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after me, the flood.

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"Omg the gay ones are looking at their Ancient!"

The "straight" ones:

I am so tired of misinformation. They're all gay. Queer even.

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I'm so obsessed with this official art of them because it's so funny to me.

Y'all know how the Ancient's pupils appear when they feel a very strong emotion? Pure Vanilla's pupils only appear when he feels a strong desire towards a goal or something. And I also know that this bitch is sooooooo good at controlling his facial expressions.

He wants that cookie so fucking BAD.

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Watching western CRK fandom fight online is very interesting and annoying at the same time. They attack people for slightest disagreement and all the evidences they bring up to back up their argument are in many cases straight up misinformation. Many parts of their so called "canon lore" is built upon fandom headcanons and mistranslations.

(Like I can't believe some fans actually think cookies represent races and have canon sexualities. Former was debunked by the officials and latter was never mentioned.)

That's why I was surprised when I found your translation blog. Someone actually recognized the translation problem! The translation quality is quite impressive. As a Korean I know my language isn't easy to translate. There are indeed some errors here and there but your works provide a surprisingly accurate translation. I can't help but be amazed by your dedication.

Also I saw how you were complaining about the VAs so I decided to compare KR and EN version. And I must admit while EN ver is very fun to listen to thanks to their various accents and tones.. The Beasts sound a lot like a silly cartoon villain than they do in the KR version. They sound a lot younger than what I imagined especially shadow milk. I think I understand why some prefer the different versions.

Sorry for the long post Chess! Just wanna say keep up your great work!

OMG 😭😭😭 Daghang salamat sa imo!!(Thank you so much!!) This is such an honor to receive compliments from a Korean like you. 🥺

I'm sorry if your experience with the western side of the fandom is quite annoying/harsh considering their unwanted white savior complex towards things that could be solved peacefully. And as a fellow Asian, I want to be the one who could put you into a different perspective.

I respectfully disagree with you on the race part because they are still representing real races and are inspired from many cultures. It is best that not only you but also everyone would recognize them and depict them correctly to give the cultures and the people respect.

Disclaimer for the next parts: This is not to say that you drop your headcanons because I'm sharing information sourced from Korean. They're fictional cookies. Do whatever you want with them forever.

A lot of English speaking fans rely on the Fandom wiki (English version of Namu wiki.) I don't even trust that much it as a source for characters or lore because it came from mistranslations that mistake so much of characters' names, genders and pronouns.

MANY examples:

Credit to @burningcheese-merchant (9 year long fan of crob) for sharing me these information.

Snow Sugar Cookie has they/them pronouns found in the Fandom wiki, while he's assigned male in Namu wiki.

Angel Cookie has they/them pronouns found in the Fandom wiki, while he's assigned female in Namu wiki.

Pitaya Dragon Cookie's has they/it pronouns found in the Fandom Wiki, while he is assigned male in Namu wiki.

The above left is when Pitaya initially released. They retroactively changed it to erase his pronouns, as shown in the right image, which is the current one.

Longan Dragon Cookie (from CROB) has they/them pronouns found in the Fandom Wiki, while he is assigned male in Namu wiki.

Snake Fruit Cookie (from CROB) has they/it pronouns found in the Fandom Wiki, while she is assigned female in Namu wiki.

(Westerners threw a tantrum over that.)

Cream Unicorn is a male. There's an interview with the character designer confirming it, talking about how they purposely made him look effeminate as a display/exploration of gender nonconformity. (Source)

(This is so based.) (hungry dog meme) Devsis!! More effeminite men please!!)

Caramel Arrow is Brown Sugar in Korean.

Burnt Cheese is Basque in Korean.

Tea Knight is Ceylon Knight in Korean.

Since Korean version doesn't use pronouns, the Korean language infers gender through context.

Ex:

(Korean version) People mistook Pure Vanilla as a girl because of his looks and voice at first until it was mentioned that he used to be a king, confirming that he is a guy.

(En version already had him with a masculine voice making it obvious.)

Hahaha, I do complain a lot. I'm mostly pissed off about how the En localization team described the characters to the voice actors and also giving them mistranlated scripts, so it was never any of the voice actors fault. They're doing a great job, but they were did dirty. U_U EN Shadow Milk more of a silly clown/walmart Bill Cipher than KR Shadow Milk who is more of real and serious jester making them 2 completely different characters. (My friend who also knows a lot about jesters think that Korean Shamil is also the best characterization of jesters in a while.) Also, the last parts with Korean Burning Spice laughing psychotically as he was being attacked by Golden Cheese is my favorite.

