#this is explicitly a homestuck reference

[maroonian]

Baby Battles

(this is part of a thing im working on)

@skrunglebeasts

[anachronistic-cat]

i'm currently working on another, more complicated Gem picture inspired by her being inherently interdimensional, and i was using dogteir Jade Harley for pose inspo,

and then i thought. you know what would be funny?

anyway, original panel under the cut

[neoanedotheart]

Lazy thing i wanted to do!!! they're just silly :3

I think dave is a pretty princess and John is awkward

I'll be yapping below

I believe that Dave texts John right after he gets his ass handed to him DAILY. It usually plays out like this where they banter and Dave never really goes through the extent of explaining what thoroughly happens to him so John lives in forever ignorant bliss. And this leads Dave to feel like there's more of disconnect because he first of all doesn't really know how to articulate his feelings and second abuse doesn't seem like abuse to the victim. So he goes about everyday unknowingly yearning to be saved by someone greater than him, which is why I put the snow white reference at the end hehe.

Snow white as a fairy tale is extremely cliche, you got the prince in shining armor showing up conveniently on a horse and saving the girl. There's always this hierarchy placed upon the story where the damsel in distress is saved by a man, that man being portrayed as a greater being.

And with John taking place as the prince in this context paints him as this greater being. And I feel like a part of Dave envies and despises John for being this way, for being "perfect" or in a way. Greater than him.

The thing is in the original snow white story she's unconscious, that's undesirable. But it adds to the desperation of wanting to be saved, shining a better looking light on a person who isn't really there for reasons you want them to be. However John is a sincere person, it's more so the lack of communication or true understanding of one another that leads to this rift, this belief that John isn't there for Dave because he loves him, but because he's his friend and it's John's duty as a friend to save him. Which also brings me to the last line where Dave never corrects himself, and how he insinuates that he'll be unconscious due to being placed in a glass coffin much like snow white was when she was poisoned. He's at this stage where he doesn't want to be saved by an outer source, a greater person than him. He wants to be saved by himself he wants to prove worthy, but then conflicting within his mind is also this idea he isn't good enough to. We all know that Dave believes he isn't a hero and explicitly states John is the hero multiple times throughout homestuck. So he stays waiting.

John however, refers to Dave as Cinderella, Cinderella gets abused and put through plenty of torture from her step sisters and is saved through marriage of some person she just met. There's still this base line of being saved by man however there's this more mutual understanding of what they're getting into, a similar yearn for one another. Though he never caught her name he was still willing to find her, the real her. Which is John in this case, he probably understands he's missing something in the big picture but can never find out what and the best he can do is hope that the other half still held on to what they once were and was willing to share.

This is a pre-sburb interaction btw they're just unknowingly foreshadowing a shit ton.

Sorry if there's like bad shitty writing in here, I'm rambling and it's like almost midnight hehe

[nekropsii]

yo, since people listen to you, can you confirm that the alpha trolls are infact described to be the alpha trolls in the comic and that "dancestor" refers to both alpha and beta trolls? I've seen so many people lately act like you can't call them "alpha trolls" and you must refer to them solely as "dancestors" and it's ridiculous as hell lmao

That's fucking wild, especially considering "Dancestor" is coined by an Alpha Troll specifically to describe the Beta Trolls, lmfao.

Illiteracy strikes again!

Also, denying that the Alpha Trolls are the Alpha Trolls is a ridiculous position that people keep trying to endear to me. It won't ever work. I've seen people try to deny it by saying that, essentially, "Beta and Alpha purely refer to Scratch Iterations", but that logic holds as much water as a sieve. "Pre-Scratch" and "Post-Scratch" are terms independent from "Beta" and "Alpha". The relation that Beta and Alpha has to each other is purely that one comes before the other, specifically that Alpha comes before Beta, because they're referencing Development Versions of specific plot-relevant programs.

LIGHTNING ROUND:

The Beta Kids are the Pre-Scratch Humans playing the Beta version of SBURB.

==> Homestuck, pg. 1 The Beta Trolls are the Post-Scratch Trolls using the Beta version of Trollian.

==> Homestuck, pg. 2009 The Alpha Kids are the Post-Scratch Humans playing the Alpha version of SBURB, and were initially known to the audience as the Guardians of the Beta Kids, meaning they came first.

==> Homestuck, pg. 4115. ... And The Alpha Trolls are the Pre-Scratch Trolls that were presumably using the Alpha version of Trollian, and were initially known to the audience as the Ancestors of the Beta Trolls, meaning they came first.

Logically speaking... Why would they not be called the Alpha Trolls?

This isn't rocket science, and takes way less mental gymnastics than saying, "Actually, everyone's been wrong in calling The Beta Trolls 'The Beta Trolls' this entire time, because 'Beta' and 'Alpha' just has to do with Scratch Iterations", even though the version of Trollian being used by the Beta Trolls is literally referred to as the Beta Client in the text of the comic. Which is a real argument I've been presented with. Several times. And it's a bad one. Every time.

It also takes way less mental gymnastics than saying that The Alpha Trolls are purely "The Dancestors", despite the term applying to almost every main character in the comic and specifically getting coined to describe The Beta Trolls, and saying that The Alpha Trolls isn't a valid term because 'they aren't explicitly called that in the comic' even though they don't need to get explicitly called. Like. Anything. In order for the reader to intuit that this is following the same very consistent train of naming logic that the entire rest of the comic has been following this entire time.

So, yeah, that argument is stupid. It is also bad, dumb, and silly. And a myriad of other terms.

[tanoraqui]

Dungeon Meshi Liveblog: Musing on Ages, & Dragon Prep

"Desire" mention - how much does Tensu know of the details of the origin of dungeons? (More than I do, probably...but I know this is thematically important.)

"Us"? Aren't gnomes another long-lived species? Ok this is going to be continuously relevant to the geopolitics so I need to break it down. From the wiki:

Elves: lifespan: 400; adult at 80

Gnomes: lifespan: 240; adult at 40

Dwarves: lifespan: 200; adult at 40

Tallmen: lifespan: 60; adult at 16

Orcs: lifespan: 55; adult at 14

Kobolds: lifespan: 55; adult at 13

Halffoots: lifespan: 50; adult at 14

I see - so really we're dealing with 3 factions: Elves, Gnomes & Dwarves, and Everyone Else. I find it interesting that the longer-lived races reach maturity at 17-20% of their average lifespan, while the younger-lived races all do so at around 25% of their average lifespan. I feel a little like this is a cop-out on the writer's part in trying to keep the ages of maturity a little closer to one another - though of course it's a cultural thing by each race (and, I'm sure, each culture within each race - idk how monolithic the whole comic will treat them, but it would track with the thematic worldbuilding for their to be multiple distinct social groups within each race, even if they do tent to band together against the other races!)

Based on the categories of "long-lived" and "short-lived", the latter seem to view all of the former as much the same - but I'm SURE the Elves have a different view of it, and I'm sure the Dwarves and, as we see here, Gnomes, are very aware of and irritated by the Elves' view.

...and as we see here, and earlier with Chilchuck admitting to being 29 (solidly middle-aged!) and Marcille going, "Aw, so you are a kid!", people rarely make any effort to understand each others relative ages, instead just coasting on their own life-based assumptions.

With reference to above, we can see that Namari at 61 is pretty exactly equivalent to Kaka and Kiki at 20.

Also: this little scene wasn't in the show at all and I love it! Namari in mentor mode!

.

ALRIGHT RED DRAGON TIME!! Hey look, literally the 2nd panel in this ghost city is 2/3 winged lions by volume. Hmmm...

.

