#I think its like the first Porrim I posted here

[forgetful-river]

💕Women💕

[cringefail-clown]

Soo, uhh, what's the story on how kankri got his sign and all? As an ancestor lover, I'm curious about what happened to kankri's ancestor. Was it one of feferi's first instances of being a cruel empress? (idk if that's what I should say, but oh well) Does kankri have a vague idea of what happened (if something bad did happen) like how karkat had an idea of what happend to the sufferer/signless?

Anyways, I love your AU and the art you make for it!

the symbol came from the same place - the irons that bound the signless hand, but how it came to be is a pretty different story.

im trying to think bout it from the classpect angle - like how in canon the signless was post scratch kankri, so his abilities as a seer of blood allowed him to get glimpses from his pre scratch life, which inspired him to try and change things for the better. but in the au, its karkat who's in the role of the signless, and he aint no seer, hes a knight, he protects with his aspect and protects his aspect. i think the blood powers would carry some memories as well, maybe not so clear like how it was for kankri, but karkat would get the vague feeling of this is wrong.

i think hed see what feferi as empress was trying to do, and would be like "wait a fucking minute she just tries to treat lower classes like some kind of animals that have to be under care of highbloods" and hed be PISSED bc hed rather die than have some highblood asshole coddle him his whole life just bc of his blood mutation.

so hed be like "actually fuck you and fuck the monarchy" and hed start preaching bout the better world where all the blood castes have a say in how their society works (like how it was on tb!beforus) and karkats really good at getting people to follow him. so thats how the movement against the empress would start, and when the news about the revolution would reach feferi she would be pissed then, bc she wants a better life for them and this is how theyre repaying her, by wanting to overthrow her?? and it spirals from here into karkats execution and feferi becoming more and more paranoid

as for if kankri knows how things went, well he does! he gets visions of his past and future selves through dreams, some are nice, but most of the time theyre terryfying (so he just,, stops sleeping). its a mix between his time on beforus and how society was like there, some of karkats memories as the signless get into it too as they're kinda bound by blood ie. the ancestry stuff, and also he gets some visions of the post-game on earth c! those are his favourite. im thinking hard bout everyones aspects, i also liked the idea of kankri being able to "sense" past and future relationships between ppl (for example he can vaguely tell when ppl have history between them and if its positive or not, or he just gets one look at roxy and porrim and goes "yeah theyre gonna be insufferably in love"), its all a work in progress tho!

[swimfuel]

okay humanstuck thoughts under the cut

i owe a lot of this to @/rhythmic-idealist's kankri/vantasposting bc holy shit theyve got such a big brain (ill link to their individual posts when im on desktop since im using this to keep all my thoughts straight and i agree with most of what they say wholeheartedly)

general status quo stuff:

signless works in an extremely demanding career involving helping others (i'm leaning towards an attorney who works with organizations and does pro bono work), and is also extensively involved in social justice work outside of his job... he is very rarely home

he loves and cares for his children deeply and tries to express it whenever they're face to face, but the couch in his cramped and messy office has seen far too much use over the years for him to have been able to say it enough

his habits of working himself to the point of exhaustion are handily passed down to his kids btw

the kids had to grow up quickly because signless was out of the house so often and so consistently—kankri, who was already pretty high-strung, has to learn to take care of himself and karkat

they grow up near ms firuzeh maryam, who's their pseudoaunt/grandma (she took in a nine year old kavana vantas when she was about twenty), but they just call her ms rosa

they spent a lot of time in the maryam house growing up, with miss rosa's two nieces. porrim is a year older than kankri, while kanaya and karkat are the same age

kankri grows kinda sensitive to people trying to mother him since it rubs against the notion that he's the "adult of the house" and that he can take care of himself and karkat just fine

(and it also kinda underlines the fact that kankri has no idea what he's doing at the best of times)

and ironically enough, kankri becomes overbearing and naggy towards karkat in his own right, which forestalls them becoming close in any brotherly sort of way

they grow up really just... unable to communicate with one another clearly

karkat develops his ornery exterior in response to kankri's constant stream of opinions and frantic attempts at making up for the presence of a guardian in the house

i think there would actually be some really interesting parallels with rose in this au.. maybe i'm drawing from my own experiences as well but i think he'd begin to assume that every time his brother opens his mouth, he's going to criticize karkat

but instead of reacting like rose with the "making yourself more of a puzzle"/passive aggressive stuff, he gets a more defensive/hackles raised/"argue with you before you can argue with me" approach

and the thing is that they do love each other and would take a bullet for the other etc etc etc.. but they don't know how to express it because they've fallen into these shitty patterns

and it really doesn't help that kankri has grown somewhat resentful of signless over the years... that mix of resentment and fear and love gets more extreme and more polar every time signless gets injured during a political demonstration

i think kankri and signless would also be slightly closer than karkat and signless, as signless' job really only started to ramp up when karkat was less than years old and kankri was in his early double digits

kankri autistic btw its word of god (i am god)

karkat has a pet crab. its name is also karkat. he vents his frustrations to it.

i feel like the vantases exemplify both the best and worst parts of their aspects with one another as well... the strength of their bonds keeps them together and grounded, but TOO grounded. [insert Blood rant here]

the Blood rant:

i define Blood as bonds, responsibility, and the "core". if Life is the fertile soil and everything living on a planet's surface, then Blood is the gravitational core of the planet keeping everything together

i also think Blood, Heart, & Mind work in tandem to define a person just as blood serves to connect the pieces of the human body... Heart is the soul and the self, Mind is the application of one's self through active choices (agency), while Blood defines both the self and the choices one makes in greater detail [and, as an aside, Life provides the physical spark of life needed to keep the heart pumping blood]

OKAY wow that got tangential anyways

SO BASICALLY! too much Blood makes you stagnate, so for example:

kankri is split between staying home with karkat or going to college across the country and being truly unbound for the first time in years

another crisis of Blood: signless is caught between his empathy and responsibility to the whole world and his responsibility to his own children

okay so here's more status quo stuff:

the maryam and vantas kids grow up together and its hilarious because you'll see them all together and its just like (girlboss) (girlboss) (physical manlet) (emotional manlet)

the maryam girls are actually miss rosa's nieces but she took them in when they were both pretty young

the pyropes know the vantases well enough considering pyrope senior and sign have known one another from their respective legal practices for years, but they live on the other side of town

the leijons lived in town when kankri and meulin were very young, but they moved and travelled for a long time before coming back and reestablishing their roots

the captors (psii being one of sign's oldest and closest friends) move into town with the peixes family pretty early on though

the condesce is.. a horrible spouse and guardian, to put it plainly. she's very emotionally manipulative and isn't averse to smacking people around, including her own family. she moves herself and her perfect little family into town so she can properly oversee a new business venture close by

feferi is one of the best young swimmers in the country and has a pretty good shot of getting onto the olympic team.. a lot of this drive to be perfect and to be better results from the condesce's unrelenting pressure and thinly veiled resentment throughout her whole life

so yeah psii, )(ic, feferi, and sollux all live together and it's really not great for anyone involved. (meenah ran away years ago, and crashed on aranea's couch for a pretty long while—mituna moved out with latula for college before psii and the condesce got married)

it gets bad to the point of sollux staying with the maryams for two months while the adults try to sort out that absolute clusterfuck and get the divorce proceedings going (meenah finally convinces feferi to get out and come stay with her and aranea for the duration as well)

in terms of relationships i think latula and porrim were really really close in high school, and probably had some kind of unacknowledged thing going on for a while that never actually turned into anything because latula and mituna were going steady

kankri has had a crush on latula for years but never acted on it for similar reasons

meenah still carries a lot of that give no fucks attitude (it's developed moreso as a defense mechanism here) and can't understand why feferi refuses to leave the condesce with her

okay back to VANTAS MANPAIN i also think that karkat feels the weight of a lot of expectations on his shoulders as well

he feels responsible to live up to the example his dad and his brother set, even if it's to his own detriment—and kankri's oblivious rambling about his grades and his teachers and all his clubs certainly aren't helping the matter

kankri is one of those overinvolved kids taking a million AP's while simultaneously shitting on the collegeboard at every single step

hes this super overachiever anal retentive perfectionist type dude and (just as karkat preemptively criticizes others to forestall their criticisms of him only to harshly criticize himself) kankri subconsciously holds the people around him to the same expectations he holds for himself

so karkat also develops this sense of lacking which, in combination with everything else, culminates in self loathing and thinking he has to solve everyone else's problems and getting horribly mad at himself for every little mistake

GOD i have a lot more but lemme post this before i accidentally close out of the app and lose it all

more little details:

vriska's mom and terezi's mom HATE each other like HATE HATE HATE one another it's so bad

karkat wrote a ten page review of my immortal in middle school

jade is one of nepeta's best online friends

sollux can't raise one eyebrow at a time.. karkat gives him so much grief about it

the vantases eat a lot of shitty renditions of persian dishes until karkat learns to cook because literally the only person in the world with a CHANCE of getting KANKRI VANTAS to make an EDIBLE DISH is miss rosa

kanaya is really good at persian dance too but is VERY VERY embarassed to perform in front of people.. however porrim definitely is not

karkat has insomnia while kankri just stays up stupidly late for assignments that really shouldnt be taken that seriously.. but they both have the same rumination/sleep anxiety thing where your brain goes insane with horrible and depressing scenarios as you try to sleep

and more ideas that i thought were interesting but idk how to fit in the context of this au:

signless and disciple getting married pretty late in life after having been in love for years, the vantases move in with the leijons and karkat suddenly has two sisters

nepeta and karkat are both juniors at this point, meulin is probably in her third year at a local college nearby while kankri is about to start his second year at a university pretty far away

the kids in general honestly but ill figure it out

more random hcs this time with kids:

kanaya and rose get into a flame war online that gradually settles into elaborate courtship rituals

also nepeta + jade online besties

also bec can inexplicably still teleport

the first sbahj movie comes out and the next six months of dave strider junior's high school career are absolute hell

actually hc that dave senior goes by d strider professionally. the d stands for a lot of things

aradia and dave frequent a lot of the same forums but never end up really interacting

meanwhile karkat and john frequent a lot of the same forums and DEFINITELY end up interacting. this turns into grudging (at least on karkat's part) friendship after they find themselves fighting for their lives defending an objectively shitty movie together on the same thread

[rhythmic-idealist]

@dragonofyang reblogged your post and added: “rhythmic-idealist: I’ve talked about this before but I’m thinking...”