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Whoa don't be cruel to her

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also it strikes me as an interesting dynamic issue is kankri getting pissed at Porrim trying to mother him and Porrim getting pissed that he’s constantly getting his hackles up over EVERYTHING she tries to do as a gesture of affection or care and i think it can go like this:

kankri is at the bottom of the blood spectrum. he is a mutant, and he knows it, and all his friends know it. Beforus in many ways is far strictly about the hemospectrum, and while Karkat’s prickly personality is a defensive measure against certain death, Kankri faces the issue of the entire world being prepared to coddle him

that doesn’t sound so bad.. if you’re not on the autistic spectrum, or have some kind of disability that people are socially trained to see as making you permanently a child, or beneath them in some respect.

so people condescend to him; no one really treats him as an adult, or someone capable of making his own decisions. Beforus is all about a top down taking care of people situation, and while that sounds nice in theory, in practice it is a highly condescending, paternalistic system of making people’s decisions for them under a veneer of doing it for their own good, taking choice away from them

so Porrim is a jadeblood; this puts her in a mid-tier of society. she’s likely to be used to this kind of treatment herself, but not to the same extremes Kankri has to deal with. So when she does tihs, its probably well meant, its a gesture of affection.

but to kankri, its EVERYONE refusing to take him seriously, to treat him as his own person. just another mutant who can’t POSSIBLY make his own decisions or live his own life. so, like Karkat, he gets his hackles up and passive aggressively fights back in what he sees as self defense.

so porrim gets pissed and redoubles her efforts, and Kankri seems to come off as inexplicably, constantly hostile for no reason, so their relationship is WAY more fraught than it needs to be, due to communication and their own responses towards how they are treated socially.

This also, further, leads to an ironic point that in Alternia, the trolls there have healthier relationships. communication is… not key on alternia, but there’s very little reason for trolls to NOT just spew their reasons at each other, or harshly criticize one another. karkat leaves his opinions of others very open… a little TOO open, but this means that there are few misunderstandings among the trolls of Alternia. the basic framework is fucked up beyond belief, but once they’re given some perspective, they have an easier time changing and growing than the Beforan trolls did, so Doc Scratch did them one (1) favor

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I mean I know a certain level of projection on fictional characters and situations is inevitable and even healthy, but sometimes you got to step back into the real world to remind yourself that Character X is not your shitty parent/abusive ex/asshole boss/bully from high school, and that people who like Character X are not personally victimizing you.

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sexiest nonsexual pairing in all of homestuck

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April's Fool event cutscenes

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Hello it’s me again! If it’s not too much trouble for you can you please sketch out MysticCacao and Dark choco as one big family pls? I just want to see them happy (*_ _)人

@sugarfulwitch thank you for indulging me yet again!!

youre so real for this, these cookies make me ill 😭 need them to be happy NOW!! /aff

and apologies for this taking so long, here's another sketch in compensation >< (ft. cloud haetae as well hehe)

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this blog hates donald trump

Look how many people hate him. I’m pretty damn happy about that 😁😁😁😁😁😁

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"In moments of triumph, remember those whom we lost along the way."

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Why The Ending Sucks

Ok I figured it out. Hear me out:

The entire comic has a running theme best summed up as "who is controlling the narrative, and why are we listening to them?"

Hussie plays a caricaturized version of himself that he describes as "buffoonish" and "oafish". Caricature!Hussie is well-meaning, but a dumb idiot who's incredibly biased in favor of certain characters and in disfavor of others (the most obvious example being his "love" of Vriska, but there's also the way he constantly disparages Eridan). As a result, you have to be VERY SKEPTICAL and VERY CAREFUL when approaching Homestuck's narration, because even when the "best" narrator is at the helm, he's not 100% trustworthy and incapable of giving the readers an unbiased view of the story.

I say "best" because, importantly, Hussie isn't the story's only narrator. He and Doc Scratch explicitly fight over control of the story - Doc Scratch, the child abusing predator who engineered Alternia's fascist murder society, whose shaping of its history is explicitly described by character!Hussie as "fanfic". He is then killed by Lord English, who is described by Hussie as embodying the "toxically masculine" and by extension, the patriarchy, and Caliborn explicitly takes control of the story. John even grapples with Caliborn's version of events, calling out how sexist and misogynistic and shitty it is.