I love how it's explicitly Shuro's job to get the final killshot, presumably because he has Feats for this (ie, cool-looking moments) as a "real" anime character (Easterner). This literally bears up with what we see of him in the future.

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Chilchuck: I will NOT fight!

Chilchuck: I'll totally be dragon bait with you, though.

Chilchuck: Not that I care if you succeed or survive or anything! I'm only here because you paid up front.

.

Laios using the Inspiring Leader speech feat! They're all having a Heroes' Feast before fighting the dragon, a classic pre-dragon act for bonus HP and immunity to being Frightened! I know this isn't actually D&D but that post that I think came through my queue earlier today is right: it DOES have the same bones. It's like reading the Locked Tomb and being aware that this author was deep in Homestuck, or Scholomance vis a vis Harry Potter canon and fandom. I know where this writer has been, because I have been there too.

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THE BOY IS HERE! THE MAN THE MYTH THE OVERWORKED* LEGEND!

THIS SISTER-EATING MOTHERFUCKER!!

*Crack AU where the whole dragon fight is averted because it talks and somehow the conversation leads to Chilchuck going, "And the Mage isn't even letting you sleep? Tsk. You've got to start a union." And then Laios gets all starry-eyed, "A Monster Union?!" And then the Mage is eventually defeated by all the monsters of the dungeon, and also the poor sane ghosts as well, unionizing against him, and "king" becomes just the title for the Union Rep, whose main job is to honk an airhorn at presumptuous Elves and tell them to fuck off like a Canadian goose.

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I LOVE THEM SO MUCH

[dingodad]

This might be a ridiculous question, but does Lord

English have control over sburb? The alpha timeline

Is set to only be the one that allows the creation of

Lord English after all. Does being Lord of Time mean

that he is the one causing all the doomed timelines

to be destroyed or that he is causing Skaia to do it?

Is Skaia just in a way another one of his unwilling

servants? I guess what I’m saying is, are Lord English

and sburb even against each other? Sure his

machinations cause the destruction of universes,

which is the opposite of sburb’s purpose, but also

his influence is why those universes were made in

the first place.

one of the biggest persistent misconceptions homestuck readers have is that all events in Sburb are controlled by some overarching, interfering intelligence, and that this intelligence's name is Skaia. when a character is given a particularly cruel or gruelling hero quest, "Skaia orchestrated it"; when a character's actions cause a timeline to become a doomed offshoot, it's because "Skaia didn't want that to happen". but this is explicitly untrue:

ROSE: ... Skaia is a very passive entity. It only "knows" and "sees," but it never quite "acts." ROSE: When it is asked to change everything, there is only so much it has control over. ROSE: In fact, it has control over exactly one thing. The defense portals. ROSE: It can decide to send important meteors to different points in time than originally planned, thus creating alternate realities.

(remember how all games of Sburb start off with the exact same parameters, and it's only data input by the players that causes events to deviate?)

this is related to, and compounded by, another misconception which came to be common toward the latter half of the story: people fundamentally misunderstand what a "narrative" is and therefore get it into their heads that in order to be a narrator a character needs some kind of "narrative powers" - where did dirk get his "narrative powers"; how can doc scratch be the author-figure of alternia if he "doesn't have narrative powers"? people think that, in order to have dominion over the incipisphere, Skaia must be some kind of wizard, capable of both predestining events and shaping reality to match its predictions. and i have occasionally humoured or implied support for this interpretation by referring to "what Sburb wants" or "Sburb's agenda", but these are merely convenient anthropomorphisations. the fact is that anyone can tell a story, and almost any kind of power can be wielded to reinforce a chosen narrative: highbloods control the narrative on alternia simply by living a long time; lord english controls the narrative not by conducting every single event to his whim but by being present at the beginning and setting small, key events in motion... Sburb is much the same. a video game is a type of story which can control its outcome with rules and code, but that's the full extent of its power; the rules and code can't change, no matter who's playing the game, no matter what the supercomputer running the game "thinks", and no matter what immortal time-travelling demon may or may not have hijacked the process.

in one sense, yes, Skaia has been made Lord English's "servant". but in another, more important sense, Skaia cannot "serve" anything, nor can it be "for" or "against" anyone, because it is not a moral entity. Skaia is simply the cosmic force of creation, and creation and destruction are not good and evil. creation is an intrinsically neutral act, which can be at one time beautiful and at another time devastating - as in cancer, which is a disease caused be cells reproducing without limit! (and in the inverse: not only is destruction not always a net negative in homestuck, it is almost always a requirement for growth and rebirth; heroes must die to become gods, planets must die to give birth to new universes... the destruction of universes is not a uniquely disparagable crime that Lord English is committing, but rather a larger manifestation of a pattern that is intrinsic to the ecosystem of Paradox Space itself, just as it is intrinsic to real-life ecosystems.) this is in fact exactly what Karkat alludes to when he speculates the universe he created is cancerous. as should be obvious, there's nothing actually physically wrong with the universe he created; it's just that, like a virus or a cancer, Lord English has hijacked the process of creation for his own ends and made his own birth inevitable if the process of creation continues unchecked - a process which the horrorterrors, gods of death who at first seem to be malevolent but are in fact revealed to be victims, attempt desperately to prevent!

[valtsv]

you’re making it through homestuck really fast! how are you feeling so far?

i've officially started recognizing homestuck references in things that aren't explicitly homestuck themselves i am in too deep

[homestuckreplay]

get dave strider a home cooked meal 2k09

(page 587-606)

9/5/2009 Wheel Spin: Parent Bad :( Verdict: Brother Committing Puppet Crimes (And Real Crimes)

9/6/2009 Wheel Spin: being silly :3c Verdict: Silliness Gone Too Far

Homestuck loves to slowly dispense information about a character’s guardian and the relationship between the pair long before said guardian actually makes an appearance. I kind of love it. It’s like hearing stories about a friend’s parents for months at school before going to their house one day and actually meeting these long fabled adults. In Homestuck, it gives these characters a lot of power as they have so much influence over the characters without even being around, it makes them mysterious in the ways that the lives of adults often are to younger people, and it adds another thing to look forward to in the story, another reason to keep coming back and reading the new pages every day.

John’s dad’s car was seen on p.29 – presumably with Dad inside – and Dad was visually seen on p.79 via a portrait on the wall, before showing up for real on p.88. Rose’s mom was seen in silhouette on p.231, but it took until p.388 to actually meet her. Dave’s bro’s appearance was actually foreshadowed on p.456, as he uses his baseball cap and triangular glasses as a lock screen, and again on p.587 with the baseball cap collection, and we get his full silhouette on p.592 where he REALLY looks like a guy with a skateboard. It could be a long time before we see him in detail, but given that Dad and Mom were both revealed during a Strife sequence with their kids, I’d guess that the same will be true for Bro.

But honestly, Bro continues to get worse and more sinister. It’s explicitly confirmed on p.595 that Dave isn’t able to put food in the kitchen, which puts a whole new spin on how excited Dave got about finding the apple juice in his closet (p.320) – that could be the first thing he’s had to drink all day. And depending on how often he’s able to leave the house, he probably lives mostly on snacks, maybe takeout since I imagine that’s how Bro eats. It’s gotta be affecting Dave’s health. No wonder he’s such an asshole.

Dave slicing a puppet’s snout off with a sword and putting it down the garbage disposal hurt me too because I get that Dave is doing this out of anger and fear, but his bro is absolutely provoking him into it, he’s obviously got more cameras pointed at all these setups ready to make more content for PlushRump. The line ‘Besides, it's not like your BRO is around to see.’ on p.591 definitely feels like an omniscient narrator giving a nod to the reader while still accurately reflecting Dave’s thoughts.

