#I think she might push Kanaya over the edge and break them up

[opalescent-apples]

My policy when it comes to the Homestuck epilogues is if it sounds cool through the grapevine I will steal it. Otherwise it's getting ignored.

Evil Jane Crocker? Not executed like that. Kids recreating the worst "canon" ship in Homestuck? Nope. Affair child who they named YIFFANY? No thank you.

Alt Calliope being sinister and possessing people? Very interesting. Kanaya and Rose as flawed figures instead of Davekat's little therapists? Love it. Concept of ultimate selves? Yoink.

I might even read them, but Dirk's narration makes me want to bash his head in with a rock and then my own. Mutuals keep telling me the cool stuff that happens.

[clonerightsagenda]

The epilogues look terrible and I don’t want to spend my time reading them... but I love + trust your judgement and your takes on things. Could you summarize them? (No pressure if you don’t want to)

OK, it’s been a few weeks since i read it, but I will do my best.NOTE: This is probably not comprehensive and definitely not objective. As a supplement, I did some poking around, and the MSPA wiki has some bullet points. I also eventually found another  summary on tumblr, albeit by someone who also didn’t like it, so it is probably biased as well. 

ANOTHER NOTE: Those content warnings weren’t a joke. Below are references to sexual content, assault, suicide, sexism, transphobia, character death, and probably some other stuff.

WHAT HAPPENED:

In the prologue, Rose summons John to inform him that he needs to defeat Lord English right now, or they will all experience terrible consequences. These are mostly meta consequences you can interpret as ‘if we don’t produce new Homestuck content on its 10th anniversary, everyone will give up on this franchise for real, and also canon doesn’t seem stable when the big bad never got beaten’. John goes to visit Roxy and Calliope before he leaves and is given the option to eat either meet or candy. This represents a choice he is supposed to make, and that choice creates two timelines.

In MEAT, John travels back in time and gathers three 16 year old versions of his friends. They confront Caliborn in the battle he represented in his Masterpiece and are sucked into the house juju. Vriska activates it, but not before being pulled into the black hole. Rose and Jade die immediately, with Rose’s body being destroyed and Jade’s falling into the black hole, because why should women get to fight the story’s biggest misogynist. Dave lands a solid hit on English before having his head bitten off Mami from PMMM style. John gets chomped on as well and a gold tooth ends up embedded in his chest. Davepeta appears and drags the wounded LE into the black hole. John finds his father’s wallet, retrieves his car, and slumps inside. Terezi appears, in bad shape after a long time wandering the ring. She seems confused at his state (explained because in CANDY she has been texting that version of him for years). She removes the tooth from his chest and they have sex.

Meanwhile, on Earth, Dave and Karkat have avoided talking about being a relationship for seven years, while Jade harasses them about becoming a threesome. This is explicitly tied to her abandonment issues but also she is referred to as a slut so like. Don’t love that. Jane is running for president, and Dave thinks this is terrible because she’s a woman fascist and doesn’t understand the economy and Karkat should run instead. Other shit is happening but I lost track. Rose is ill because she’s becoming her ‘Ultimate Self’ and seeing all timelines. Dirk claims he’s overcome the same problem and offers to help her but ends up controlling her and revealing he is the one actually writing this narrative.  There is a bit where the narration starts addressing the reader directly and then turns orange which I admit is genuinely cool and might have been interesting if done with characters I didn’t actually care about.

Dirk amps up controlling the narrative, directly forcing people to do and think certain things. (For example, he sequesters Rose away in his workshop and tells Kanaya via narration she believes Rose is better off with him, and she uncomfortably agrees without understanding why she thinks that.) He supports Jane’s bid for the presidency, even though she wants to crack down on trolls because they are naturally violent and reproduce too fast. Everyone tries to get Jake’s endorsement because he’s popular, which includes Jane attempting to seduce him in a very uncomfortable scene.Then Jade slips into a nice coma, because it’s not Homestuck without Jade losing her agency, and alt!Calliope starts using her as an avatar to take control of the narrative away from Dirk. They have some back and forth arguments before he is pushed out which, again, is genuinely clever but would be more enjoyable without all the edgy bullshit. Dirk eventually tricks alt!Callie and sedates Jade, taking back control of the story. Jane wins the presidency. Also at some point Meat!Roxy and Callie ID as nonbinary and start using they/them, and narrator!Dirk freaks out about it and misgenders them a lot, which is character assassination bc everyone knows Dirk is a trans icon. Anyway. Dave and Karkat have an awkward talk about their relationship where they keep dancing around things and Dirk tries to force Dave to kiss him. Dave gets frustrated because he’s aware someone is trying to make him do something (like with the Aimless Renegade), and eventually yells at Dirk to get out of his head before kissing Karkat. Terezi brings John back to Earth, and he begins to fade, since apparently LE’s tooth was poisoned with something more powerful than god tier that makes you irrelevant. Possibly a meta commentary on the hero or story not being needed once the big bad is gone. Terezi is sad about this and listens to him bleed while she smells him die. Then Dirk contacts her via narration and implies he can help her. She gets a text (later revealed to be Vriska). Dirk gets a spaceship from Jake after forcing him via narration to grovel about how much he loves him and then rejecting him and flying away with Rose and Terezi in tow. Jade wakes up long enough to tell everyone Dirk’s gone bad before she gets repossessed and starts pointing in his direction, prompting everyone to give chase. 