So if we're keeping score: control over the narrative is LITERALLY wrested away from Hussie (who was already struggling to be unbiased) by fascists, abusers, and the patriarchy. It's stressed multiple times that Caliborn/LE are responsible for literally everything that ever happens; the reason the Game Over timeline ends the way that it does is because the alpha timeline is, in essence, the narrative LE is telling: the forces of fascism get to claim the new universe, thereby propogating itself, while friendship dies and all hope is lost.

Who's in control of the narrative, and why are we listening to them?

There are other minor examples of this, too: Aranea is an exposition fairy, and she's biased as fuck and wrong ALL THE TIME about her own teammates. Karkat's explanations and rationalizations are constantly tinged with his own self-loathing and self-blame. Sollux and Meulin are both prophets as per their Mage class, but are both so bogged down by their own emotional issues that the futures they pick out are actively harmful. So on and so on. At nearly every turn, you have to interrogate who's telling the story, what their motivations are, and what they're overlooking or deliberately obfuscating.

So given that this theme is so prevalent, and so thoroughly weighted toward "well, actually, maybe you shouldn't take narration at face value and should interrogate it and come to your own conclusions," it would be Really Weird for the story to go "actually, you can totally trust the narrative now because everyone gets a happy ending".

So, I know that it makes me sound like a conspiracy theorist, but here's my genuine take on Homestuck's ending:

The ending is shitty on purpose because the viewer is intended to take it as a dare to refute the narration and make something better.

Why are we letting character!Hussie tell the story? He's a biased idiot. Why are we letting the various avatars of LE and Caliborn tell the story? They're fascist, misogynistic, predatory assholes.

And - because Homestuck is a story about life - why are we letting idiots, assholes, abusers, and creeps dictate the story of real life? The world is full of forces that would try to take control of the story and make everyone else play along, represented in microcosm within the text of Homestuck. We cannot let those forces win.

So please go out and do something kind and hopeful and loving in the world today. Thanks for reading.

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Why the Alpha Timeline is the Alpha Timeline

I figured I'd make a post, since it's pretty subtle and I think it genuinely passed a lot of people by? Homestuck is made up of a lot of words, haha.

The alpha timeline is described by Doc Scratch, functionally, as "the timeline that causes LE to exist."

The path which alone has my absolute mastery is the alpha timeline, a continuum I define as that which boasts exclusive rights both to my birth and to my death, two circumstantially simultaneous events.

Aranea also gives the explanation that the alpha timeline is the one where reality is perpetuated.

AG: Reality itself is using you and many others to propagate its own existence. Strictly speaking, there is only one path to its successful propagation. 8ut it still permits you to make choices.

Caliborn also states that his quest as a Lord of Time is coming to terms with the inevitability that everything, ever, in all of time, will be because of him - that he'll be the one to shape it, including the circumstances of his own defeat.

uu: AS A LORD OF TIME. I THINK I'M GOING TO MASTER TIME. NOT WITH MY BRAIN. WHICH WOULD BE TOO HARD. BUT WITH MY INSTINCTS. uu: LIKE IN A WAY THAT WORKS WITH MY NATURAL IMPULSES. SUCH AS MY AMBITION. MY WILL TO COMMIT MAYHEM. MY DESIRE TO PUNISH THOSE I DESPISE. uu: SO IF I WANT YOU TO BECOME STRONG. SO YOU CAN CHALLENGE ME LATER. AND I SEE EVIDENCE. THAT YOU PROBABLY BECOME SUCCESSFUL. uu: I THINK TO MYSELF. WHY SHOULDN'T I BE THE ONE TO MAKE THAT HAPPEN? IF IT'S GOING TO ANYWAY. uu: I THINK PART OF MY PERSONAL QUEST. IS TO BECOME AT EASE WITH THE FORCES OF INEVITABILITY. uu: INEVITABILITY THAT ALL THINGS SHOULD AND WILL FALL IN MY FAVOR. THAT ALL CAUSALITY ANSWERS TO ME. AND THAT ALL OUTCOMES NOT ONLY SERVE ME. BUT CONSIST OF MY BEING. uu: SO I FEEL THAT. THE MORE I GROW IN POWER. uu: THE MORE STUFF IT SHOULD TURN OUT I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR. uu: UP TO AND INCLUDING. EVERYTHING THAT EVER HAPPENS. uu: EVEN IF IT HAS TO BE. uu: RETROACTIVELY.