There are things Dave still isn’t getting about his situation. He’s caught in this space where part of him realizes how fucked up his relationship with his bro is and he’s scared, another part of him is reacting by doubling down on how cool he thinks his bro is, and a third part of him is still just oblivious. The internal conflict and the moment to moment uncertainty are very real for an abusive power dynamic in general, and although in the abstract it’s funny to imagine a jumble of shitty swords stored in a fridge, I really can’t laugh at any of this.

Dave’s bro is the first character that I don’t enjoy thinking about, but all this stuff is really important to Dave’s character, so I will watch the first Saw movie and see if that sheds any new light.

On p.587, there’s the line ‘You think if you see one more soft, bulbous bottom being like / kind of jutting out and impudent or whatever / you're gonna fly off the handle.’ This is word for word a set of messages Dave sent Rose on p.522: ‘if i see one more soft bulbous bottom being like / kind of jutting out and impudent or whatever / im gonna fly off the handle’ and is the second time Dave’s narration and pesterlog have been identical, the first being ‘it is like fucking christmas up in here’ referring to an unopened container of apple juice on p.26 and p.320. I don’t recall seeing this for any other characters. It makes Dave feel very unfiltered, like the difference between his thoughts and words is less than for the other characters. But it also feels like the narrator likes him, and is entertained enough by his words to replicate them exactly, like he’s god’s favorite.

Finally, I had a revelation that Rose should be the one using hash map. It’s the perfect modus for someone who wants to expand their vocabulary and show off all the weird words they already know. I bet Rose could get so creative with item names. Instead of a PLUSH CUDDLE CTHULHU (1) she could knit a FLOCCULENT OTHERWORLDLY AMUSEMENT (also 1 but like, a fancier 1) and she could spend all her time trying to find words that even the sylladex doesn’t know.

[thewebcomicsreview]

Hate to tell you this, but the HSBC update just got updated.

I get that they wanted to keep the Hell Arc confined to page 666, and it'll make the archival experience pretty cool, but hard refreshing the site didn't let me see the update to the page due to cache bullshit, I had to use a different browser. So let's liveblog now before it breaks again:

Looks like we're back to Tavros. I guess it makes sense that the first path to update would the one where they could reuse the talksprites.

So, as directly stated by Davepeta, Vriska is trapped in a time loop, where Tavros doesn't remember anything that happened the previous day, just like in the movie Groundhog Day. That Davepeta called out the movie explicitly in-universe as the reference makes me wonder if events will follow the rough plot of that movie. It's clearly what Davepeta wants to happen, but...Vriska....

Anyway, Vriska offers to let Tavros decide what to do today, for the first time. It took two whole years for her to try that, but she is the Thief of Light and not letting anyone else decide what to do is literally her cosmic role and stuff, so I guess that tracks. And what Tavros wants to do is....play a game.

Last update I said that Vriska saying she's done some things wrong while shrugging and laughing is the ultimate distillation of Vriska, but her having won everything and being miserable about it is also the ultimate distillation of Vriska. She's a woman of contrasts, that Vriskers.

The use of the phrase "session" here outs this line as having Deeper Meanings. Having SBURB sessions over and over so we can play forever is literally Dirk's plan, and most of the fandom is assuming a Candy session is coming.

So, even though they're talking about playing FLARP (the troll DnD game, which is apparently PvP), this is also an argument over whether or not Homestuck should continue. You can't really "win" if the game keeps going, but that doesn't mean you're stuck doing the same thing over and over.

I know Vriska is Problematique, but I'm still taken aback by her 2000s kid usage of "gay" as a general-purpose insult, and not just because trolls don't have a concept of "straight" or "gay". Apparently she doesn't even know what it means and learned the word from Da-

Oh, it was just to set up this line for people to screenshot. Alright. Fine.

brb, gotta go post this in the hard to use reaction images channel on the discord and have someone complain it's easy to use.

Tavros accuses Vriska of projecting her own fears onto him, and then gets into a tangent about being a "soft" female fairy and Vriska takes him up on playing this new "game for girls" and he panics and changes the subject. There's a...lot....going on there.

Vriska starts to have an actual breakthrough, when suddenly Aradiabot appears. Wait, is this where Aradia and Ult!Dave went?

We fade to black and I thought that was it, but apparently not. This being a visual novel makes it feel like a much bigger update than it is, and also kind of makes you read each line a bit more carefully. It's a good way of having multiple meaty (or, um, candy-y) updates in a short stretch of time, and that's kind of an important part of the "feel" of Homestuck that no one can really replicate.

Oh, I do not care for this talksprite.

The downside of this format is that it's harder to liveblog, I think, but basically Aradia is complaining about the Vriska Cycle of "Do bad thing, self-flagellate to be redeemed, repeat".

Vriska justifies it because she has to take action and set people straight and stuff, and if this conversation/game isn't leading to the return of "(Vriska)", the OG timeline Vriska who died and got a ton of character growth before post-retcon Vriska stole her girlfriend, then what is it building towards?

A lot of these lines make good single-panel memes. Yes, Vriska, you are the problem in nearly every situation, even (especially) when you're also the solution.

Aradia sa- oh for fuck's sake this is unreadable, guys. Anyway she says that getting into a routine leads to stagnation and slow death, which, mood, but also is about Homestuck itself as much as it is about Vriska.

Jesus Christ, how long is this update? This page is a full on Pesterquest game when the other five routes are finished.

Oh, okay. That's it. Vriska levels and we get a bunch of fire-themed pun ranks for her, of which Skinner's Bane is the best

[raecaw]

hi okay i was meant to sleep like an hour ago this is going to be so fucking incoherent you have been warned

first off the timeline divide in the epilogues into meat and candy is so fucking interesting to me because its like. its so clearly a reference to the meat/candy binary of storycrafting that hussie talks about in the [s] descend author commentary iirc - meat as action heavy content that drives the plot forward, and candy as lighter less heavy content (usually focused on shipping which matches with the candy timeline being represented with the sucker juju or whatever the fuck its called). caliborn is meat calliope is candy this is simple this is basic.

*BUT* - if you look at calliope and caliborns roles in the narrative of homestuck itself theres some really interesting shit there right - caliborn is the meat. he drives the plot forward he wants nothing but action he literally tries to steal the narrative and recreate it in his own image. calliope is the candy the focus on shipping. in universe shes explicitly written to be a fandom stand in, especially obvious in how she draws fanart of the kids right. caliborn = meat = canon (also side note i cant fit anywhere else - the meat timeline is the one where john kills lord english, which has to happen to preserve the timeline, arguably making it the 'canon' timeline). calliope = candy = fandom. obviously the two timelines are representative of those two binaries, and alt calliope controls the candy timeline (which has a much heavier focus on shipping/fan kids/relationship drama/generally the type of shit you see in fanon content) but theres no caliborn right? hes dead.

enter dirk. unfortunately one of the most interesting fucking characters in this entire shit heap i hate it here. hes clearly the caliborn stand in for post canon - he controls the meat timeline, he and alt calliope keep trying to kill each other, he hijacks control of the narrative homosuck style and arguably pushes his friends and family to act out of character to 'fix' the narrative (second side tangent here but to me thats why everyones so. gestures vaguely at post canon. not themselves yk. theyre either in the fanon timeline or the 'canon' timeline thats being hijacked and controlled just like homosuck i swear theres a reason theyre like that guys- (<voice of a guy desperate for post canon to have anymeaning)). not to mention all the connections dirk already has to caliborn theyre basically splinters in law at this point

so everything lines up pretty well so far right. candy is the fanon timeline, the focus on shipping and interpersonal drama as established in the meat/candy storycraft binary, controlled by the character written as a stand in for fans. meat is the canon timeline, the focus on action and conflict, controlled by (a stand in for) caliborn. its all normal and great and fantastic if you just ignore the burning trash heap that is the actual content of post canon.