I think this is a really excellently-put analysis, because the ancestors as thematic devices is something I really wish Homestuck had expanded on if only to explore avenues such as this. I definitely feel like the text (intentionally or not on Hussie’s part) makes the point about hemophobia and bigotry, but then fails to properly bring it home the way it deserved, especially since one of the main themes of the comic itself is that challenging the status quo of arcs/destiny/etc. is something we can and should do because there is more to life than accepting your fate. In fact I’d even argue that fighting fate is what can really develop a character and a story.

Kankri grew up in a world of “niceness”. Where he’s coddled and cared for and the people are good to him, but he’s ultimately denied his own agency. Instead of overt oppression the way the Signless endured, he grew up in a world of microaggressions and a thousand cuts to his independence. People insisting he not do things or let others help him because it’s their job, regardless of whether he is physically capable or not. He’s not allowed to challenge himself because his destiny is to be cared for and kept in a gilded cage.

The Signless, meanwhile, grew up in a world where if you were off-spectrum, you’ll die and so will everyone you know, everyone you had contact with, and probably their neighbors for good measure and whatever passersby pissed off the subjuggulator doing you in. So in this world, kindness is a radical thing, and the Signless had this unique perspective of being able to remember a world where he, once upon a time, was taken care of and treated with (some) respect as an individual, even if not as an agent with his own free will. Anything is better than the overt violence of Alternia.

And with all the dialogue about free will and fate throughout (but especially toward the end), it would’ve been really beautiful to me to see this addressed more fully as well.

But it’s hard to figure out how to word it since Hussie and the text itself are very closely linked thanks to Homestuck’s unique history/creation, so I totally get your struggle there. I had a hard time figuring out how to respond to you partially because of that. I suppose you could arguably say that the canon text is given to us via an unreliable narration, given the general snark of the omniscient narration, and the deep character flaws that influence the story whenever we follow one specific character’s point of view. I don’t quite remember what character(s) we follow when we get that framing about how Beforus’ softness ruined Kankri, but given how he himself feels about his position in Beforan society, it’s entirely possible the framing is partially due to a character’s viewpoint, so arguing with the text itself is totally appropriate since it’s challenging specific biases characters hold thanks to their upbringing.

I appreciate your response SO much dragonofyang; I didn't say that enough below so I'm taking the time to again right now.

This is a really interesting comment to me and I appreciate it a lot. I think that in response to your point about what framed Kankri like that.... I had to stop and think about that. We get introduced to Kankri through Meenah, and interact with him as Karkat, Latula, and Porrim- and Meenah again, as he later jumps into a conversation she and Horuss are having (and Cro... nus.....? I think?). But I don’t think the framing.... is actually inherently in any of those characters, so what is it?

I think what frames Kankri that was is his existence as satire, and the fact that he’s being interjected into a conversation with context.

If Kankri was just a person, that would be one thing. But we know, immediately, that Kankri is a joke about Tumblr SJWs, in a broader joke about 1) Tumblr users (the nature of Bubblr), and 2) various internet-user tropes in general.

So there already is a joke about soft snowflake SJWs. There already is a perception that SJWs are sheltered from the real problems of the world, and that being less sheltered would help them- to the point that people think that things like trigger warnings, people asking that you use the proper language about their gender and orientation, and other things that are either accessibility tools or seeking a kinder but not fake, playing-pretend, or damaging world are bad.

There’s already this perception that softness creates sheltered people with no character development and trauma helps people build character, and with characters like Kankri and the Signless, they would fundamentally be inserted into that conversation whether Kankri was an intentional joke about it or not. And then, when deciding what to do about that- Kankri became a joke that targeted things that fundamentally upheld the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”/“not only are all SJWs actually bad and damaging, but the reason they’re bad and damaging is because they were too soft and sheltered in their safe spaces” mentality.

And I am trying to be fair to Homestuck. More than I have tried to give benefit of the doubt, in the past. If you left Openbound with that impression, it could have been to play along with your those preexisting statements just to pull the rug from under you- like how you thought for a while (I admit to the fact that I did) that Bro training Dave sucked, but was just cartoon logic, and then the rug was pulled from under you and it was actually just abuse because abuse is real in this universe because these are people.

Kankri could have been set up to surface level enforce the idea that soft places generate what actual flaws he has (inconsistent ideology, weaponizing the language of progressive ideology against people he has personal grudges against, expending more care on looking right and sounding right than how you’re actually impacting people, playing oppression olympics) and then subverted with a jump back to look at Beforus properly- oho, no, look at all these little seeds I’ve planted, it is actually a complex web of oppressive forces, emotional safeguards built against them, poor resources and influences, and propaganda that did this. This is actually what happens when you build a planet that tries to softly coddle someone to sleep every time a hint of non-logic-based emotion slips into their argument. This is actually what happens when you beat down someone’s ability to emotionally connect with the people who need them most. This is actually what happens when you take someone who is primed to be The Signless and make them more terrified of being wrong than of the fallout their actions have on their friends. (And more. I don’t want to make this way longer than it is but please please know I know I know it’s more.)

But it didn’t.

So I can stand here and know that the seeds were planted, but they didn’t even- it doesn’t even clarify at any point to me whether they were planted intentionally, and at the end of the day, in terms of which messages I would ever hold Homestuck responsible for- whether the seeds for this argument were planted intentionally or not doesn’t matter to me. Right now, if they were, it would just be plausible deniability, in a joke that punches down and laughs not only at the places Kankri was wrong but several of the ones in which he was right or trying in the right way.

So anyway, I hold canon responsible for laughing at trigger warnings and MOGAI/“unusual” LGBTQ+ identities and (arguably, I need to fact check this) activism that isn’t (White) Feminism First, Everything Else After, etc.

Whether it’s saying that Beforus’s softness made the Signless into Kankri is I guess not the same as that, so I got off topic for a second.

But that last long paragraph, “the seeds were planted but-,” is what explains why I feel like I’m arguing with the text instead of explaining its authorial intent. The lens you were talking about turns out to be the fact that Kankri is satire, in a world that already has one extremely common way to satirize this thing, which Kankri wound up matching- despite any other content about him, because that content hasn’t been used to subvert this or twist against this- beat for beat.

[twitchesandstitches]

Alt Fleet Origins

idea i wrote up during my absent spell a couple months back; alluded to a few times and decided it was time to post it:

Consider this: the core group of the Fleet and thus the characters you might consider the central characters (Sierra, Terezi, Rose Quartz, Grimlock and Undyne) are the members of the generation that made the FLeet what it is, but they’re not the FIRST generation of the Fleet

They didn’t found it, but shaped it into what it is now, making them the heroes who defined the Fleet, gave it power and brought them home after ages of suffering and nomadic flight, but there is a lot that predates them

In short, it expands on the culture of the Fleet and makes it about more than just them!

This does require tossing out a lot of my original ideas for the Fleet’s origin and the foundations of the AU (Sierra discovering the Matriatrix and finding the other founding groups during the course of several adventures, building up their collective powers and creating the basics of the Fleet), but heck with it, some of the ideas I’ve had for this are SUPER fun and make a lot of sense within the AU

The actual founding generation goes back much further, perhaps an additional several hundred years prior to the birth of Sierra, who being the least difficult to map to realistic ages, makes a good barometer. The Fleet’s core ideas (it’s codes of honor, the way they handle things, and the basic social concepts) go back to the original founders, who banded together for mutual survival in a hostile multiverse where they were outcasts.

Most of the original groups are still represented here, but their ancestors are the ones who came into the fold first, so to speak.

(Greater detail and worldbuilding below)

I’m thinking there were probably no human members of the group, and came later; possibly humans are a bit of a rarity in this AU, at least in terms of population. Elves, dwarves, tieflings, they’re more common, but bog-standard humans are simply less common than you might assume.

The Homestuck contingent is represented by the troll ancestors: Neophyte Redglare as their leader, the Dolorosa, the Disciple, maybe the Executioner and the Signless. Additionally they had a large number of trolls allied to them, effectively they’re the Beforan versions of the ancestors (though giving them different relative ages for the sake of interesting divergence, like making Porrim a primordial vampire) until Beforus fell in ancient times, and the struggles of survival shaped the Beforus characters of the dancestors into the wiser but harder characters on par with the Alternian ancestors. While likely revolutionaries, these specific trolls were mainly just trying to survive without a homeworld, and being unwilling to take Condy’s ruthless measures to claim one for their own. Redglare would be the original wielder of the Matriatrix here, eventually passing it on to Sierra.

Because the troll kids (Terezi, Vriska, Feferi and the others) come later, presumably this means that you had to have access to all the troll ancestors genetics to get them. This might mean that, for a while, ALL the ancestors were part of the Fleet or had their genetics acquired somehow; this has interesting implications for Mindfang and the Condesce.

The Gems are, quite simply, the Crystal Gems. Possibly the core group (Rose, Pearl, Ruby, Sapphire, Amethyst, Bismuth) with additional crystal gems rounding out the population. They were also just trying to survive, and specifically avoid restarting Homeworld, the circumstances of the Crystal Gem Rebellion are way different here, and possibly unrelated to Earth, though it’s also quite possible that Homeworld was outright destroyed prior to those tensions building up into full revolution. The human characters, at the beginning of the Fleet, wouldn’t have been born yet. Lapis is off somewhere else doing her own thing, Peridot possibly hasn’t been born yet (???) and Jasper MIGHT have a servant of Rose before leaving to join the Stingers once they’re formed to amass her own glory, or else had no idea Pink Diamond survived.

The Transformers present an interesting possibility: maybe Grimlock is actually younger here? I like him having participated in the Autobot/Decepticon wars too much to have him been born recently, but if the war was more recent, that might play into things. I’ve implied that the Cybertron Civil War took place many eons ago and shaped history across the multiverse, but it’s possible that this can be fulfilled by the children of Primus carrying out the same narrative cycle repeatedly, with the Autobot uprising dating to, at most, a thousand years ago. This would make the Autobots SIGNIFICANTLY younger than usual, and also let me mess around more and make things even more AU.