There is a final scene that will make more sense later, so I’ll add it later.

CANDY

John decides not to go fight LE. Roxy is delighted, and they began dating. Calliope tells John it is time to let Gamzee out of the fridge. Gamzee pops out and claims he is redeemed in a long speech making fun of sloppy redemption arcs. He then proceeds to be terrible for the rest of the story.Candy essentially satirizes Harry Potter epilogue style fics. Jane marries Jake (it’s implied she essentially roofies him with the trickster lollipop) and has Gamzee on the side. They have a son named Tavros. John and Roxy have a son named Harry. Rose and Kanaya adopt a troll clone of Vriska and name her Vriska. Jade, Karkat, and Dave are all dating, but Dave and Karkat are miserable. Dirk kills himself when he realizes the timeline went off kilter. Jade’s corpse from the Meat timeline crashes to earth, and in the middle of the funeral (which was genuinely a good scene) she sits up, possessed by alt!Calliope. Alt!Callie sequesters herself on the old meteor, now landed, and explains to Aradia and Sollux that this timeline is a dead end and she is protecting it from the influence of the prince. She also, in a parallel to Dirk’s reveal in Meat, talks about how every narrator has an agenda even if the text is formatted to make you not realize that.Jane becomes a fascist dictator and begins oppressing trolls. Karkat eventually get sick of being in a trio and runs off to be a resistance leader, including getting a sick eye patch (reference to Summer Teen Romance). Meenah stole the Ring of Life from Meat John and lands in the session; she and Karkat begin dating. Other ghosts begin falling from the sky as well, and Gamzee converts them to his redemption religion.John feels like something is really off.  His only solace is texting Terezi a lot, and he seems closer to her than he is to his wife. He and Roxy break up for a while and then (non-romantically) reconcile. Jake eventually leaves Jane and takes Tavros with him. Jade and Dave become rebels as well, then Dave meets a hologram of Obama, who helps him attain his ultimate self, putting his soul in a new robot body. 

Oh, also Vriska falls out of the sky, has hatesex with Gamzee, kills him, and then talks with Rose and Kanaya’s Vriska about how she loves Terezi. Then she texts her, as seen in the Meat timeline. Isn’t Vriska 13 and Gamzee an adult at this point? Probably. There’s a lot of questionable age stuff in this.

I’m sure I missed some details. Can you tell I’m losing steam.

Anyway, the two last chapters of each section reference the other storyline. At the end of Meat, Lord English’s body falls out of the sky, and alt!Callie (still in Jade’s body) devours it, becoming powerful enough to battle Dirk. Candy!Davebot arrives and he and Aradia jump into the black hole in pursuit.At the end of Candy, Dirk’s ship nears a new planet where he intends a new game of SBURB to be played. Rose is in a robot body serving as his handmaid essentially, and Terezi’s also on board.  

TAKEAWAYS:

There are a lot of different interpretations of the epilogue. A mockery of the two extremes of fanfic. Andrew Hussie continuing the theme of ‘all authors are tyrants by nature’ and using his self-insert to display how he hates his own story but also can’t stop telling it. Dirk trying to create conflict by making himself a villain because otherwise they’ll lose relevance and disappear. Musing on how being arbitrarily labeled 'grown up’ when you’re not ready (aka handed godhood by a game that doesn’t understand people) can fuck you up, and there is no single winning screen in life. Just a big old meta experiment on unreliable narrators. I can see where some of this is coming from, but frankly, I found it disturbingly sexist (even if it is intended to be so for effect). A lot of the sex and violence felt over the top and graphic just to be #ow the edge rather than serving any narrative purpose. Also, authors can do what they want with their texts, and they’re allowed to write tragedies, but after Hussie’s self-insert informs Caliborn that the most important stories are about friendship and teamwork and the fandom (that I’ve seen anyway) really responding to the bonds between characters, it felt cruel. That’s my feeling. Not everyone shares it. But hey, I’ve got my solution.