and then the dirkjohn propaganda kicks in /hj

but fr though this doesnt even have to be in a shipping way its just. jesus fucking christ these two have so many parallels its insane.

winding it back to og homestuck for a moment - john arguably *is* homestuck right. hes the audience surrogate, the first character we meet and the last we see, the guy that gets retcon powers and literally rewrites the entire narrative around him - literally leaving his mark permanently on the rest of the comic (the arms and oil retcons on the early pages). john as homestuck is i think a fairly common reading and also makes the rest of my argument work so lets just accept it and move on okay <3 okay. also, the way he becomes the narrative is incredibly heir of breath coded - he literally inherits/becomes the narrative, and the narrative changes around him to protect him (all ways heir interacts with aspect), and he does all of this almost without realising it. he never wants the narrative, and he barely uses it once he has it - honestly, hes pretty detatched from it, just kinda... breezing through yk. breath coded behaviour

so. johns homestuck - or homestuck proper at least. and what does john do in the epilogues?

...he either dies or becomes a depressed repressed mess going through a midlife crisis that basically just drifts through life doing fuck all. yyeah. homestuck aint doing too great in post canon (Which. checks out). him dying in meat specifically though is really fucking interesting to me, *because*-

i think. ult dirk is post canon. or at least, he is to post canon what john was to homestuck. he literally kills john (homestuck) and takes his place as the bearer of the narrative - and hes entirely fucking aware of what hes doing (yet another fun parallel between them - john never has to face himself (not even an alternate self - one of very few characters in the comic to not have one), and if you consider him the narrative then he never has to face the narrative. dirk *constantly* has to face himself, which means if he is post canon, hes constantly aware of it. theres also potentially smth here with heirs being a passive class while princes are active but i could be wrong ive never cared about +/- alignments LMAO). dirk's also the narrative in an incredibly prince coded way - he destroys the narrative, and he destroys *through* the narrative. he kills the very thing he wants to become more than anything because thats the only way he *can* become it.

so. dirks post canon. he and calliope had split control over the epilogues, but now hes almost completely taken over control of post canon (and im tempted to say thats commentary on how much influence the fans had on the epilogues, following the calliope = fandom reading, but im not gonna put much weight into that because i have no fucking clue how things went down behind the scenes). calliope can definitely still be read as the fandom in post canon though, which makes her hatred of ult dirk and everything hes doing even better because like. yeah! look at the fan reception to everything in post canon! we do want it dead the way she wants ult dirk dead! (also really fun in how it matches up with cherubs fighting for domination - dirk being the caliborn stand in and alt calliope being the calliope that *did* fight her brother and win). also ult dirk (canon) hating alt calliope (the fandom) lines up really fucking well with how bitter and cynical post canon was towards the homestuck fanbase but again thats probably not intentional

so. ult dirk is canon and fighting to 'fix' the narrative/continue its relevancy (could be seen as a metaphor for how capitalism insists creative properties continue on into infinity with pointless sequels < absolutely a fucking reach). alt calliope is the fandom and would Really like him to fucking stop please. john is homestuck and is just fucking dead

(side note pt 3 electric boogaloo but i dont think its a coincidence that the only surviving jegbert (the only one that can crack her egg barring any weird corpse revival bullshit) is in the candy/fanon timeline. it also might not be a coincidence that the only strider to not be ascended and/or turned into a robot is roxy (also transed gener in the meat timeline). ult dirk gets his ass kicked by the power of transsexuality real)

anyway tldr because its 2 am but post canon is just an extended metaphor for sequels killing their sources, mocking their corpses and then trying and failing to fill their roles while the fandom tries to murder them and everything after the paradox space comics was a mistake thank you and good night

ok firstly: who are you and what are you doing on my blog. secondly: thank you for this it's everything i was hoping for when i asked for you to hyperfixate on BC in my inbox.

i fully agree with this reading + appreciate the nuance that BC brings to the table. I think Hussie coined and embodied the term "suicide of the author" by explicitly turning canon over to the readers and allowing the concept of canon to become dubious. it was an extremely risky move that paid off in some ways and flopped in others. much like most other risks hussie took with hs. i find BC so compelling because it is simultaneously flogging a dead horse and creating interesting arcs and futures for beloved characters. Like thats the thing i cant say i love BC and I can't say i hate it, compelling has been the most descriptive word i can come up with for it lmao.

I want to extend and highlight the calliope/caliborn(dirk) metaphor in regards to the ultimate fate of canon. we know that cherubim have the double sided childhood where one is active while the other sleeps, and we've explicitly seen that calliope represents candy and caliborn represents meat. also i could be delusional but i feel as though there's been foreshadowing for a while that the timelines will at some point converge. there are many unanswered questions about the state of the new universe and the cracks in the sky, and i feel this is representative of the cherubim reaching maturity. at some point i think the meat universe and the candy universe may crash into each other so to speak, and perhaps one may destroy the other. again this parallels dirk and calliope's fight across both timelines.

i also heard a theory some time ago that in the meat timeline, dirk and rose on their quest to create a new session of SBURB to continue the reproductive process of the universe (lowkey a noble pursuit sans the evil controlling shit) , will create the 48 player squiddle session thus completing the giant time loop theyve been slaving under this whole time. and as we hear enough about from dave, serving time loops can be an exhausting feat of self fulfilling prophecies stacked on top of each other. It seems that the characters were under the impression that the great time loops were complete (or at least escaped from) when they created Earth C but I believe they were mistaken. What happens when the loop is truly complete? does True Free Will finally begin to take effect? Do our protagonists travel to the new universe too or are they destroyed with the old one? does the story end or does it loop back around forever and ever?

I think that the decision John made at the beginning of the epilogues had that ultimate outcome. Both decisions led to the characters escaping the time loop, but for the meat timeline it means they have to complete the time loop and for the candy timeline it means they have to escape the time loop. Is the candy timeline a doomed timeline? perhaps. but we know from Davesprite that it is possible to escape doomed timelines and enter the alpha timeline, you just have to change yourself somewhat so from a narrative perspective you're a different character from your alpha counterpart.

much to think about.

[puzzlewagon]

it is funny to me that people will insist homestuck "always referenced memes" because (1) hussie specifically created sbahj so that he WOULDN'T have to do that (and then sbahj became an actual meme because he's just that good) and (2) if you want an mspa that explicitly references memes and internet culture, problem sleuth is right there.

[familyabolisher]

You've talked a lot about lolita in terms of how it relates to tlt, and as possibly tumblrs premier tlt scholar are there any other works that you think it would be important to read to get the most out of reading or rereading tlt?

oh god!! okay well off the top of my head:

i assume this is a given, but, like, Annabel Lee. some of Poe’s other poetry hits similar beats to that one – The City in the Sea, The Sleeper, Lenore are a few examples, and his short story The Fall of the House of Usher has a woman with a very similar feel to his poetic muses (and frankly a similar feel to Alecto). not required reading ofc but it pads out the kind of touchstones Nabokov + Muir tap into!

i haven’t actually read Homestuck lol but i’ve heard that Homestuck helps, like, a lot (i really really should read Homestuck)

i think a decent fluency in classics is probably also helpful. which i do not have, lmao. but i WOULD recommend reading Homer's Iliad, if only for the fact that the Iliad is very explicitly referenced at multiple points in Gideon the Ninth and continues to thematically lurk throughout Harrow and Nona in these rhetorical gestures made towards heroism + tragedy (i believe Muir once talked about John as conceiving of and constructing himself as a classically tragic figure, which – interesting!!).

there’s absolutely some christian theological dimensions that fly right over my head (i’m jewish, lmao), but a working knowledge of the christian easter story is probably like the minimum you need to get how that’s being played around with in-text.

the opening of Alecto references the opening of Dante’s Inferno such that it’s fair to speculate that Alecto will develop itself in part around Dante (and, considering the role that Dante plays in Lolita, I imagine around Beatrice), so the Divine Comedy is a good one to have a feel for.