An alternative possibility is having Transformers (And other long-lived beings that don’t mature physically) grow up as a response to emotional growth; they are prompted by life experiences to mature and change, but don’t do it in a vacuum. Thus, Grimlock and the other Autobots can be millions of years old but until they go through exceptional circumstances, they don’t change much over time. Leaning towards the former option of them simply being way younger than I normally do it, simply because I VERY RARELY make the Autobots younger than series average and it might be fun to mess around with that.

In any case, the founding Autobots would be a smallish group mainly led by Elita-1, Arcee, several others of note (Ultra Magnus, Jazz, ect.) and of course, Wheeljack and Ratchet, who are Grimlock’s parents. Grimlock himself may have been alive at this time, but he remained taciturn and withdrawn after the things he suffered, and doesn’t become a major player until later. The smallest in overall number, but the largest in terms of power. Most of those would, of course, be fembots.

The Undertale roster is largely unchanged, since they seem kinda long-lived anyway. They probably provide the largest initial population for the Fleet, because of the sheer diversity and monster girl possibilities they provide! Monster Musume characters would also be included in their numbers; specifically the monster moms. Toriel, as queen of the monsters and perhaps led by portents she believes the monster goddess, Mothra, has bestowed upon them, leads her people (the Undertale characters; the human ones and Deltarune characters are born later) to find a place to survive, and eventually bond with the rest of the Fleet.

Add in additional characters and groups as needed, with some provisos: no humans at all at this point, they come later. Secondly, this version of the Fleet is a large band of nomads, perhaps numbering several hundred at most for the first generation or so, traveling from continent to continent and then world to world via teleportation gates they discover, uncovering a mystery that eventually leads into the overarching conspiracy that the Fleet will later investigate.

They are thus a convoy, staying on the move from their enemies and just trying to survive. They have kids, mind their own business, but can’t help being heroes and getting a bit of a reputation; eventually they wind up being superheroes of a sort.

Redglare, as mentioned, is the first wielder of the Matriatrix for the FLeet. I dunno where SHE got it (found it? it was passed down to her by a mentor?) but she uses it in a very different way from Sierra; the modding and power-enhancing scene requires an economic base and adventuring capability the proto-Fleet does not have, at this point, but they are able to use some of its powers to begin changing themselves to stay alive and relevant. Possibly the first signs of hyper proportion power levels begins here. But no one has any idea how to use it, and as in the current time, must experiment: Redglare ultimately does not learn the specific abilities Sierra did, but combines its alchemizing abilities with her innate Mind powers to draw abilities from those around her, combined with the zeitgeist of the area around her and, in a sense, weaponize the narrative to randomly generate abilities and spell effects. She is ultimately far better at the subtle abilities and Sierra still falls short of living up to her skills. Redglare is the first champion and leader of the Fleet, the heroine they all adored, and leaves big shoes to fill. (Her fate is… open to debate.)

Eventually, there is a second phase around the third generation of children and the signs of the Matriatrix’s gifts imbuing them with hyper fertility and devouring/pregnancy powers so that the Fleet is associated with nomming themes and producing huge amounts of children. By this point they have multiplied by several hundred members, both taking in anyone who wants to join their merry band and reproducing… a LOT. Gems and Transformers have been changed to be able to have super pregnancies, but not to the one-woman population booms in the present. This significantly alters the dynamics for their people, since the difficulties of resources for making new Gems and Transformers is a major problem for reproduction; possibly something similar applies to trolls, as I imagine the mother grub not being a natural part of the reproduction, but akin to a biological cloning machine inducing inbreeding due to over reliance on it.

Around this phase, two things happen, in no particular order, but as a result, some humans enter the Fleet. Again, humans are a relatively rare and severely underpowered species, and possibly in the process of dying out. But their greatest place of utopian ideals and success is the world-nation of Wakanda, reimagined her as a massive ringworld inhabited by humans, robots and the creations of ancient humans. It is a distillation of Marvel, with the entire human population being mutants; powers are universal, and the older generation of BNHA characters also originate from here (All Might, Inko). The Fleet seeks shelter, and for some time, calls Wakanda home. This utopian wonderland becomes the Fleet’s first true stable homeland, and eventually the beginning of their spaceflights; eventually they can no longer remain after Wakanda is devastated by Evil, and the notion of Wakanda becomes a spiritual homeland they home to one day reestablish.

By this point, the clan social system that eventually replaces biological families entirely begins to manifest, growing out of the social structures of Wakanda and the factionalism present within the newborn Fleet itself.

The other thing that can happen before or after the joining with Wakanda; the discovery of ancient cloning facilities, in which humans played a part. Great mechanisms to produce vast amounts of cloned offspring lay dormant, but fully functional, and providing the Fleet with valuable lost technology that will become the basis for later bio-tech. The facility contains information on the twenty-eight hundred trillion different bloodlines of the many species recorded, among them human bloodlines that still have a claim to the last dynasties of Earth in its pre-Cataclysm hey-day, and the offspring of those bloodlines would have tremendous cultural influence due to their descent from the last great powers of their people.

The Fleet begins what will become a solemn vow to resurrect life whenever possible; eventually they will start gestating fallen species, but they begin by simply starting the machines back up and raising the resulting children on their own. Among these are the first human members to be born into the Fleet; these include the human guardians from Homestuck (Pop Egbert, Mom Lalonde, Grandpa Harley, non-abusive Bro Strider) as well as anyone explicitly confirmed to be human and born into the Fleet; of note, the human SU characters from an older generation, most prominently Greg Universe.

Additional time passes, more generations come and go, and the Fleet’s initial powers grow more advanced; rebirth via pregnancy becomes a viable technique though not as widespread as it will become, and extends life spans considerably. Hyper huge proportions and recreational modding become more common, and with Redglare’s increased control over the Matriatrix, the beginnings of the Fleet’s superpowers status beings.

Now we come to the birth of the ‘current generation’; the characters the AU focuses on. Sierra, the other TDI characters, and the Homestuck kids and trolls are born. (Analogues to the Beforan characters as they are in the dancestor bits are also born roughly around this time.) The human characters in question (mainly the TD and Homestuck humans like Jade, Roxy, Jane and John) are a mix of being born from the cloning processes and offspring of the human mutants. The trolls, though, are explicitly the biological children of the troll ancestors, even if they are not raised by them as per Fleet custom.

Thus, everyone effectively grows up as friends and have an established society that predates them, putting less of an emphasis on them as the sole heroes; they stand on the shoulders of those who came before.

Sierra winds up becoming a protege of sorts to Redglare, and Terezi, as her descendant, suffers a great deal of pressure to become as great as her, while Redglare does her best to just let her descendants have a happy, ordinary life.

At some point, though, Redglare leaves the story. However it happens, she passes the Matriatrix onto Sierra, when all expectation was that Terezi would continue her legacy. This causes a great deal of tension between the two, even though they are very close prior to this. Eventually it is repaired, but not without damage.

In her childhood, Sierra befriends Grimlock (Effectively being his human companion friend, in TF fandom terms), bringing him out of his gloomy shell and lightning him up a little bit into the hero we all know he can be.

Sierra’s discoveries, as well as those of her friends (most predominantly Feferi, who is effectively the mother of modding) and the leadership of their particular group begins to shape the Fleet into what it is, setting the stage for its current position as it grows and changes.

(This also means that Vriska, and perhaps a good chunk of the Stingers, were originally part of the Fleet, perhaps those who opted for personal gratification or glory over the Fleet’s heroic intentions.)

Some other consequences is that the Fleet initially grew gradually, slowly absorbing people into it over time and then growing just a bit faster at a time as the Matriatrix’s powers expanded into others… and relatively recently, their expansion went from a few worlds and a single fleet to multiple ones, and a MASSIVE population explosion that continues even to this day. This rapid expansion is clearly terrifying to most people and a serious threat to people who originally saw them as hedonist outcasts and rogues challenging tyrants.

The second one is a theme of building things over the course of multiple generations, but suddenly the plan is askew. Redglare, the seemingly immortal wielder of the Matriatrix, is gone. Her plans, whatever they were, are suddenly stalled and the Fleet doesn’t have a rudder; people depended on her and revered here, and Terezi and Sierra wind up having to take the reins and inspire people. Sierra the heart-felt champion and the one they adore, and Terezi winds up the one with a plan and purpose people can root for.

Things build up and expand from simpler roots, growing more complex and better than what their forerunners initially created. They might be standing on the shoulders of giants, but they’ll grow far bigger than their parents did.

(The metaphor is somewhat muddled by the fact that the Fleet’s stronger people genuinely regard ‘growing bigger than a planet and using your finger to destroy a kaiju’ as mid-tier feats, but the point still stands.)

[betweengenesisfrogs]

The City of the Old Emperors: Thoughts on Openbound

DJay’s post reminded me that I have a lot of vague thoughts about Openbound, which I’ve never managed to organize into a coherent essay. In part, I was waiting for DJay to share his idea of Openbound as a kind of katabasis (journey to the underworld), which is central to a lot of my thinking these days. Now that that idea’s arrived, let me talk about some of my own.

Spoilers, as with all the best Homestuck analysis, for the book version of The Neverending Story.

1.

So. I’m very much in agreement with DJay’s big thesis that the shallow, annoying personas the Dancestors hide in are a ruse - a distaction, if you will. The dancestors present themselves as annoying, one-note characters, but they actually have a lot of history and pretty complex psychology if you look a little further - it’s just that at *this* point, after a billion years of living out their memories they’ve retreated into simplistic roles that they can safely play without engaging any more deeply with their past. Terezi and Karkat even acknowledge this, calling them caricatures. I love DJay’s term - “shades.”

I think where this really clicked for me was in in-story Hussie’s comment on Latula. He claims there’s nothing more to her other than being a cool rad gamegrl radgirl coolgirl.

This is obvious bullshit. Talking to her as Porrim reveals that Latula puts on the gamegirl persona as a way of dealing with other people, and she’s actually kind of relieved to be able to drop the act and acknowledge her problems. Relatedly, talking to Kankri as her reveals that she’s dealing with the problem of him awkardly hitting on her, which is one reason she retreats into a Gamegrl persona around him.