Aradia's stint as stewardess of the afterlife is explicitly described as "service to the lord of double death," and Dave explains that he acts instinctively - like Caliborn does - to fulfill the conditions of the alpha timeline. It's also worth noting that their classes, Maid and Knight, are roles that directly serve a Lord in the real world.

TEREZI: LUCK1LY YOU M4K3 4N 4DOR4BL3 H4NDM41D TO TH3 M4ST3R OF D34TH, 3SP3C14LLY 1N YOUR CUT3 CH3RRY P1X13 3NS3MBL3 ARADIA: you think so?

GG: well youre from the future right? GG: dont you know already if itll work? TG: yeah more or less TG: i never really studied how it went down all that closely TG: i just figured when the time came to sort it out the right thing to do would be obvious TG: like it is now TG: managing the loops is a balance of careful planning and just rolling with your in the moment decisions TG: and trusting they were the ones you were always supposed to make TG: by now im pretty used to having my intuition woven into the fabric of the alpha timeline

I'm starting with all that so I can explain that the GAME OVER timeline doesn't end when the time players disappear from it, like doomed timeline offshoots normally do, because it IS the alpha timeline: the sequence of events that causes GAME OVER to occur is the sequence of events that Caliborn/Lord English have chosen: one where (nearly) everyone dies, all hope of victory is lost, and his servant, the Condesce, gets to claim the Ultimate Reward, perpetuating the same misery and oppression in the new universe, and presumably all universes to come.

We see from Caliborn's chess match with Calliope that his (and by extension, LE)'s modus operandi is to follow the rules to the letter, while manipulating his opponent, tricking them with "shitty twists". It's always been explained that LE's actions have been "sanctioned by paradox space," that is, everything he's doing is explicitly allowed, nothing he's doing is against the rules - including the fact that he must be defeated. He has, via his mastery of time, perfectly engineered a situation where the only viable reality is the one where yes, he IS defeated... in the dream bubbles, by the dead and doomed, whom he sent to the dream bubbles in the first place via Condy, Jack English, and all the other boss fights. And his will, his ideals, are imposed on the new universe in spite of his defeat.

In a completely Watsonian read of the text, Lord English is an incredible villain because - subtly and unsublty - he IS basically responsible for every bad thing that ever happens, ever, to everyone. He has legitimately been the puppetmaster pulling the strings the entire time, pretty much all because Caliborn is a huge asshole who loves to hurt other people, and wants to do it as much as he can, to as many people as he can, for as long as he can.

But I think he's especially interesting through a Doylist perspective, through a reading of the text as a coming of age. Homestuck is a worth riddled with theme and symbolism, and thematically, Lord English represents everything that these kids need to overcome in order to mature into kind, empathetic adults who will be one day responsible for the care and oversight of a new universe. He represents selfishness, sadism, greed, destruction, oppression, fascism, murder, genocide, and hatred. And also literally the patriarchy.

And, you know what? Don't take my word for it. Here's Andrew Hussie's commentary from Book 6 Act 5 Act 2 Part 2:

Much of the logic [for who contributes to Lord English] orbits around these negative traits associated with men, or more specifically, the “toxically masculine” aspects often linked to certain male personalities. Dirk has a lot of these traits, which are central to Dave’s feelings of tension and abuse concerning his bro. The intellectual aggression, the power of assertion, the knowitall-ism, the mansplaining. That’s a lot of Dirk stuff when he’s at his worst. Equius shares a lot of those traits too, with some different points of emphasis. Both of them have this creepy-guy streak running through them, with strange or offputting interests, and seem to get a quiet kick out of making others uncomfortable through demonstrations of these fascinations. They are actually pretty similar characters in this way.

He's invited into the trolls' universe (and, by extension, the kids' universe) via the Dancestors, in an original sin kind of way. I'll let Hussie explain on their Formspring (emphasis mine):

We learn more about the troll race, as a once peaceful species and such before kid-ancestors as players scratched their session, though the short term relevance of this is mainly as a preamble to Scratch's religious story. Establishing an Eden-like paradise from which there is some departure through sin is sort of the boilerplate basis for religious lore. ... The failed players from peaceful Alternia made a classic "deal with the devil" move by causing the scratch after being given a choice by the mother of all monsters. (Echidna. Hey, she's a big snake!) By doing so they brought Scratch into their universe, and therefore all the things you'd expect that comes with summoning the devil.