Don Quixote! one of my favourite things about Gideon the Ninth in particular is the fact that ‘Dulcinea’ is named in reference to Cervantes’ Dulcinea of Toboso, a wholly imagined woman essential to Don Quixote’s false image of chivalry, representative of spanish nationhood during a time of imperialist conquest, etc etc etc. it does a lot with the gendered paradigms being prodded at in Gideon, especially wrt how they relate back to ideologies necessary to the social structuring of imperialism. i really should put together an essay about Don Quixote and Gideon alongside one another tbh someone ask me about that sometime

i’m sure i’m missing some lmao but these are the ones i can remember! i also have a bunch of texts that i just think hold interesting discursive relationships to tlt, even if i can’t fairly make a case for being consciously present in the text: Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Christabel, Sheridan le Fanu’s Carmilla, Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire are the Big Three.

[st-just]

I never actually read homestuck, what's the right weird troll relationship term to refer to a relationship that's neither romantic nor technically sexual but is just explicitly replacing self-harm that isn't hurting enough anymore with interpersonal masochism?

He Who Drowned The World sure is a book BTW.

[gem-tavvy]

IMPROMPTU TAVROS NITRAM WRITING COURSE

VOL. 2 ~ OF HEROES AND VILLAINS

(note: originally this was not gonna be a fully fledged tavros writing post. it started as just talking about tavros' culpability in jake harley's death, but later i get into some heavier stuff that i feel is worth addressing. in order to write tavros, you have to understand what he goes through in canon itself.

a lot of people will tell you that tavros was "done dirty" by homestuck, or that hussie didn't do a good job of writing him. i will not ever say this. i believe that in order to understand and appreciate tavros, you need to understand and appreciate what happens to him in canon. even the bad.

if all you see in tavros is his nice interactions with other characters, you are missing the point. tavros is a deeply tragic character who interacts deeply with a lot of homestuck's greater themes. childhood and adulthood, loss of innocence, abuse, trauma, heroism, independence. all of it.

i don't think homestuck would have been better if all the bad stuff that happened to tavros didn't happen. that would have made it a far less interesting and impactful story. and even if i would have enjoyed a happier ending for him, i understand that that was not what the author wanted to write and portray. because in the end, i did not write homestuck. neither did you. all we can do is enjoy and analyze it. we cannot demand any more from it.

before i get to the actual post, i also wanna state for the record that i think the idea that tavros didn't get a satisfying arc is just flat-out wrong. but i'll save that topic for when i get the chance to delve into GHOST tavros, because that storyline is very dear to me.)

all i'm saying is that the idea that tavros "killed" grandpa harley feels like a misunderstanding. technically speaking, the only thing tavros DID was commune with bec to redirect a bullet!

think about his wording here. "aS A WONDERFUL BONUS AND COINCIDENCE," "aND AS FORTUNE WOULD HAVE IT,"

tavros's only intent was to save jade's life. we should REALLY be blaming bec here for jake's death, not tavros. imagine if you told or asked someone to save another person from being crushed by a falling piano, and in order to do that, they threw another innocent bystander under it instead. is it YOUR fault that the person you delegated to thought a murder was the best way to achieve your goal? probably not!

and of course, when tavros recounted this tale to jade, he spoke about it as if it was a good thing. culturally speaking, for trolls - a child and a lusus is a natural familial unit, and adults are fucking SCARY. his nonchalance about the situation was understandable up until jade explained it to him.

now, what tavros is REALLY guilty of is being incredibly awkward when trying to ask a girl out. i see a lot of people take this part in a really bad faith and uncharitable light. they see him as a creepy, predatory weirdo, but that's deeply unfair.

you have to remember how much bullshit he's gone through at this point. he spent a lot of time being harassed by vriska, but when aradiabot beat her to near-death and she tried to psychically convince him to put her out of her misery, he became deeply traumatized, and fell into a deep depression for the remainder of the game. he spent more time asleep on prospit than awake.

after the trolls had to hide away in the veil, kanaya and equius collaborated to saw off tavros's legs ahd replace them with robotic ones.

this was very explicitly not something tavros asked for, but something imposed on him for "his best interest," as it were. desperate for something to ground himself, tavros hyperfocuses on his new legs as a source of self esteem. he feels awful after the vriska god-tier incident, but maybe if he can be more like her, robot prosthesis included, he'll be better! she kept making fun of him for the disability she caused. she wanted him to be like her. now he is!

that's why he tries to meddle in jade's past. why he starts referring to himself with the ableist, derogatory terms vriska used against him. why he rejects rufio and proclaims his utter fakeness. tavros is completely unraveling at this point in the story. this conversation is deeply uncomfortable to witness, not just because tavros is coming across as an awkward creep, but because this is the compounded culmination of everything vriska did to him. all her tormenting, her manipulation, over all the time she's known him. tavros is at his rock bottom, and is trying to emulate vriska in a last-ditch effort to regain some control over his life.

after tavros gets to experience the singular sensation of being on the other side of his experience with vriska's domineering advances, (though i should reinforce here that tavros backed down pretty quickly after jade's rejection and understood her feelings) he gets contacted by vriska herself.

vriska, of course, sees his attempts to emulate her for what it is. on some level i am sure it burned her just a little to know that that's how he saw her - if that's how he tried to mimic her. with jade not reinforcing vriska's method with reciprocation and vriska herself tearing him down definitively (and reinforcing the idea that she isn't really even worthy of emulation; she helped create bec noir, endangering everyone) tavros doesn't have anything left. all the walls are torn down. his childhood innocence was destroyed. his chance at a normal life, gone. romance, utterly tainted. every single fantasy and bit of joy he could prop himself up on was systematically burned to a crisp, and he had only one thing left.

anger. pure, righteous anger, the kind he should have been feeling this whole time.

it took her a long time, but she did it. she got tavros to "grow up," in some way or another. his whole life, he's just wanted to keep to himself. to play games, to rap, to have fun. to be a kid. but she paralyzed him. she traumatized him. and when the last fantasy he was clinging on to was the idea that maybe vriska was right, that she was a good person all along, that she was helping him - she disillusioned him.

this part of [s] wake is kind of the perfect summation to this. the host plush: a symbol of his childhood innocence. a game he used to play that made him happy. fiduspawn - a game in which the host plush is destroyed in order to give the a fiduspawn life. by decapitating it, tavros is at last symbolically shedding his childhood, and by using it to threaten vriska with death, also shedding his natural aversion to conflict and violence.

if this were any other story, tavros would have triumphed over vriska, slaying the treacherous bully and being all the more heroic because of it. but this is homestuck. tavros was heroic, sure, but being heroic isn't always a good thing. sometimes being a hero is the worst thing you can be. vriska was a hero. bro strider was a hero. bro strider's heroism broke dave - made him loathe the idea of heroism. sure, dave never accomplished his destiny, but he's happier.

tavros was being heroic in this scene. but there's a reason that gods in homestuck can only ever be killed by heroic means or just. heroism is a heavy burden.

that's one of the most important lessons in homestuck.