This is true for basically all of the characters introduced in Openbound. In-story, Kurloz is dismissed as a ridiculous mime when he’s helping Gamzee orchestrate LE’s rise and suppressing the agency of his friends (oh hey, Gamzee does this too, putting on the persona of “lolrandom incomprehensible prankster”); Cronus is indeed terrible, but terrible in a “what could have been kind of way” where he once had the chance to be a Harry Potter-esque hero; Mituna babbles and insults but only because he burnt his brain out making a great heroic sacrifice, Damara distracts the pretty significant statements she’s making about LE with vulgarity, Rufioh is pretty insecure beneath being Rufioh ...the list goes on.

So Hussie, in his in-story persona, is a god damn liar, and this is key to everything to that comes next.

The funny thing is, you don’t get the real stories from Hussie. You get it from talking to Aranea, which is framed as an act of “indulging” her, and by extension the author...but it’s only this “background” information which gives these characters complex lives and motivations beyond their personas. The effect it has is not of indulgence - the effect is to frame the whole dancestor ballet as a non-indulgence, revealing them as deeper than they seem.

(At this point, though, many readers will already be sick of them, and miss what’s really going on.)

Porrim would seem to be the one exception. In her case, though, I think it’s not so much that the reader doesn’t recognize her complexity as a person, but that her friends don’t. They stereotype her as being all about sex and relationship when her sex positivity is actually part of a larger goal of honestly examining her society. She’s the only one who can see the personas for what they are, since she recognizes it as something put on her from the outside.

2.

The theme of a voyage to the underworld (katabasis) can be analyzed a number of different ways, and all of them fit Homestuck. As an epic, Homestuck of course has an obligation to go to the land of the dead halfway through its story, so that the protagonist can learn something they need to know.

If there’s anything we’re learning these days, though, the protagonist of the epic Homestuck isn’t a character,  it’s the MSPA reader. It’s us who make the journey to Homestuck’s underworld. Meenah plays the role of hero there, with Aranea her guide, but we know that we move through which characters we control, each of them being temporary analogues for our will. We are the ones who descend into its hell.

(And now I think we’re finally figuring out what we’re supposed to learn there.)

Just as DJay says, the fact that these characters are reduced to stereotyped shades is all Lord English’s fault. Literally, they’ve been hollowed-out by millions of years of being trapped in their memories, thanks to his machinations ruining their lives, and now face his threat again in the afterlife. Metafictionally, we’ve been asked *not* to care about them by the narrative, in the same way Caliborn demands that we don’t give a shit about Homestuck. That’s LE’s great power over the narrative: the threat of apathy.

3.

I tend to think of Life, in Homestuck’s platonic-narrative symbolic system, as representing positive character growth, and by extension things that readers experience as positive development. It’s interesting, then, that the one who brings these dead souls back to life is Meenah, a Life player. It’s even more interesting in that it’s Meenah who deprived them of their lives in the first place. Thinking to escape a dead session for the afterlife, the Thief of Life robbed them of their literal lives, but she also robbed them of their chance to grow as a people. They are thus echoes and victims of LE’s nature as a being that cannot grow or change, and is doomed because of it. But also, it’s kind of Meenah’s fault. Her frustration with them echoes her own choices.

(Worth noting, though, that Tavros is able to persuade them to take part in the final fight against him! It’s subtle, but a little burst of Life at the last moment.)

4.

Openbound is full of good parallels to katabasis mythology. The dream-bubble afterlife echoes both Greek Hades and Christian hell. Homestuck’s dancestors are a lot like the shades Odysseus and Aeneas encounter: they’re faded ghosts, “shades,” who can’t speak until the hero gives them blood to restore their intelligence for a brief time. In Homestuck, what we - and Meenah - give them is a brief window of attention. But it won’t last, and it won’t restore them to life. But it’s also Dante’s Hell. Dante sees souls undergoing ironic punishments, trapped by their own greed, avarice, and lust. The limitation of their will is what keeps them in hell.

There’s one more descent story which I think is very instructive here, though.

And that would be the City of the Old Emperors from Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story, a tale which has quite a bit of relevance for Homestuck.

5.

The first half of The Neverending Story featured the protagonist Bastian being called into the pages of the book and the world of Fantastica, explicitly stated to be a realm made of humanity’s ideas, to recreate this world anew. In the second half of the book, he does so. Unfortunately, as he becomes more sure of his world-creating power, Bastian loses the memory of his own humanity, and begins to forget that Fantastica is not merely his plaything. Declaring himself Emperor, he tries to pretend he created it all, when really he was only acting through the power of another, The Childlike Empress. Bastian soon undergoes a spectacular fall at the hands of his previous allies and friends.Only then can he wake from his reverie and find the last wish he needs to achieve redemption.

But for that redemption to happen, he needs to go into a kind of underworld himself, to learn what mistake it was that he was making.

After being defeated by his friends, Bastian stumbles into a strange city. His horse disappears under him, and he falls - down, down into a crater, where there is a city of strange buildings, full of people in strange clothes doing bizarre things. Before long, he finds a monkey-like guide named Argax, who calls the place the City of the Old Emperors. These strange figures, Argax informs him, were all people from the human world who declared themselves Emperors as Bastian did, and this is the sad result.

“How did they get here? What are they doing here?”

“Oh, there have always been humans who couldn’t find their way back to their world,” Argax explained. “First they didn’t want to, and now, in a manner of speaking, they can’t.[...]”

“Why can’t they?” he asked.

“They’d have to wish it. And they’ve stopped wishing. They used up their last wish for something else.”

“Their last wish?” said Bastian, going deathly pale. “Can’t a person go on wishing as long as he pleases?”

“[...]No! No!” he chattered. “You can only wish as long as you remember your world. These people here used up all their memories. Without a past you can’t have a future. That’s why they don’t get older. Just look at them. Would you believe that some of them have been here a thousand years and more? But they stay just as they are. Nothing can change for them, because they themselves can’t change anymore.”

- The Neverending Story, Chapter 23, pg 378-379

Bastian learns that all these people used up their wishes, leaving them unable to understand or interact with the world. Imagination eludes them - they can only tell stories by randomly forming words from jumbles of letters. Because they didn’t understand where their wishes were coming from, they were left without the capacity for wishes altogether

Another way of saying this is that they were left without will. They have no will to impact the world, because they turned away from the world altogether, retreating into a false idea of themselves. A persona, and not a person who could grow.

This is exactly the position we find the dancestors in in Homestuck. In both Homestuck and the Neverending Story, the limitations of one’s own will are the limitations of one’s agency to influence reality, and the Beforans have given up their will. Theirs is the same mistake as Bastian’s, as Caliborns, and it leaves them hollowed-out, unpleasant, shallow people.

It is their ideas about their will that failed them.

From his encounter with the Old Emperors, Bastian learns the truth about his wishes, enabling him to make his last few wishes count, and bringing him to where he needs to be to find the Waters of Life and make his final wish a wish for his own capacity to love.

So what do we need to learn from the Beforans?

Like us, Bastian is at once both a reader and the protagonist of the story. Michael Ende uses Bastian’s experience to argue that readers have a responsibility to the stories they read and tell. We must give them dignity by breathing life into them, rather than read them in self-indulgent, shallow ways, and we must be willing to grow as we read them.

Homestuck suggests much the same thing. Just as Bastian needed to descend to the hell of the Old Emperors to understand his mistake, we need to descend to the hell of the Dancestors to understand the final confrontation with Caliborn. Like them, we are offered a choice. We are shown his limited view of the world - a view that reduces Homestuck to shallow jokes. We must decide whether we will become him - or set ourselves free.

And to set them free, from the hell they’ve made for themselves, we must also, difficult as it is, believe that the Dancestors can change, more than they can believe it themselves.

In presenting us with their ballet, Hussie challenges us with his favorite question: are we going to accept the surface level,  that Homestuck is just a bad joke full of meaningless flat characters?

Or are we going to take up his challenge to look a little deeper, to breathe life into them and believe there’s more going on beneath the surface - even, no, especially when it’s hardest to do so?

The dark hell of Openbound is the other side of the triumph of Calliope’s Rapture. Homestuck’s fractal structure reflects itself many times over, again and again asking us what we make of it, because we can make of it what we will.

But what will we make of it?

Ah, that is our story, and will be told another time.

[transvros]

romancemancer mentioned you on a post “y'all really out here stanning eridan ampora, a genocidal murderer who...”

@transvros hello????? hello??????? vris dod bad shit but like. EVERYONE did!!!!!! and everyone looooves their sweet widdle bois but hates vris and any morally grey girls and its real fucking thinking emoji because vris did the same amount of bad stuff as men.