[bladekindeyewear]

Boots Reads Homestuck Epilogue(s) Part 13 - Candy Page 23

==>

This is going well, despite all the weirdness... it might not be so bad by the time I get to the end of all this.  Maybe my stomach can stop clenching as much from the Meat poisoning.

Then again, that’s what I thought when I was up to four-fifths through Meat and thought things were going to be resolved before the end.

So.

Anyway.  Reading.

In fact, all she did was tip her head at him and blink a few times, her long eyelashes catching the light, making her eyes look like mirrors. It was disconcerting for reasons that he couldn’t put his finger on. It’s not like Roxy had ever been argumentative, exactly. He just seems to remember someone from his youth who was somewhat more contrarian in spirit than this person he’s married to now.

God damnit... hypnotized, basically dead Roxy is worst Roxy.  I need that fucking explanation soon.

If she doesn’t get upset after what he’s about to pull today, then...

John doesn’t know what he’ll do.

Gosh that’s horrible.  I wish I didn’t have to go back to Meat if I ever wanted any more Real Roxy again... please, PLEASE, if NOTHING ELSE gets fixed in this stupid fucking Candy arc, PLEASE HAVE ROXY BACK TO NORMAL BEFORE THE END

That... that would be just the fucking icing on the cake, wouldn’t it?  I was already upset about Dirk not getting his due.  I was traumatized over how Jane, Jade, and Rose were left.  But ROXY was fine.  Roxy, pretty much my favorite character next to maybe Jade, or a good number of the others.  If this timeline gives me an alternate cliffhanger to lean on that spares the others to leave HER to shit, then I’d basically be left with nothing to stand on!  It’d be fucking worthless almost.

My stomach isn’t clenching YET, but I’m starting to fill with dread.

JOHN: harry anderson, don’t tell your mother but... JOHN: we’re getting a new addition to the family today!

Pfffff

serious kidnapping

And who said John was just a blank slate with no will of his own?? Fuck you, Dirk.  You knew about this timeline and you STILL said it.

Dave and Jade materialize behind everyone, he in a pressed red suit, she in a glittering Space dress. They’re both holding gifts wrapped in spare printer paper.

Look, you two looking cute is just rubbing salt in the wound of the relationship you fucked over, Jade.  You should have waited to make sure Dave and Karkat FINALLY ACCEPTED THEIR FUCKING RELATIONSHIP before moving in and potentially pushing one of them out, WHICH HAPPENED.

Oooh, smart human babby Tavvy.  ...He isn’t going to want to leave his family situation, is he.  John’s off the mark isn’t he.

Dave ruffles Harry Anderson’s hair. It’s nice that Dave is so woke and great with kids, but that really does invite the question of why he and Jade don’t have any yet. There’s still something sad and wistful about Dave at the moment, as he pointedly avoids letting Jade take his hand while they’re led into the game room.

GAAAAHHHHH

Could we at least BE ALLOWED TO PRETEND THERE’S A POSSIBLE FUTURE WHERE THESE PEOPLE’S RELATIONSHIPS ARENT THOROUGHLY FUCKING MESSED UP?????

I KNOW THESE CHARACTERS ARE MESSED UP BUT YOU HAVE TO AT LEAST GIVE US HOPE

AND WHERE’S THE HAPPY POTENTIAL PAIRING FOR JADE??? IT SEEMS LIKE THERE’S NO POTENTIAL FOR REAL MUTUAL HAPPINESS FOR HER BESIDES JADE X COMA!!!!!!!!!!

X(

God damn it Jane can be creepy.

She gained his affection the same way she gains everyone’s affection: she fucking bought it.

UUuuuuuuggghhhhh

...pff stars vs enemies of the state

John, stop making this so stranger-danger.

JOHN: are you ACTUALLY happy about it? JOHN: about... everything going on here? TAVROS: I suppose,,, TAVROS: My mother tends to get displeased when i’m unhappy, so,,,

uuuugughghghuhh

TAVROS: It just seems like a thing that would eventually happen to me, does it not?

D:

Oh wow, callback to Dirkbro abuse.  THAT’S gonna set John off.