[thebigcjart]

Unlike the Khaos post, I'm going to be talking about Jake's land and quest primarily (extensively), as Soter doesn't have much metatextual significance outside of his direct impact on Jake's quest, which is the generally the case for the other denizens except for Kronos and Echidna. Everybody good? Good.

Let's get it:

Soter

Soter is the denizen of Jake Alassa's Land of Armor and Cliffs.

Soter doesn't have as much wacky behind-the-scenes stuff as Khaos, but like all denizens, is still crazy powerful. Also like Hemera and Nix, Soter's color scheme does not match his player's text color. They do have color significance to this session's Cherubs, though, but I'll cover them after I do all the players ;3

Greek/Roman(?) Origins

Not much is known about the Greek god/spirit Soter, or if there is, I have found very little. As far as my research goes, Soter is a god/spirit of safety, preservation, and deliverance from harm. He is commonly associated with Zeus in the Orphic Hymnns, and serves as an overseerer and savior, which suits the Light aspect. The two scarfrobes around him echo the two snakes in a caduceus, a symbol of Hermes/Mercury.

There is a solid chance that I'm making the following up, so please correct me if you know for certain that I'm wrong bc I'm operating off of memory here. I remember reading somewhere that the Roman empire had waystones along roads that looked like the head of a spirit/god of security, to bless travelers with safety and to show them the way. I'm like 60% sure that was the Roman equivalent of Soter? So that ties into the themes of deliverance and preservation that I'm going for. Take that with a pinch of salt, my research is infuriatingly vague there.

Hey, This Guy Isn't Cetus

Yeah, well.

Homestuck is inconsistent with whether denizens are tied to aspect. Sure, Vriska and Rose had Cetus, but that's because their planet was super watery (fit for a sea monster). Both Jake (English) and Karkat had Abraxas, and their aspects are just shy of being as far apart as possible. The only Denizen that is absolutely for certain tied to an aspect is Echidna, with Space. Alli Sharpe (this session's Space player) follows this trend. It's also only implied that Hephaestus is anywhere similar to Echidna. Aradia isn't explicitly stated to have Hephaestus as her denizen, and she is a time player. I go into more detail about why Kronos is a better fit for this session's time denizen in Mark's post, which I'll make later.

Also LOAAC doesn't really have any good places for a sea monster to dwell, now does it? (I suppose I'll compensate with a Kraken pun. Sea also: the Crackening)

There is some alchemical significance with the whole Jupiter/Tin thing, but I'll round all the session's alchemical stuff in one big superpost later. Let's get into the land and quest now.

Land of Armor and Cliffs

Jake's land, the Land of Armor and Cliffs, is an almost entirely level planet with huge cracks and holes running through it, revealing glowing streams of light deep underneath. These are not fjords, like would be found on Mark's land (the Land of Acid and Fjords), as they are not formed by glaciers, but instead through earthquakes in an event dubbed the Crackening. The clay that composes the plateaus is a bright purple, and lush neon pink vegetation lines most of the cracks.

Design

As I stated in the Khaos post, the players' lands in this session follow a specific naming scheme: Land of (Two syllable word dealing with the player's past) and (One syllable geographical feature).

The Cliffs refer to the sheer edges of the plateaus that drop all the way down to the narrow rivers of light that fill the empty space. All of the plant life is concentrated around these areas, though they were like that long before the Crackening (the worldwide tectonic event that split the earth). As such, almost all of the consort settlements are around and some divided by the ravines.

Speaking of, the Armor refers to the consorts, which are turtles. It also is with regard to the fact that the ground itself acts as plated armor for Soter's Lair. Jake's past has to deal with how his mother was a chronic gambler and gambled away all of the money they had instead of paying bills or for necessities. Jake's armor here is the fact that he relied on willful ignorance and pretended like everything was okay instead of confronting his mom. One day, his mom was dragged out of their home by loan sharks, leaving Jake homeless. As a Mage of Light, he experienced/suffered from misfortune and by failing to confront the truth, he lost his home and only family.

The way he as a Mage experiences, suffers, and understands his aspect is very similar to how a Knight might protect themselves from/with theirs. This is a big reason why Dean Casuco (this session's Knight of Rage) and he are able to bond and empathize with each other so easily, and why they have such big influence over each other. In fact, both players' lands and quest are the only ones in this session to deal with war of some kind, but they engage with it in very different ways.

Consorts

The consorts of LOAAC are Turtles. Jake likes turtles. Before the Crackening, the turtles established some pretty developed (and heavily fortified) settlements throughout the dense network of heavily forested... well, forests. This is all before the event, however. Nowadays there's all sorts of disarray. There are (heavily fortified) bridges between plateaus, but something about the light coming from the chasms degrades them quickly.

Quest (and lore drop, because I just couldn't stop typing, I guess)

Jake initially believes his quest is to find out who is planning to assassinate the turtle king and prevent it from happening. Jake spends almost all of his time in the (heavily fortified) Grand Library trying to research the geopolitical history of LOAAC, and must go out to retrieve specific books to put together leads on who it might be. This is where most of the combat happens, as all the different settlements and kingdoms are unwelcoming to all outsiders, which leads to underling buildup around their (heavily fortified) borders.

At this point in the story, Jake and Kane have started to form feelings towards each other. It's some messy combination of Flushed and Caliginous, but humans don't really recognize the latter as romantic anyway, so it's fine (*Laughs maliciously*). They talk a lot in the downtime between getting to their respective destinations, as both of them have a lot of travel involved. There is a lot of conflict between the two, as a result of their entirely conflicting classpects (Mage of Light and Heir of Void), but a big help towards mending these is Kane's alexithymia sort of ensuring honesty. Kane has no clue how they feel, and so emotions don't serve as much of a hinderance clouding their reasoning (or so they think), and Jake has a certain soft spot for reasoning. Kane is also sort of like a project to Jake. If that sounds kind of toxic, that's because it is, but they work it out eventually. Jake craves understanding, and Kane is the unknowable. Hijinks ensue.

Quite early on into this sequence, much earlier than anyone else in their quests, Jake stumbles upon a very rare (and heavily fortified) book that was assumed to be lost, and upon returning it to the Grand Library, it acts as a key, opening up the entrance to Soter's (heavily fortified) den deep within the earth.

Jake finds Soter already awake, when his research concluded that he should be asleep still. He discovers that Soter has been manipulating the world population since the Crackening to become isolated and to put up walls between each other, almost a cross between a helicopter parent and a 1984 "big brother" type entity.

You see, even though Jake confronted his denizen early, none of the denizens in the session are sleeping. In cannon, the denizens are commissioned by Derse to spread pollution and whatnot, then they go to sleep until the player shows up. Here, they all independently decide "screw that" and do things their own way, constantly meddling with their lands. The true enemy of the players' sessions in Homestuck was "always already here" but in this session, this enemy that I have so diabolically not shared with you yet takes a more... "always on the horizon" approach to such prophesied schemes. This empties out the narrative niche for an antagonist, so why not just use the antagonists given by the game itself? A lot. Very a lot.

Soter, the meddling overseer of LOAAC, presents Jake with

The Choice.

Embrace the "tyranny" in front of you. Take your place as this session's damned overseer; render all that is Void known and annihilate with your bonds, or

Let Freedom Reign.

Considering the weight of his options gets him seriously donked up. From there, the threat of assassination seems so small in comparison. Whatever Jake chose, it leads him to his true Quest. He himself begins to isolate from everyone else, and eventually leaves his planet for Skaia after one last lecture from Dean about "not putting up with his egghead denizen's rampant and malodorous bullshit."