“Vris did the sane amount of bad stuff as men” Alright, let’s go to the three worst characters (flaws and actions-wise) and consider what’s been told to us here.) GAMZEE MAKARA: - Was possessed by Lil Cal and forced to murder Equius, who was one of his friends, and Nepeta, another one of his friends. - Went crazy due to the feral desires and urges of his purpleblood state which he had been suppressing purposefully for years by basically poisoning himself to keep his friends safe. - Was abusive towards Terezi pre-retcon but then in the retcon was instead shoved into a fridge- an isolated and confined space- for the duration of not only the game, but also the duration of Earth C’s EXISTENCE, which is a pretty intense punishment. (Vriska is the one who does this, by the way!) - Parented the Cherub egg and aided Caliborn, likely still under future Caliborn’s influence via Lil Cal but that’s admittedly up to interpretation. ERIDAN AMPORA: - Wanted landweller genocide (admittedly, AWFUL) due to his status and his following of the caste system, which was likely pressured onto him for a very long time. - Was cast aside by his own moirail who didn’t bother to try and help him through ANY of his problems, and was borderline neglected by the one quadrant he could have really used. Probably was pushed to believing the bullshit “moirail-zoned” shit because of it. - Was likely traumatized by the angels in his land, and nobody had any empathy for him because he was kind of generally a douchebag most of the time. - Killed Feferi, wounded Sollux and temporarily killed Kanaya as well as destroyed the Matriorb and was killed in response to it. VRISKA SERKET: - Killed hundreds upon hundreds of trolls via flarping to feed her abusive lusus. - For some reason, attempted to kill Tavros, her friend at the time, and wound up crippling him instead. - She then spends most of her time emotionally and psychologically torturing and manipulating Tavros via ableist language and making him believe she’s just trying to “help” him, which she clearly is not. - Kills Aradia after she is tortured by the souls of trolls SHE KILLED. - Blinds Terezi after Terezi tells Doc she’s cheating and gets her arm blown off and eye as well. LET ME REMIND YOU THAT SHE ONLY TOLD DOC THAT VRISKA WAS CHEATING! VRISKA WAS STILL THE ONE RESPONSIBLE FOR CHOOSING TO CHEAT AN ALL POWERFUL BEING IN THE FIRST PLACE. - Then continues to use exceedingly ableist language against Terezi and Tavros, who she MADE DISABLED, and practically torments them on a daily basis. - Has zero care for Kanaya’s feelings, who is trying to help her when she’s down on luck. - Continues to torture Tavros during the game, forces him to climb stairs OUT OF HIS WHEELCHAIR and eventually forces herself onto him and almost uses mind control to make him love her back (which is assault, mind you.) ((admittedly she does not go through with this)) - Puts the entire group in danger by creating Bec Noir (you forget about that?) so that she can play hero and be the big savior - Post death, continues to fucking torture Tavros, using him to do shit for her and ordering him around near constantly in what is clearly an abusive relationship until he has enough of her shit and leaves - Ends up fucking abusing HER OWN DAMN SELF via (Vriska) and calls her weak for being happy, which is a good look on how Vriska feels about happiness and joy being a weakness - Bullies Jake to the point of tears for no reason other than to make sure he knows he’s useless There’s more. Point is, it has nothing to fucking do with gender. I hate Eridan and Gamzee’s actions but I firmly believe they’re more open for a redemption arc than Vriska. I should mention to you that some of my favorite god damn homestuck characters are Kanaya, Roxy, Porrim, Jade and Calliope who are all WELL-WRITTEN PROTAGONIST WOMEN Vriska is a villain who deserved to pay for what she did- end of story.

[utopianparadoxist]

Witch of Space==> Ascend : What is Jade Harley’s Story?

Alright here we go I finally get to write about Jade. My biggest Homestuck secret is that for how relatively little I talk about her, Jade is actually probably my favorite Beta kid.

I love the others and Rose and Dave in particular are intensely personal to me but Jade vibed with me in a way pretty much no character in fiction ever did because she’s an unabashed furry and that’s basically the subculture that raised my preteen catholic ass.

So Jade means a lot to me, and the way her narrative grows has always spoken to me as much as Dave’s narrative about overcoming toxic masculinity, or Rose’s struggle to find existential meaning. In a way, Jade’s struggle IS Rose’s struggle! Jade and Rose have narratives that lead us to twin conclusions about the nature of Homestuck’s reality.

That’s getting ahead of myself though, and I’m going to do this wild thing where I try to impose some structure on my approach so hopefully you can come away with a clear idea of what I think Homestuck is doing. (I want to give special thanks to @landofsomethingsomething for helping me out with the feedback that led me to striving to improve in this respect.)

So. This post has three thesis statements that I hope you come away with at least seriously considering, if not outright buying into.

1. Jade’s character arc was as thought out and deliberate as any of the kids’. She was not “shafted” by the story. The two reasons fans most likely seem to think she was were the Three Years trip she spent alone, and that she “didn’t do anything in Collide”. I believe both are misreadings of the canon.

2. Jade’s arc is meaningful both for herself and for the broader narrative, and builds to one of the most important revelations about Homestuck’s universe.

3. Jade and Davepeta are not only canon but deeply romantic, and Davepeta stands to improve one of the biggest reasons fans feel Jade got “shafted”--not to mention that some fans might take issue with Jade’s lack of a romantic arc, and Davepeta...well...is her romantic arc.

But before we can talk about where Jade’s arc succeeds, we need to talk about what it is, which means we need to talk about her title--Witch of Space. For the record, here’s my view on the mythological roles:

They aren’t a pasted on set of superpowers, and they aren’t given to the kids by Skaia. The titles describe the nature the kids had all along, and the way their patterns of thought reflect onto the world around them. They also foreshadow their narrative arcs and trajectories in their entireties--Just like the titles Hussie was inspired by in creating the system, the Hero of Time and Hero of the Winds structure from the Legend of Zelda.

I’ll begin by tracking Jade’s similarities to her fellow Witches and Space players. By pointing these out I believe I should be able to give you an idea of what I think Jade’s arc is about, exactly.

After that, I’ll expand my reading of Jade as a Witch of Space to include her later narrative turns, as well as explaining how I feel Davesprite--and later Davepeta--is inherently tangled up in her arc, as well as being a better romantic partner for Jade than basically anyone else in the story.

Let’s go. I’m hoping this is the beginning of something really excellent.

Where lies the Witch’s magic?

The first striking similarity between Witches is their bond with an outside force much more powerful than they are representing their Aspect. For Jade, this is Becquerel. For Feferi, it’s Gl’bolyb-who is about as Lifey an entity as it gets. It is, after all, defined by being unknowably massive, incomprehensible Living things, with conscious awareness of its own. 

It is simply a completely alien kind of Life to our own, and thus the Cosmic Horror. Gl’bolyb also requires the consumption of vast quantities of Life that Feferi has to provide it, tying it to Life’s themes of edible consumption. More on Life stuff when I write about Jane soon, though.

Like Jade, Feferi has little direct power early in her life. But she’s able to accomplish stunning feats through her connection to her guardian--which functions effectively as a Witch’s familiar. Before ascension, a Witch’s power is linked to the symbol that identifies her as a Witch in the first place.

Feferi is also ambitious. Not only did Feferi originally aim to change the rules of Life in troll society imposed by the Condesce’s will, but through her connection to the Horrorterrors, she’s able to fundamentally change the rules of Life on a metaphysical level, allowing Ghosts to exist inside dream bubbles in an unnatural limbo.  

Damara has an outside power figure linked to Time, too--Lord English, who she associates with and wishes to work for. She also changes her relationship with Time--turning it into a weapon to use against her friends as revenge as opposed to a tool and series of systems she needs to serve like Aradia and Dave do during their sessions. She’s quite willful and ambitious about both her relationship to her “Familiar” and her use of her Aspect. 

Both witches are driven primarily by their own ambitions and desires, and both witches are also fundamentally Changed by their Aspects. Feferi loses her life and becomes a ghost, her will becoming almost indistinguishable from the Horrorterrors’. And Damara’s primary use of her Aspect coincides with a drastic change in outlook and personality, making her cynical, bitter, and willing to serve her Familiar over connecting with others. 

Now--if Witches are ambitious about and defined by both changing and being changed by the domain of their Aspect, then what is Jade’s field of ambition in this regard? To answer this question, it’ll help to look at her fellow Space players.

The weight of Space

We don’t see Porrim pre-session, but from their introductions, Jade, Kanaya and Calliope are all defined by a unique passion for Sburb. This makes sense--Sburb, after all, is the construct that defines the Space they will exist in their entire lives. 

Waking early on Prospit also essentially makes them grow up in two environments--places--at once, meaning that they grow up influenced by the culture inherent to two different environments. 

This is particularly notable with Kanaya, who is uniquely untouched by Troll culture compared to her friends. Her morals are much more aligned with Sburbs’ spirit of growth and cooperation, and she takes a passionate interest in fashion--which is to say, the expression of ideas about oneself through clothes. 

This kind of self-expression is something Sburb encourages constantly, and is in fact it’s core philosophy. Kanaya internalizes it completely to such an extent her identity is created by her relationship to Sburb--and Space--much more than by her relationship to Troll culture. Calliope, too, is so inspired by Sburb’s philosophy of cooperation and possibility that it works against her Cherub sociology.

This connection also allows them to use the insight gained from one environment to influence the other. Space players tend to set the stage for their own sessions, laying the Setting for their games in their own unique ways. 

Calliope--the Muse of Space--inspired Dirk and Roxy to set the stage for the Alpha session, and influenced Jake into setting the stage for the Beta session as well. Lord English’s particular exploitation of Trolls was also influenced by her, setting the grim stage for both the troll sessions as well.  Kanaya used Rose’s guide and her visions to help set up her session, too.

Finally, all Space players seem to end up somehow becoming entities they surround themselves with and are influenced by in life, in this sense being drastically affected by their own environments. Kanaya grew up influenced by troll rainbow drinker novels, and just so happened to develop an affinity for the Alternian sun. 

And once she died, she was outright reborn into one. Sylphs being the Passive Creation class, this makes sense--Kanaya heals and Re-Creates herself as her own ideal image. If her ability to do so is intrinsic to her being, that’s no surprise, since Sylphs are considered a kind of Fairy or Elemental, and so are intrinsically connected to and created by their Aspect. 

Once she transforms, she gains super speed--ie: an increased ability to navigate space-- and the ability to fill her environment with Light, which she always found highly desirable. This pattern is repeated across Space players--Calliope is able to inspire others to see her as a Troll, while Jade is able to deliberately Change herself into a Furry. More on that later in this essay. 

Now a picture begins to emerge. 

The Witch is the Active Change class. One could parse the title as:

One who Changes X, or Changes through X.

With the corollary attribute of One who is Changed By X. 

And as Sburb defines everything about the setting of Homestuck, and the enviroments of Space players growing up. And given Witch’s ambition and zeal, it makes perfect sense to think Jade’s ambition and execution would concern Changing not just Space, but Sburb itself. 

Which is true! Among the main kids, Jade is uniquely passionate about actually playing the game. She sets up her session, gets Rose interested, and takes charge of orchestrating and executing the plan that leads to the Beta’s victory. 

And she is uniquely changed by the environments the game exposes her to--the divide between Jade’s Dream Self and her Waking Self is by far the widest of any Player. 

Dream Jade is relatively pampered and aloof, and while having access to a whole other world makes Waking Jade’s life far less distressing and lonely than it might otherwise have been, she still ends up more practical.