Oh wow, Tavros knows his situation is bad enough that he’s willing to GO for it. All he’s worried about is the security.  YEAH John!!  Do your Breathy thing and get him out of here!!!

Tavros takes in a sharp breath before spinning on his heel and stumbling toward his closet. John catches the ghost of a smile on his face before he turns and that’s all it takes to turn the pounding of his heart from terrified to thrilled.

AAaaaaAAAAAH THIS IS ADORABLE SOMEHOW

She twitches her dog-ears and raises her face. Her mouth is a neutral line, but her eyes are burning furiously.

OH NOOOOOOO

FUCK, Jade don’t stop it!!! She’s... she’s gonna put her foot down and stop this just so everything can be all candy-coated and good on the SURFACE without hurting people OPENLY even if she and Jane and all the others are DEEPLY hurting everyone else under the surface!!!! D:

JOHN: jade, i don’t know where you’ve been these past few years, but i don’t think things CAN get any worse!

Yes exactly

JOHN: but there isn’t one, because everyone’s been all... brainwashed by marriage, or whatever the hell happened over the last few years that made things be this way!

Hmmmmmm

JOHN: well, you’re nothing like the jade i used to know either!

D:

Alright, huge blowup. Let’s air out some feelings.

JANE: I let go! I was actually RELIEVED to hear he died!!! ROXY: uhh ROXY: janey wut

HAhahahaah YES let’s get all that dirty laundry OUT IN THE OPEN

......Okay that didn’t end as well as expected.  Or... well I guess I KNEW it wouldn’t end well, but I’d hoped otherwise.

==>

Wait, so Terezi and John’s conversation is “in the dream bubbles”? Is that just because he’s talking to her while she’s skirting the edge of the storm in the Void rocketways, or because John’s from a somehow doomed/irrelevant/side timeline?

(Why does Terezi always have to be dying.  She figured herself out and how awesome she is.  Stop dying.  And I don’t mean like the sad walking off in Meat, though I guess that kind of counts.)

JOHN: if she cared about you as much as you care about her, she wouldn’t have fucked off like this forever.

YES JOHN

LAY

ON

THE

TRUTH

(Ghost!Vriska is the only one who really deserves to matter anymore.  This “alpha” Vriska just sank deeper into her problems and delusions beyond being able to really redeem herself or recognize them.  That diatribe she gave her ghost self was horrible back when.)

Wait, wait hold on

JOHN: if she cared about you as much as you care about her, she wouldn’t have fucked off like this forever. JOHN: driving you crazy with doubt and uncertainty, making you chase her through infinite nothingness until you almost starve to death... JOHN: she would have at least given you the courtesy of closure!

Is... is Andrew talking about the comic here and his relationship with the readers

is this some sort of apology for not giving this closure, like, as if he were the vriska that launched himself into the sun over his own artistic ideals or

hmm

JADE: doomed is not a word i would use to describe the condition of those on this world. JADE: even if my work is unsuccessful, the stakes for everyone here have nothing to do with the issue of mortality. JADE: to frame the matter that way would be misleading. JADE: to the extent that it is my naturally endowed duty to defend the innocent from wanton acts of destruction, from degradation and dissolution, JADE: it is also my duty to tell the truth to those i protect. JADE: and the simplest statement of truth for all of you to know is this: JADE: we are the lucky ones.

Calliope lets out a long, thin sigh from between the teeth of Jade’s corpse. It’s more for effect than anything, as corpses don’t actually need to breathe.

JADE: we are the ones fortunate enough to live in a reality that is beyond the influence of the prince.

Geez, it’s like escape from Lord English’s influence all over again.

They won only for everything to just fucking start over, everything they struggled to stop?  That sucks!!!  >:(

Anyway, still reading... god damnit Terezi don’t fly off and die for no fucking reason.

JOHN: then what DID you want?! TEREZI: L3TS S4Y... TEREZI: 1 JUST W4NT3D TO G1V3 YOU TH3 COURT3SY OF CLOSUR3

Fuck.  Yeah, let’s just keep fucking over Terezi, another one of my favorite characters.  Yes she lives and goes to fuck off somewhere in Meat with the villain of the week, but FUCK, couldn’t we get a SLIGHTLY clearer picture of her potential happiness than just THAT?????

It’s like the whole purpose of these epilogues was just to remind us that these characters were too fucked up to ever be happy!!!!

Couldn’t we have at least been left to IMAGINE OTHERWISE?!?????