The Dancestor's "departure through sin"? It was the fact that they couldn't get their shit together and grew up inside the Medium. That's why they're the age they are, 9 sweeps - adulthood by troll standards. They aren't kids anymore because that's the ultimate sign of having failed to do a coming of age. Symbolically, the Dancestors represent a prior generation of grown-ups that fucked everything up, leaving a huge mess for their descendents to clean up after. In fact, Doc Scratch even describes the alternate choice Echidna gave them:

The heroes could either accept their defeat along with the extinction of their race, and put no others at risk.

In other words, they could have stopped LE if they'd simply chosen not to Scratch. But once more, in line with their behavior up until that point, they chose the selfish option, and bore descendants into the world they ruined. They're immature, nasty, mean-spirited, cruel, callous, and shallow on purpose, because their role in the story is antagonistic. They're aligned (even if unwittingly) with Lord English, as they're the ones who directly invited him in via their failure to grow the fuck up.

There's also a reason why SBURB/SGRUB directly tie achieving godhood and reaching the Ultimate Reward to planetary quests fundamentally designed to help children mature. God-tiering is supposed to come at the end of one's quest, as achieving it directly teleports you to the Battlefield for the final boss.

AG: I really think how successfully they mature is tied to success in the game. It challenges the players in all the ways they need to 8e challenged to grow, which is different for every individual, and veeeeeeeery different for every race. AG: I don't think we were so hot at that aspect of the game. In fact, I'm sure we were quite awful. Hell, even I wasn't that gr8 at it! I actually just kinda fell ass 8ackwards into the god tier, to 8e honest.

And there's a perfectly functional Watsonian explanation for this - in order to increase the odds that the new universe will successfully propagate new universes, it's ideal to leave it in the hands of kind, mature people. But the Doylist explanation is, again, even more interesting.

Hussie has spoken extensively about the comic having always been about two things at its core: first, a creation myth... and second, a coming-of-age. These are complimentary themes, as Homestuck also makes statements about society and its effects on kids. In the real world, the kids of today become the voters, revolutionaries, and lawmakers of tomorrow. In Homestuck, they create, and are responsible for, a new universe.

I always saw HS as an exploration of young people developing relationships over the internet […] There’s a lot more to HS than just that obviously, but if there’s anything which it’s been about through and through, it’s modern kids relating to each other from afar, developing as people and growing up.

In fact, all the initial kids' entry artifacts are metaphors for "departures, loss of innocence, and sometimes the journey from childhood to adulthood outright." John biting an apple, symbolizing the act that cast Adam and Even from Eden. Rose breaking a bottle, the act of christening a boat, and an item integral to the main means by which she relates to her mother, alcohol - an adult substance. Dave hatching an egg, literally the act of bringing new life into the world. Jade shooting an effigy of her dog, both symbolic of Old Yeller, and of breaking a pinata, an act often done at quinceneras.

There comes a point in childhood where the child stops being a child - the safe, familiar, comfortable world that they knew stops existing, and they can never get it back. They are thrust into a world that is alien and massive, and forced to grapple with the weight of their future duties. They deal with losing their guardians and finding direction in their absence. They must decide how they want to grow up, and then are responsible for shaping the society that comes after them. In other words, SBURB/SGRUB in this metaphor represent adolescence.

Within that context, God-tiering is actually interesting because it symbolizes adulthood - a semi-permanent state that a child is supposed to reach at the end of their SBURB/SGRUB journey. And, in fact, it's treated that way - none of the characters reach god-tiering the "proper" way... and of our god-tiered characters, nearly all of them have some sort of emotional struggle with growing up too fast. Vriska with the expectations of her shitty society, Rose with her emulation of her mother, Dave with his abusive brother, and the Alpha kids with substance abuse (the jujus) and romantic drama.

Anyway, sometimes when Mario's running sideways he gets a star that makes him magic and invincible. OH. YOU MEAN HE BECOMES TRICKSTER MARIO. Yes, but less stupid. So for a while he becomes flashy and hyperactive and nothing's challenging anymore. He just starts barreling over mushrooms and leaping over pits as fast as he can, then gets to the end and jumps on the flagpole and that's it. Mario "wins". But the point is, he didn't really win. That magic star was actually devastating to his development as a human being. WHY. Because he skipped over many critical trials on his spiritual journey. Mario NEEDS to stomp on all those mushrooms. He NEEDS to bonk those bricks with his head, for the sake of his personal growth. By using the star, he is denying himself many powerful moments of catharsis.

Like... I dunno... seems pretty blatant to me!

So with Homestuck so firmly being a coming of age, and with the Dancestors - whose primary failure is that of unrelenting immaturity - being cast in an antagonistic role, doesn't that make Caliborn's position of ultimate final boss extremely fitting when we take this conversation into account?