And once the game really gets going, also more demanding. In her desire to protect people and be an asset, Jade holds herself to a very high standard. As such, she actively tries to be strong and keep an upbeat attitude, and in execution Jade’s approach to this is quite similar to John’s--she ends up coming off as weirdly emotionally detached from the consequences of what she’s doing. 

The difference is that Jade willfully uses that detachment for her own benefit, like Jake does. After all, reviving Dream Jade this way directly leads Jade to becoming a God Tier, and embodying Space as a First Guardian.

Dream Jade, meanwhile, dies, and is greatly changed by the stagnancy and fatalism inherent to the Dream Bubbles. Jade tries to comfort Jadesprite, but this also brings us to another core facet of Jade’s. Jade has a habit of bottling up her emotions in a big way, like Jane. Jade wants to be reliable and useful, and to her that parses as a focus on practicality and solution-oriented thinking. 

So when Jadesprite--who’s another version of her--fails to live up to her standards, Jade tries to be caring... but tries to find practical solutions which go ignored as Jadesprite copes with the trauma of her circumstances. Jade’s frustration with the game, with Jadesprite’s defeatism, and with Jadesprite as a reflection of herself build until finally she gets fed up and...

Blows a gasket. Jade’s got self-loathing issues just like anyone in Homestuck, and for her they manifest as being angry at what she could’ve become under different circumstances. She hates Jadesprite for being so malleable to her environment, and for being something she sees in herself--Selfish. Jade didn’t think too much about Becquerel before creating Jadesprite, after all, did she? Active classes are intrinsically self-motivated, and Jade is no exception.

Jadesprite is the only character Jade is quite this cruel to other than Karkat, who torments her for years and exhausts her with hyperemotional debates that distract her and waste her time. But this attitude is still something she carries across her relationships. She’s kind to Tavros, but his logic turns circular for long enough that she gets frustrated and turns their attention towards practical matters.

She extends much more time and patience to her friends, consoling Rose when her Mom dies...but even then is immediately concerned about what she will do with her feelings. In this pesterlog she also begins to question the nature of the game they’re playing, beginning to note Sburb seems outright cruel at times--foreshadowing her more intense struggles with the nature of the Space she inhabits.

Which brings us to Davesprite. Dave and Jade had a special relationship growing up, and Davesprite is a Dave brought into being by the game Jade is so invested in. And Davesprite is the one who finds Jadesprite at her lowest, and comforts her. He then makes her aware of her own power...

And encourages either Jade’s first great feat of magic as a Witch of Space. Immediately after this, Jade ascends, becoming one with Jadesprite and bringing the entire session under control--an action Davesprite bears witness to in it’s entirety. Soon after, Jade and Davesprite start dating during the three year’s boat trip. But…

It doesn’t work out. Why?

Well, there’s two reasons. The first is that Dave is an abuse victim, and that isn’t really the kind of trauma Jade could easily relate to--she’s been exposed to neglect and isolation, but the experience of being subjugated under an overbearing guardian would be alien to her-- and she never takes it particularly seriously growing up.

Grimbark Jade clues us in on the second. Davesprite also feels set apart from the kids, distanced by his Sprite status. He considers himself auxiliary to Alpha Dave, the same way Hal does with Dirk. John even rubs it in a couple of times, and openly wonders about Davesprite’s importance relative to Alpha Dave himself. And of course, Davesprite himself admits it.

This is something Jade can relate to to some extent--she was solely a Sprite for a time, and distanced and set apart from all society besides that. But the game fixed both of those for Jade, through bringing her closer to her friends and God Tiering. Not so for Davesprite.

Note what these issues have in common, though: Neither abuse trauma nor existential marginalization are problems that come with practical, tidy solutions--which are Jade’s instinctive method of dealing with things. 

Jade wants to look for something to Do about everything, but there’s nothing to really Do for Davesprite. So Jade bottles her feelings of frustration up, only to have them come out when she goes Grimbark. But even while evil, brainwashed, and pissed off about Davesprite breaking up with her...

She still sticks up for Davesprite’s validity and personhood. Now, let’s move on to the retcon. 

Davepeta happens, obviously--Nepeta acting as a Rogue to “Steal” Dave’s Heart for his own benefit. Davesprite transcends both his issues with his Bro and his tortured sense of auxiliary identity. Nepeta benefits from this arrangement, too--but we’re talking about Jade, so let’s see how the retcon treats her.

In the Post-Retcon version of the three years trip, Jade ends up completely alone and isolated. Fans usually hate this about her arc, but hear me out, because this is where I make my case for the first point I laid out at the beginning of this:

This isn’t just about tormenting or “shafting” Jade. It isn’t Hussie being lazy or not caring about her. Jade is struggling with her Aspect, the same way Dirk is tormented by his Splinters, Terezi by her Choices, and so on.  And as she struggles with Space, she also struggles with the Game--and the label it seemingly “assigns” her. Space. She dreams about and meets Alt!Calliope, who tells her the Game has ordained this tragic reality for her, and as a result Jade feels distanced and set apart from her friends--just as Davesprite once did. When she meets Alt!Calliope again, she reinforces this notion, seemingly telling Jade that it is in a Space player’s nature to be alone.

But that’s not all she tells her. As she’s exposed to the fully-fledged Muse of Space the longest, Jade is also uniquely privy to the deepest secret of the nature of all of the entire Homestuck multiverse. A secret implied and built up to literally from the moment John first bites Sburb’s apple and enters the game(citation pending--I’ve got that video recorded already):  

That Paradox Space is composed out of the abstractions of thought called the Aspects. This is the root of my second point, that Jade’s narrative is important both for herself and the wider Homestuck story--not to mention our understanding of it’s Multiverse.

The implications of this stunning revelation are enormous. Calliope literally states that ideas are made up of the Aspects, and what the Alchemy system does is make physical objects out of ideas. All of Paradox Space grows outwards from these twelve tiny elements of thought, and so reality is literally something created by those perceiving it. In Homestuck, existence is created by thought--and so too is all physical matter.

This is why I argue all depictions of Light in Homestuck symbolically contain the Light Aspect’s fundamental ideas--because Light as a physical presence is simply a concentrated enough amount of Light aspect abstractions to be visible in physical reality. The same is true of every Aspect--in this same sense, you can argue all food is made out of Life, and all absence out of Void. 

Imagine being granted the key to understanding the entire universe. That’s what is happening here. Jade doesn’t understand all of it right away, but the core idea gets across. And understanding the true nature of reality this way could take Jade’s interest in science to an entire other level. There’s practically no limit to what she could do with this information, I mean--if all of reality is created by thought, then what are the real limits of what’s possible for anyone?

Having delivered this information, Calliope leaves--leaving Jade as close to the biggest symbol of Space in the comic--the Green Sun--as she could get. Jade lingers, waiting, under the impression she is inherently meant to simply comply with the will of her Aspect and Paradox Space, when along comes…

Davesprite, freed of all the issues that made their relationship originally unworkable. Only now it’s Davepeta, and Davepeta is a wholly new entity, completely and utterly defined by their relationship to the Game that functions as one of Jade’s primary domains of power and influence. It would be literally impossible for Jade to have met any version of any person even remotely like Davepeta elsewhere. It had to be here. It had to be through Sburb.

Davepeta also has unique insight into the nature of the Player’s ultimate reality, and is one of the few characters with more insight into that reality than Jade herself. 

In keeping with the Light motif with Homestuck’s romantic relationships, Jade lingers in the dark Void of her loneliness, not knowing whether she should Do anything, by a hyper-incandescent 2xSprite, an entity literally created to provide aid and information as well as giving off Light physically.

As if that weren’t enough, Davepeta is also a twice over Passive player--a Knight who serves their friends Time, or serves them through Time, and a Rogue who can Steal Hearts for the benefit of others.

And Davepeta is also coded as a cat and a bird, simultaneously--the two animals most commonly associated with Witches. 

Do you see where I’m going with this? Now that Jade is a fully ascended Witch who has mastered Space, along comes Davepeta, framed perfectly to act as the Witch’s Familiar. A Familiar whose existence reflects not just dominion over Physical Space, but mastery over both Sburb and the nature of Paradox Space.

And what does Davepeta do when it’s, for once, Jade at a loss for what to do next, trapped in a circular spiral of logic on whether to even move forward? Davepeta says that’s dumb, and that Jade should do whatever she wants to, and offers her a practical solution to help her do it. Making it clear that Davepeta is capable of being a partner and aid to Jade’s desires and ambitions.

Jade then wakes up, and decides to follow Davepeta’s (and Calliope’s) advice: She has fun.

In Collide, Jade chooses not to fight, but rather to use her space powers to play with Bec Noir and PM, distracting them and keeping them busy. Doing this leads her to Changing the game in the most powerful way possible. 

The two First Guardians are completely equalized by Bec’s influence on them, making them equal in power...but also giving them equally powerful feelings of love for Jade.

This gives PM the advantage. PM is the one able to control her own emotions, find nuance in her situation, and take a middle solution between really hurting Jade and complete inaction--which Jack is unable to do. 

By setting up this situation, Jade turns the core fatalism of Sburb on it’s head--setting up a scenario where White can do the impossible and defeat Black itself. That’s about as “Changing” the nature of “Space” as it gets--a Witch of Space, fully realized.

And now Jade is hanging out, happy with her friends and not lonely or isolated at all. Jade is having fun and enjoying herself on Earth C. That’s a pretty satisfying narrative, as far as I’m concerned. 

Jade struggled, but she also gained unique insight and knowledge entirely in keeping with her Aspect. At the very least, considering the importance of the information Jade got from her journey and all the thematic imagery surrounding it, I think it’s likely that approach was intentional and not a byproduct of Hussie “not caring about Jade” or “shafting” her.

Whether you guys do or don’t like where he took Jade’s arc is another conversation, albeit one I’m willing to have--I’m just arguing there was intent behind the chaos.

That said, now I’m going to do something I don’t usually like to do, and speculate about Jade’s future a little. 

I personally think Jade’s “arc” is complete enough as it stands now--Davepeta’s a compelling romantic partner, but it’s not like Jade necessarily needs a romance in the first place. I won’t be upset if I end up wrong about this stuff-- I just think the nature of all this build up between Jade and Davepeta makes it more likely than any alternatives I can think of.