The only way anyone learns about this is from the turtle king on LOAAC, who tells Kane that "The Mage is going on a holy pilgrimage to Skaia!" and "That's really all that he told us!" after Kane abandons their quest and reaches LOAAC through the gates. Kane gets more in tune with their powers the more that everyone else forgets about them. Kane is nearing the top of their echeladder, and starts to fade into Void. It gets to the point where Kane begins getting impressions of being elsewhere, nowhere even, sometimes getting bouts of amnesia. This is because they begin to start occupying the empty places around Jake.

Jake cuts off communication with everyone else, and brute forces his way through the other lands, Prospit, any crack or foothold in the session that will get him closer to Skaia; he has to get to Skaia. Throughout this, he starts seeing glimpses of Kane in his peripheral vision. A gap in a bookshelf. In a shadow beneath a tree. In the window of a building. The pause between sentences. He sees their face in a crowd of thousands. He reads their name in almost every empty page. But Jake is nearing the top of his echeladder, too. He starts noticing more, his perception focuses, his senses keener. And Kane starts to go away.

The last time they talked to each other, before all this Choice mess, it was about questions. Kane believes that a truly good question is ruined when it is answered, and Jake vehemently disagrees. Jake argued that everything has meaning; that everything has a purpose. Kane simply laughed and said, "I don't." Kane doesn't know why Jake even bothered with them in the first place, but Jake didn't have the heart to tell them that he was still searching for it. Maybe that's why his eyes hurt so much all the time. Is it because he spends too much time with them open, endlessly flipping through texts or scanning for leads, when any moment not looking for a way to Skaia is a moment wasted? Or is it because every time he closes his eyes, he thinks he sees Kane in that taunting darkness behind his eyelids, unable to speak to him, but forced to remember that he didn't say goodbye, blink after arduous blink. Another question without an answer. Those are getting rarer.

The more powerful that Jake gets, the larger his sphere of understanding grows. Kane has only ever found (lost) themself on the outside of that bubble, looking in. Kane is aimless. They spend a hell of a lot of time going nowhere, and even as quickly as they're going, it's not enough. Maybe that's what Khaos meant by "he might not be found," that Jake might find them first? Another wasteful search for meaning. Those are getting rarer. But what good would that do if Kane can't exist around him anyway? Kane knows better than to ruin that one with an answer. This leads Kane to head off and find an ectobiology lab floating away into the furthest ring via accidentally using their Void powers and clipping into Alli's peripheral vison this time during a zoomed out view of the medium. Y'know, because she's a Seer of Space and can do that. This lab was knocked out of the orbit comprising the Veil of this session's medium near the start of the session during one of Lono's (Lono Anakoni, the Sylph of Hope) Hope Surges she used on Alli when Alli first was hit with her Seer powers. But it had to happen in order for Kane to find it and make everyone's ectobiology clones, and Seers are all about what "has to happen". I'll cover that more in another post. Also I promise that this is relevant to Jake's issues. Anyway, Kane does the ectobiology, I'll cover the specific sequence of events in another another post. The only place left in range for them to get to, though, is Derse (as Derse is also technically in the Furthest Ring). On Derse, Kane meets up with Hiro's and Lono's dream selves, and they direct Kane to one of the transportalizers that would lead to a frog temple, if there was one in this session (more on that in another post). Because there's no valid destination, the destination of choice is like a perfectly generic location in the medium (a default coordinate of sorts). In the same vein of a perfectly generic object. This happens to be the very center of the medium, the core of the battlefield. As this session is not a Null Session, and further, the Green Sun already exists, there is no tumor. It seems that Kane's quest really was to crawl out from the center of a planet.

A Seer's expertise surrounds that which "has to happen," and Jake has learned that he simply does not have as easy access to that information as Alli does. What he does know is that the Mage deals with "what is happening" a whole lot easier, and what's happening right now is very bad. He spends almost all of his downtime looking up at Skaia from Prospit, and it's bad. Yeah, that whole "always on the horizon" guy I was talking about earlier (remember him?), well he's not quite on the horizon yet, but he's getting there, and it's not good. Jake has to get to Skaia. And it's not good enough to just fly up there as his dream self. It has to be his awake self. It has to. He gets impressions from the information around him, allowing him to glean entire books from skimming multiple at a time. His friends haven't stopped reaching out to him. They've actually pestered him more, recently. He can't talk to them. Not yet. Not when he could do something. So he does. His alchemizing equipment is back at his room on LOAAC, so he delves into a new realm of experimentation and research: His fetch modus. By selecting all empty data, he can load an empty card onto a card, then retrieve it, then turn it into storage space and partitions. He duplicates his storage space a lot this way, then he begins captchaloguing anything and everything he can get his hands on. By storing two items, then selecting a string of 8 digits from the middle of their agglutinated item codes to load onto a card, he can essentially design items bitwise. He deduces offhand that there are only 2^48 possibilities in terms of item codes, and there are many dud items that don't even render properly. It takes a lot of effort and fine-tuning, as the only patterns he can tell between items that vary by a single bit are long-winded and not elegant, to say the least. Along the way, he discovers [bixqbx!q], a code for a dual-sided fountain and ballpoint pen named "Riptiditpir" that could turn into a shortsword with a dagger on the other end. That might've come in handy, if he already couldn't see danger approaching a mile away. Literally. For transportation, he settles on [PCHOOOk] which is an-- oh, wait, no that's a violin stuffed with a potted plant, a cinderblock, and.. is that shaving cream? That doesn't fit at all. After a brisk and completely necessary reanalysis of the entire understood system of bitwise alchemy to accommodate the god damned shaving cream, he settles on [PCHOOOOO], which is a rocket pack. Good enough. One last nap though, just for good measure, while the night surrounds him like a cold, distant blanket.

Now that Kane and Jake's sequence of events are nearly lined up, let's smash them into each other like two action figures in a shitty embrace. But not like that at all, actually.

Ascent To God-Tier (Feat. Kane Mendoza)

Jake wakes up during the peak of noon on LOHAW. Again. Its sun burns, but it's a familiar feeling, and Jake has spent a long time this session heavily fortifying himself against the natural degradation that comes with continuous exposure to Light. He dons his rocket pack and shoots up into the sky. Whenever he passes by one of the gates, it's as if he can almost "see" where it goes... except for the seventh gate. Jake has a bad feeling of uncertainty surrounding that one. from there, it's a straight shot to Skaia. As he approaches the huge ball of sky, something is wrong. Are the clouds... darkening? A bunch of small red portals pop up around its atmosphere, almost like shields. Jake blitzes through the calculations in his head. There's not enough time to course correct. He knows how these portals operate. They'll smash him right into the Earth during the Reckoning.

Kane finally peels himself out of the battlefield. Who knew that increasing the complexity of a place exponentially seven times would thin it out some? Not Kane. Kane wouldn't even consider that in the first place. Something's off. Was this place always so... bright? A bunch of chess people fight to the death around them. As chess people do. They don't see Kane walking around, too focused on trying to not die to focus on some weird fleshy person and their cat vaguely drifting on the edge of their vision. Whatever,

Jake forces his eyes shut, hoping to see Kane again, to tell them goodbye. Kane hasn't been there for a long time, though, and Jake knows better than to let something be meaningless. He opens his eyes and faces whatever purpose Skaia has for him, head on and oh, no. he. he just... He just passed them. It was a tight squeeze, too. A shield blocked the gap he flew through maybe an instant after he passed it. A few instants, perhaps? Lucky shot, then. The chances of that... no, he was certain he'd crash. What was Skaia up to? The portals were gone, now. Why did it put up a barrier for him? Why did it let Jake through? Was it some kind of-- Jake crashed hard into a river, injuring himself in the process. --distraction.