You may be destined for bigger things, but you’re still an atrocious, stupid child. And you may have won the “game” with your sister, but that doesn’t mean it was the best thing for your development as a person. You had her dream self killed, which is not an opportunity your species typically gets. So she died prematurely, instead of allowing the conflict within you to settle itself naturally. In short, you forced your predomination to happen a little too early, and now you’re stuck. STUCK? Yes. Your personality is stuck in some sort of cantankerous prepubescent limbo. You are going to be a stunted, miserable tool forever.

He's literally a child who chose to stunt his own growth so that he could reap all the game's rewards for himself. Someone who so stubbornly desired the selfish, greedy, and immature option that he was willing to hurt himself to achieve it. Caliborn - and by extension, Lord English - is a direct symbol for the refusal to mature, to be kind, to care about other people. By including Dirk, Gamzee, and Equius at their worst, he also comes to represent misogyny, toxic masculinity, the patriarchy. He's the Condesce's master, and so by extension, he represents fascism and oppression; as Doc Scratch, he gets off on abusing girls, and so he also represents predators and abusers. And his goal is to perpetuate himself, his ideals, what he symbolically represents, down every successive generation. Much like how these cycles of abuse and oppression seek to perpetuate themselves in the real world!

And that's why the alpha timeline, the GAME OVER timeline, is the way that it is: it's one where Lord English WINS. In Lord English's version of the story, everything is fucked up forever. He might be defeated, as is the timeline's inevitability, but his politics, his bigotry, and his ideals live on.

Except.

Our Breath player gains a power that literally unsticks him from time.

Now, personally, I don't believe that the ending we got is the one that was originally intended. I don't feel the need to elaborate upon that here, but suffice to say, given how clearly and consistently these themes are set up throughout the entire rest of the comic, it just makes sense to me that the ending we got, where characters stay dead, never finish their character development, etc. etc., is a MASSIVE tonal and thematic departure, which smacks of external pressures and influences. Everything after [S] GAME OVER is soft canon to me for this reason. But there's things that survive in it that are really really interesting, so I'll mention some.

First, the pre-retcon versions of the characters still exist, as we see from (Vriska). That means that everyone who died in GAME OVER would not necessarily have stopped mattering to the plot. I firmly believe that the original ending would've seen Lord English confronted by the GAME OVER (characters), who would also have the most karmic claim to beating Lord English's face in. This would also satisfy his whole deal of playing by the rules - he knows he HAS to be defeated, he just gets to choose the circumstances of his defeat; without realizing that John's retcon powers can rewrite a timeline, he would've set up his own death to be in the bubbles, at the hands of the already-dead, while Condy claims the Ultimate Reward - thus making it so that he still wins in the end.

But Breath represents freedom, choices - and the retcon powers are something John gains mastery over after completing his personal quest, which we've established is directly tied, both literally and symbolically, into growing up and maturing. By becoming a kind, empathetic, mature adult, John is able to choose something else.

Second, that the Ultimate Self is brought up at all, which seems to me like it would mitigate the bittersweetness of the (characters) from GAME OVER staying dead - because, in my head, the original plan for the retcon was that it would bring everyone back, and therefore, all the (characters) from GAME OVER would live on through the surviving post-retcon gang, who will eventually achieve Ultimate Selfhood, as Davepetasprite^2 says they will. This would also directly mirror the words Godtier!Calliope gives to her counterpart:

CALLIOPE: bUt then... CALLIOPE: what shoUld i do? CALLIOPE: you don't need to do anything. CALLIOPE: be who you've become, and who i didn't. CALLIOPE: consume the fruits of an existence i could never understand. CALLIOPE: live.

Third, there's just so many outstanding plot threads, even for the characters that DO survive. Jake's prophesized to defeat Lord English, Dave never actually gets over his hesitance about time travel and defeating Lord English, Karkat has multiple means of bringing his dead friends back to life and doesn't say anything, Vriska and Terezi still aren't 100% reconciled, Gamzee's tragedy is never addressed, Jane, Dirk, Jake, and Roxy never really figure out their situationship, etc. etc. etc. ... to say nothing about all the plot threads left dangling for the characters that stay dead.

And finally...

Isn't that just kind of a better story? One where the kids get to grow, change, learn from their mistakes, and create a better, kinder universe, after defeating the avatars of cruelty, oppression, and immaturity?

Is it just me? Haha.