So here’s some thoughts about the Epilogue you may want to consider:

Whether Davepeta will survive to meet up with her again is, admittedly, an open question...but considering all this narrative buildup, the fact that we already know Sprites exist past the end of the Game, and that Davepeta already fought Lord English and survived, I have a hard time believing they’re going to be killed off at this point.

Especially considering [S] Credits is clearly setting up the Masterpiece, and if we see the Beta kids get sucked into that Juju it’s likely we’ll also see them pop out the other end...in the Void, where Davepeta is.

And one last thing:

We already saw Roxy steal something from nothing, so it’s not impossible to think Davepeta could reach across the Timelines they already see, and steal the Heart or Time Game Over Jade spent with John and Davesprite in the original timeline back from the Game that took those experiences from her--fitting into Jade’s motif of Cheating the game to suit her desires.

This is the nature of my third and final point--that on top of everything else Davepeta adds to Jade’s narrative, they could subvert the lasting pain and suffering the Game inflicted on Jade across those three years, enabling her to remember her relationship with Davesprite, and also potentially giving John and Roxy another person who remembers the old timeline.

No idea if that’s gonna happen, or be shown in detail if it is. I just think that given the sheer depth in which Davepeta’s and Jade’s arcs are interwoven, it’s not impossible. If it doesn’t, I’m personally pretty happy with Davepeta giving Jade some good advice and helping her out at the end. Feel free to let me know what you think! :)

Alright, that’s all I got on Jade for now, guys. Hoping to write one post about Jane soon, but I’m going to be refocusing back towards video editing and job hunting, so these written posts may slow while I devote more energy to making videos. This has essentially been a side project to my Homestuck, Explained series as I gathered my thoughts on the endgame enough that I thought it warranted posting some more of them.

If you’re interested in enabling me to write more of these posts and making more videos, it’d be cool of you to check out my Patreon. We’ve got a neat little Discord community of Homestuck aficionados thinking and talking about a bunch of different Homestuck analysis topics, and doing so can also get you perks like previews of my video scripts and previews of the videos themselves.

That’s all for now, peeps. As always, thanks a ton for reading.

See you again soon, everyone.

Until then, Keep Rising.

[gulescamisade]

Mega Texas:  Day 1

[ Dirk, Nepeta, Sollux, Tavros, Equius, Aradia, Signless, Summoner, Tyrena and Disciple all find themselves blipping suddenly onto the hot, scorching ground. Snapping back to reality and here comes gravity. They find themselves closely scattered in a Wal-Mart parking lot. The cars are here, aren’t they always, only some of these are broken into, which is another common thing. Beside them there is a judgemental moo from cows watching as these weirdos appeared from nowhere and decided to take a nap on the asphalt. Their hair still static-y from the trip, touching one of the abandoned carts seems like a bad idea man. Real bad. ]

DIRK: -DOOF. he lands on his ass.- ... What the fuck?

DIRK: -looks around. wal-mart... fucked up cars...-

DIRK: -a weird looking horse?-

DIRK: -could he be in the fabled land of his birth?-

NEPETA: =TAIL FRIZZES AND HISSES=

EQUIUS: -How dare you. He is in perfect condition. This Wal-Mart, however, is not. Equius stands with a groan.-

NEPETA: =THE CLAWS ARE OUT=

DIRK: -nah, that's a ridiculous conclusion to jump to...-

TYRENA: -drags herself up from the floor-

DIRK: -gets up, surveying the group and takes a head count.- Everyone okay?

TYRENA: -a little bit of a hISS as she does-

TYRENA: 0NLY SUPERF1C1ALLY >:)

TYRENA: -STALKS AND HOBBLES a few steps, bare feet on the hot ground.- TYRENA: BLEH

SIGNLESS: -Ahh, nothing like suddenly APPEARING SOMEWHERE ELSE. First thing to register when his feet hit the ground is that its very hot, but heat he can handle, what he cant handle is trying to guess what just happened.-

SIGNLESS: Would someone.... kindly fill me in on what has just happened. -Squints as he looks around at all the cars and cows.-

EQUIUS: -He's sweating abhorrently, and the heat is making him a little...sluggish-

TYRENA: 1 PR0M1SE NO K1NDNESS

TYRENA: 1T WAS A TRAP

SOLLUX: -just laying face down on the ground.-

ARADIA: -she had a soft landing...but sollux...he needed to fall flat on his face. it was important. so she just waits for him to get up.-

NEPETA: =Scampers around anxiously, scampers over Sollux. Sits on him and kneads=

NEPETA: =With claws=

NEPETA: =Hello=

SOLLUX: 0w.

SOLLUX: guess i'm still alive. c00l.

SOLLUX: -muffled into pavement-

DIRK: ... -hoists him-

DIRK: We're missing most of the crew.

DIRK: -pats himself down... his comm device is still on him. hmm.-

NEPETA: =Doofs off Sollux as he's lift and scampers again before climbing Equius=

SOLLUX: -is hoist- l00ks like nepeta is 0kay.

TYRENA: YES

TYRENA: THEY ARE M1SS1NG YOU, EQUALLY, 1'M SURE

SOLLUX: every0ne stand still and wait f0r me t0 st0p tasting c0ncrete s0 i can figure 0ut wh0's here.

DIRK: I'm gonna try to get ahold of everyone else. Hold up.

ARADIA: im here

SOLLUX: 0h hey AA.

EQUIUS: D --> Are you...okay, Nepeta? Aradia as well. Everyone else

NEPETA: :33 <sure this is grrrrrrrrreat blargh but im fine just furreaked out :'((

ARADIA: hi sollux

ARADIA: hi equius

ARADIA: theres nothing to be freaked out about :D

NEPETA: :33 < this is dumb >:'((

EQUIUS: D --> Stop being weirder than usual, Aradia. I concur with Nepeta

ARADIA: youre weirder than usual

ARADIA: oh wait

ARADIA: thats all the time

EQUIUS: D --> Now is not the time to wa% pitchy. Something severe has happened

ARADIA: its moderate

DIRK: -gets this random urge to kick hal's ass-

TYRENA: 1 APPRECIATE Y0UR UTTER 1ND1FFERENCE AND F1ND 1T REFRESH1NG

TYRENA: H0WEVER, 1T D0ES REVEAL A F0REKN0WLEDGE 0F TH1NGS

TYRENA: SP1LL, P1X1E, 1 KN0W H0W TH1S GAME W0RKS

TYRENA: 1'VE BEEN AT 1T F0R M0ST 0F MY L1FE

DIRK: -blurts out, holding up his comm- Hey. We're in Texas.

TYRENA: 0H

TYRENA: WHAT'S A TEXAS

ARADIA: -she smiles at tyrena- ive been through every way this could possibly go

ARADIA: i know what we have to do to get to our best end result

ARADIA: but in every circumstance that i choose to tell you what to do next

ARADIA: it all ends horrifically

TYRENA: HA

TYRENA: 1F Y0U 1NS1ST

TYRENA: 1 AM N0 HYP0CR1TE, AT LEAST

SOLLUX: welc0me t0 hell.

ARADIA: welcome to hell

SOLLUX: yeah.

DIRK: -looks a little distressed-

DIRK: ... Alright, everybody.

DIRK: I've gathered that the crew's been split up into groups, presumably all around the US. We're going to try to meet up in Minnesota.

DIRK: The kids are still on the ship, but Porrim is looking after them. Think she's got the bots helping her too.

TYRENA: HM

TYRENA: 1 SUPP0SE 1T 1S A PLAN, 1F N0TH1NG ELSE

DIRK: Sollux, come with me. We're gonna try to hot wire some of these cars. -drags him, but also because he wants to talk to him-

ARADIA: -smiles as they go-

SOLLUX: hhff. -is DRAG.- h0w fucking 0ld is this techn0l0gy even g0ing t0 be, this is g0nna suck.

DIRK: We weren't transported back in time, asshole. I'm sure it's fine. -he assumes-

DIRK: ... -quiet for a second after he jimmies a door open- I don't know where Jake and Roxy are.

SOLLUX: -no human technology suuuuucks. whine whine. but also quiets himself after that.- SOLLUX: ... 0kay. uhh.

SOLLUX: fuck.

DIRK: I'm trying not to freak out. Not while I still gotta give everyone direction. -leeeans into the driver's seat and starts fucking around with the car.-

NEPETA: :33 < its purrretty hard to not freak out :((

NEPETA: =crawls in the car and starts to scratch the seat immediately= :33 < where can we even go in texass?

TYRENA: AWAY FR0M TEXAS

DIRK: -SUDDENLY A CAT- ... Yeah, that's the plan, actually.

DIRK: Probably best we lay low too. As much as I'd love to sight see.

SOLLUX: jegus nepeta.

NEPETA: :33 < i can help scout...... =mnng, jumps out and starts to prowl around........= and also get dinner =STARES at cows=

NEPETA: =MEAT=

DIRK: Don't you dare kill that horse.

NEPETA: =tilts head and snorts=

NEPETA: :33 < thats a silly looking horse!!

EQUIUS: D --> It's an udderbeast. A, oh fizzlewinks, what do humans call it again? Oh yes, a cow -And Nepeta better leave it alone-

DIRK: He's just a lil chunky.

ARADIA: -joins the rest of them-

NEPETA: :33 < a chunky hunk of FOOD

EQUIUS: D --> Cease

NEPETA: :33 < im trying to feed the pack :30

SOLLUX: can s0me0ne take a chunky hunk 0f shut the fuck up while i'm trying to blindly help h0twire this scuttlebuggy?

SOLLUX: in case y0u f0rg0t the tech guy was blind.

NEPETA: =leans next to Sollux=

NEPETA: :33 < (is the shut fuck tender and juicy.... like steak?) =mrps softly= i pawlieve in you!

SOLLUX: ggghhhhh.

ARADIA: im assuming youre pretty talented with your scents to know whawt youre doing by now

EQUIUS: -Plucks Nepeta up. Let him work-

SOLLUX: -mocking her- i'm assuming y0u're pretty talented with y0ur dick by n0w t0 blah blah blah my ass.