No. No, no, nonono. Jake forces himself to stand, falling over on the bank of the river. He couldn't move his arm, his right eye was pooling with blood, and he was certain that he had punctured... something. This place is a chessboard, why are there rocks in the river? Why are there trees?! He has to keep going. He can't die here, he's not allowed to. He has to do this, to preserve this session.

Kane didn't plan this far ahead. Turtle guy said that Jake was going to Skaia. Here's Skaia. What now? Kane wanders around aimlessly. Something about this place wasn't too keen on letting them do any sort of Voidy thing, as if this whole damn planet was being watched. Kane didn't even have full control of it yet. So it probably wouldn't do much of anything. Kane walked for several minutes until they saw something that surprisingly wasn't white, black, or red. It was a yellow stone in the distance with four tall yellow pillars on its corners. Kane started to walk towards it.

Jake was panicking. Blood loss was setting in, and his already limited powers began weakening. Screams from the clashing armies turned to indistinct ringing in his ears, but he had to keep pushing forward. At the very edge of his shrinking field of focus was his destination: His quest bed. There was one on LOAAC too, somewhere, and dying on that would have transported him here by combining with his dream self. But he couldn't do that. That's not an option for him. The closer he got, the less he could see. The less he could know. His bubble...

Kane approached the structure, noticing a stone pillow and the symbol for the Light aspect on it. On the other side of the bed, Jake was dragging himself towards Kane. Kane called out, breaking out in a sprint, but Jake couldn't hear them. Kane reached the stone bed first, and went to hold their badly injured friend.

"Kane." Jake muttered, barely a whisper. "I get it now," He looked up with bloody tears in his eyes. "I finally see you. You're beautiful." Kane tried to help Jake lay down.

"Jake, I don't--" A long blade exited the back of Kane's body. Jake coughed up more blood. Kane looked down at the double-bladed weapon that connected the two of them. Jake had... Jake...? "Wh-Why?" Jake fell backwards onto the bed, bringing Kane with him and driving Riptiditpir deeper into the both of them.

"not everything needs a purpose." Jake sighed.

Kane's death would be meaningless, as it always had to be. And Jake learned better than to argue otherwise. With his last surge of life, Jake pulled Kane into a long, eternal kiss. This is how it was always going to end. The Mage of Light destroys the Heir of Void by revoking them of their nonexistence. This is what Jake saw in the clouds, after all. Jake saw himself kill Kane over and over and over again. This is how he would save this session. This was what he chose. Then again, there really wasn't another option. When matter and anti-matter meet, they cancel out; they annihilate. Jake died with purpose, as he always had to do. And Kane knew better than to argue otherwise.

When someone's awake self dies, their dream self can be utilized as an extra life of sorts, so long as another player kisses the corpse before the injuries have time to affect the dream self, killing them too. When this happens, the person's dead awake self becomes their dream self. This does not work if a player's dream self is dead. Not existing in the first place, mechanically speaking, is not dead.

From this, Kane is revived and becomes nothing. Kane becoming nothing is the Heir of Void moment of all time. Kane becomes a God.

From dying on his quest bed, Jake is revived and becomes a God.

There was a reason that Jake had to die on his battlefield quest bed instead of his LOAAC quest bed. Dying on his LOAAC bed would have caused his dream self to fade from Prospit and appear on this bed before waking up as the God-tiered player. That wouldn't do. Dying like this doesn't happen in cannon, but essentially what it does here is function as a sort of wrong warp. SBURB is a game, first and foremost, so it would stand to reason that it uses game mechanics to achieve its very wacky prophetic paradox bullshit. It takes the locations of the quest beds in an index (LOAAC is 1, Battlefield is 0), and when you die on one, it warps your dream self to the next one in the index by subtracting 1. Following the item codes, it is likely that SBURB operates in base-64. So the location of the "quest bed" that Jake's dream-god self is transported to is the next one after 0. This is called an integer underflow error, and it causes the index to read whatever "location" is at the base-64 8-bit integer limit, which is position 281,474,976,710,656 in the index. Yeesh. Luckily, this happens to be 3 feet to the left. So he doesn't clip into Kane.

God-tier Mage of Light Jake is revived and instantly teleported off of the bed and falls on his God-tier butt. Unfortunately, Kane becoming nothing causes them to have disappeared completely, meaning that this whole scheme would have been utterly pointless if it wasn't fated to happen by wacky prophetic paradox bullshit. Point, Kane. For the rest of their conditional immortalities, Jake and Kane will continue to engage in this game of metaphysical-ontological one-upmanship with meaning/meaninglessness and bicker like an old married couple until the sun explodes.

Jake's "revealment bubble" causes God-tier Heir of Void Kane to stop not existing in front of Jake and they proceed to kiss the shit out of him. Let's give these two lovebirds some space, then, shall we?

[unidentifiedfroggy]

this is not a new subject but it's one am and i have no better place to put my scattered thoughts on the topic. this is definitely something ive seen mentioned before but i think it's something worth repeating and fairly crucial to understanding the beta trolls and alternia as a whole, which is that alternia, as a society, ostracised and punished all of the troll cast we encounter. working solely off the text of homestuck we can't reliably extrapolate to how the "average" troll might be treated (hiveswap is a different beast), but i think it's valuable to realise that none of the beta trolls were in a healthy environment and all of them were victimised to some extent and punished simply for existing, simply as a mechanism of how their society worked. even equius, gamzee, eridan and feferi, who are at the very top of the social hierarchy and are generally subjected to much better treatment especially than the lowbloods, are still victimised and treated badly by alternia as a system and as a society, if to a lesser extent.

equius is explicitly stated to be "a freak", and is repeatedly referred to as off-putting by the narrative and other characters, and though he clings to the hemospectrum as a really shitty coping mechanism, to me it's a fairly reasonable reading that a coping mechanism is all it is. part of his development, if he ever actually got it, would likely involve letting go of his privilege as a means to make up for his personhood, and coming to terms with the realities of alternia as a systematically harmful society to him and the people he cares about.

eridan, too, clings to the hemospectrum to make up for the fucked up stuff in his life. he's a shitty guy, but he's also growing up alone on murder planet, and is expected to murder other kids' parents so his best friend's mom doesn't exterminate society. his genocidal tendencies are pretty clearly stated, i feel, to be hollow, and i imagine he would have similar elements in a storyline to equius. eridan's position as orphaner inherently ostracizes him, and we see that although he is absolutely privileged compared to the other trolls which should not be forgotten, he is still in a position to be victimised and punished by alternia for his deficiencies.

gamzee is a bit of a joke character before murderstuck, but we get repeatedly informed that he is actively nonconforming to society's expectations of the aristocracy, with a negligent parent. he is the model of what the aristocracy is not, a definite other on alternia, as exposited by equius a bunch, which makes it kind of ironic that when he snaps we see him exert his violence primarily through exploiting the existing class structures that permeates the trolls' relationships with one another. but, once again, gamzee is an isolated kid, and i think his active displacement from the traditional hierarchy and suffering at the mechanisms of alternia is a reasonable angle to understand his character.

going to wrap this up soon bc i need to go the fuck to sleep and this is way longer than i expected it to be, but even the highest of the high, feferi, is a relative outcast from alternia. something about her arc here sorry im tired.

my point is not to ramble about highbloods bc frankly i am a lowblood enjoyer but i do think it's worth acknowledging and understanding how all of the beta trolls were othered by alternia, even those who conformed the most to its systems, and what it says about alternia as a society and the beta trolls as characters