SOLLUX: -sparks fly as he touches two wires together- 0W FUCK.

ARADIA: i mean yes

ARADIA: i was waiting for that

SOLLUX: Y0U WERE WAITING F0R MY ASS?

ARADIA: for you to get shocked

ARADIA: after saying that

SOLLUX: AA can y0u st0p being super fucking creepy f0r tw0 sec0nds and try being slightly m0re s0cially acceptable? like ask if i'm 0kay 0r s0mething???

ARADIA: are you ok

ARADIA: you are

ARADIA: i can answer that

DIRK: -he's just watching this happen tbh-

SOLLUX: i'm-- g0d damn it.

SOLLUX: -throws hands up-

ARADIA: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

SOLLUX: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ARADIA: :D

DIRK: -and with that, he manages to get it to start running- Nice.

DIRK: This wouldn't be possible without the sacrifices you made, babe. I'm so proud of you.

TYRENA: -climbs onto the roof of the car.-

SOLLUX: y0u're WELC0ME, every0ne!

SOLLUX: what the fuck is that.

ARADIA: tyrena

SOLLUX: figures.

DIRK: Important question... Who all knows how to drive a car?

NEPEPTA: :33 < i do!

DIRK: Cool. We're gonna need a few people cuz we ain't all fittin' in one.

DIRK: -moves onto another car to get that one running.-

TYRENA: 1 CAN DR1VE

SOLLUX: Y0U'RE BLIND.

SOLLUX: HA HA.

TYRENA: YES, Y0U ARE

SOLLUX: yeah.

SOLLUX: -SIGHS.-

SOLLUX: -he's more agitated because he misses Terezi already.-

EQUIUS: D --> I can navigate one of these rudimentary vehicles well enough

SOLLUX: kn0wing y0u, y0u'll break the wheel 0r kick a h0le in the fl00rb0ard bef0re y0u get this thing past the ugly h0rse.

DIRK: -keeps an eye on those two... no strangling this time.-

EQUIUS: D --> I could just as easily put a hole in you -This heat is doing wonders for his anger-

NEPETA: =puts her foot on Equius' cheek=

DIRK: Don't make me come over there.

ARADIA: -pats equius's arm- but you wont

SOLLUX: i dunn0 aa i think we have time t0 find 0ut.

DIRK: For fuck's sake, my dude.

SOLLUX: let's just be real ab0ut 0ur handicaps here. i'm blind and he's freakishly hulking.

EQUIUS: -There's a neck vein or three bulging-

ARADIA: hes big

NEPETA: =Puts her foot on the neck veins, mrps=

NEPETA: :33 < if i cant eat the weird horse ill eat mew both fur survival!

SOLLUX: at least i'll be put t0 g00d use.

NEPETA: :33 < purr bones would make a nice broth

ARADIA: -whacks sollux's arm-

EQUIUS: D --> As what? A post dinner tooth picking tool

NEPETA: :33 < no equihiss purr the picking tool fur my teeth! >:00

EQUIUS: D --> You've already e%pended your use, Captor

NEPETA: :33 < BLARRRRRGGHH =ascends the horse and gets on his shoulders, hand over the mouth= shush

DIRK: -okay, he's coming back over.-

SOLLUX: 0W.

SOLLUX: what was that f0r???

[In the not so far distance, a shitty jpeg skateboard gently floats to the ground]

ARADIA: you hit your daily verbal self deprecation limit a long time ago

DIRK: Are we really doing this right now? Because I'm not in the fucking mood to br-- .....................

DIRK: -stares at the skateboard-

SOLLUX: excuse me?? that d0esn't exist.

SOLLUX: .... br.

ARADIA: -just smiles at the skateboard. HAHAHA it's kind of funny this time around-

DIRK: ... -picks up the skateboard-

SOLLUX: br???

SOLLUX: dirk???

DIRK: Bruh.

SOLLUX: 0h 0kay.

[It's just...So shitty. It's UNREAL, how poor the quality of this thing is. It feels like it's going to break apart in his hands. There's no way anyone actually ever rode this thing]

DIRK: ... -captchalogues this-

DIRK: Anyway, I got the other car running so let's split up.

SOLLUX: sure thing gang.

DIRK: Watch me swooce right in. -pushes sollux into the passenger's seat so he can get into the driver's seat.-

SOLLUX: hrrf. -scrunches up his little stick noodle body-

EQUIUS: -Grumbles off to the other with Nep-

NEPETA: =Pats his sweaty face, softly shushing=

DIRK: -BYE BITCH. just kidding. he likes equius but he can't abide anybody flexing threateningly at his husband. sorry bro.-

ARADIA: -she'll stay in here. for reasons. BYE EQUIUS KISS KISS LOVE YA BYE BYE-

EQUIUS: -He'll break everything-

DIRK: -leads the way further north with his gps guiding them. it's gonna be a long night.-

[rhythmic-idealist]

Your duty is to protect the Alternian people, to in that process keep a watchful eye to weaknesses in your race.

This grub is a weakness in your race.

This grub is the Alternian people.

Your name is UNIMPORTANT, you are all sisters anyhow, and you are faced for the first time with the fairly obvious fact that your line of work presents a moral conundrum.

Maybe it’s because you’re making the decision aboveground, errands-containment textile prism slung over your elbow, thinkpan still a little clearer from the sunlight that, a little over an hour ago, had shone on your skin.

Maybe it’s because of the fairly jarring and unique situation of following a shooting star to its serendipitously close landing point, and finding a grub who, while by all means sickly, underdeveloped, and baring a glaring hemotype aberration, survived the impact.

For whichever reason, you look at this grub and cannot help but see a person, and one for which you feel an instant, uncomfortably familiar affinity, and you, Porrim Maryam, are faced with a dilemma.

If you bring it back to the caverns, it will die.

If you leave it here, it will die.

If you give it everything you have, smuggle it back to the caverns and through the Trials, keep it fed and watered and watch its every step - under the guise of some sort of research, understanding steps to be taken in future iterations of the FF mutation (as you’ve just named it, in your head, to give this idea credibility) - if you are successful in all of this, and not branded heretical or insubordinate for trying, it will reach the end, and there will be no lusus, and it will die.

“Kamill.”

Allmother fucking dammit, you’ve named the thing.

[Continue on AO3]

The part of you which you have grown to dislike reeeeels you back to reality, and the part of you that dislikes her pouts, unfurls a ponytail you no longer have, rolls the waistband of her skirt up an inch shorter, but you, with your actual body, right now, do none of those things, and Porrim The Adult keeps talking. This is not a choose your own adventure. This is not a question the world has given you the wisdom nor the authority to answer. That’s why the world has just given you answers, and you’ve studied this one: once, between the eyes, and snap its neck for good measure.

Your sign is engraved on the side of your culling knife in the shaky but artistic hand with which you first held it when you were seven, the night before Ordeals.

Its forelegs are too short and its translucent exoskeleton underdeveloped, aberrant blood showing through brighter in some patches and darker in others.

“You don’t understand that I am talking to you.”

You are fairly certain, as you sit in front of the thing, that this is true. Your first distinguishable memories place you distinctly post-pupation, though if you focus, you can dredge up colorful, dizzying views of a time you were much too small to be a wriggler, either half-imagined or carried over hazily, but, as all of your schoolfeeding tapes confirm, there was no sign of language or organized thought there. Even the grubs that do face their Trials like proper Alternians do so haphazardly, failing to understand until their second or third or twenty-fifth try that the thing they are biting contains no food, or it if does, may be the kind of food that bites back.

The grub rubs its hind legs over and over each other like it thinks it’s a chirpgrub, an experiment through which it accomplishes absolutely nothing, because grubs are stupid and you generally can not fault them for this. It has also done you the inconvenience of moving to look an awful lot like it’s inclining its head toward your voice.

It probably thinks you, too, are some kind of food. Stranded out here without so much as egg fragments to be seen, the thing must be starving.

Something in your is chest chained firmly to this patch of ground. The sky is heavier around you, and sticky on your shoulders in a way it shouldn’t be able to be in the driest parts of the dark season. It is stupid, and it is going to live and die in a night, or a night and a day if by some miracle it finds its way to shade, which is not the kind of miracle Alternia’s messiahs work, and looking at the brightness behind its eyes you think of how vastly unfair it all is.

That’s not Porrim The Adult talking!

You’ve stood abruptly and are three steps away when you become aware you’ve moved.

You turn, you look toward the sky in front of you instead, and keep walking, the now-chilling night air on your face.

...

It is a full minute’s walk away before you turn and sprint back and already you are babbling, and bumbling, and apologizing. Something stings, and it occurs to you that those are your knees, where you’ve skinned them not quite to bleeding when you dropped against the sand.

You’re laughing, “You do not understand that I am talking to you!” because here and there you need the reminder that you are being a little bit silly, and sentimental, and oh, you have not felt this way in a long, long while.

You have not felt in an awfully long time.

No, that’s untrue. You don’t know what an awfully long time is yet. “Porrim The Adult,” and yet her eyes are still mottled and skin is still wiggler-grey and scraped near bleeding from a brief tussle with the sand. But you haven’t felt in a while. It’s like breaching the surface of a touchless grey molasses and remembering the way air is supposed to scrape the inside of your lungs, like you feet have abruptly found land again and now, of course, the next step is to stand.

Each bone and muscle moves with such a shocking kind of solidness that you wonder what else you haven’t been feeling.

It’s... stupid, you realize with a sudden, uncomfortable jolt of common sense, that this is a dilemma. 

...

The grub gains several things this night, aside from, presumably, its first breaths:

A handmade hammock, that sits around your shoulder and down to your waist, made of a fabric that is so, so much to sheer to carry something as heretical as this.

A good mouthful of your hair, when you first try to move it.

An all kinds of heretical unofficial name, and a shot at survival, but that of course has been discussed.

A... friend? You aren’t sure friendship is a disease grubs are known to transmit.

Your symbol is engraved on the side of your culling knife in the shaky but artistic hand with which you first held it when you were seven, the night before Ordeals, and you polish every scrap of blood and stain off of it and scrape at imperfections you left with a sharp-edged stone and fall asleep sobbing, doubled over on your knees, under a crossing trestle.