JADE: not until i am able to deal with the prince myself. ARADIA: and when will that be

The meteor is passing beyond the fall of night. Dead-Jade, standing half in light, half in darkness, looks up at the sky.

JADE: not soon enough.

Ahh.  I’m getting an idea of the Postscript’s circumstances, then.  That was alt!Callie in this black-hole-powered Jade body going from THIS Candy timeline to go chase after Dirk and help stop him like everyone else, giving her a more powerful card to play than just the adult Jade she was having guide the others. (Maybe she could have that adult Jade FUCKING WAKE UP AND ABLE TO HELP instead of keeping her in a coma. That would be a pretty fucking nice change of pace.  Too bad we have to just IMAGINE IT without any reassurance that she’ll be awake or okay for YEARS TO COME, HUH.)

Also that means that resistance fighting is gonna break out with artillery and stuff because Jane is apparently a dunpass in both timelines.  Fuck.

==>

Swifer, can you stop swifing?

KARKAT: HOW THE HELL DO YOU TWO TOLERATE EACH OTHER? KANAYA: Quite Thoroughly Enthusiastically And Often

Pffffff :D

...Oh my God MEENAH landed here???  All ring-of-lifeways from the other timeline?  I guess the Furthest Ring was outside the scope of those timeilnes so she could’ve fallen in any of them... huh.  Heck, maybe the same Terezi who experienced those conversations eventually met the John from the Meat side of the timeline too.  And she said John smelled younger than she thought he was, oh my GOD, it WAS that.  It was that exactly.  The Terezi we’re hearing was the same across both Epilogue-halves.  That’s actually fucking fantastic!!!

MEENAH: capisces?

Fuck that pun

(Also Meenah is talking about how they lost, but she was knocked away before she saw the conclusion of the fight, so.)

...Holy SHIT Meenah is really taking to this!!! This is adorable.  :D

==>

John’s having some canon/existential ditherthoughts, hm.

He’s been contemplating this melodramatically for maybe ten minutes when the sky rips opens above him and flashes violent waves of red and green across the landscape.

Hm.  So do the black hole wormholes have some tie to the cherubic portal device from Hiveswap?

It’s his father’s car.

Mhmm, that confirms all of it, really.  Same Terezi in both stories.

A vast cry of sorts.  :(

Heading out for a while; gonna start from Page 27 in the next post.  I feel pretty good, somehow.  The way these two timelines tied together with Terezi outside them makes it feel like it all may have ultimately meant something.

[clonerightsagenda]

Heeeeeeeeeey, happy Homestuck eve y'all. Over a year ago I wrote something featuring GO!John and ghost!Jade (might’ve been an abandoned Tuesjade prompt?) but never posted it because I prefer not to acknowledge any of that. However I stumbled across it while sifting through my files and thought that, on the off chance it gets Jossed by future events, I might as well post it. So here you go. 

Disclaimer that it is Sad and does not reflect retcon events in a very positive light:

You're not looking for her. That's what you tell yourself. You don't think about the timeline or people you left behind. It's not worth it, and there's no point. But people have been pestering you to go find Terezi, who's been gone for a long time and who hasn't answered her phone in months, and the furthest ring doesn't blend well with your powers. So when you zap away to find what you're missing, you find something else instead.

At first, you've done so well forgetting timelines and alternates that you see her sitting there in full God Tier garb and ask, "Jade? What are you doing here?" 

‘It hit me like a punch to the gut’ is a cliche. But you tell anyone who criticizes your movies that cliches don't happen for no reason. They get repeated because they're true. When your sister turns eyes blank as peeled eggs in your direction, you feel an ache spring up in your stomach and your lungs go empty.

She's sitting on the edge of a wooden stage. The green curtains hanging off its frame are faded and frayed. Brightly colored flowers peel off the backdrops. They look like a child's drawing of her old greehouse. Did she make it herself?

"John!" She scrambles to her feet and launches herself at you. Her hug and her stream of questions would stop your breath if shock hadn't done that already. "Where have you been? We've been looking for you and Roxy and Davesprite and Rose for ages. Have you been hiding somewhere? We thought some of the others might be, but I didn't know why you wouldn't come right back." She talks so fast that you can't think of how to respond, so it's your body that gives you away. She pulls back abruptly and looks into your eyes. Her ears flatten against her skull. "You have a heartbeat," she says.

"Sorry," you say.

Jade backs up a few paces. Her ears still reflect a dog on guard. "I'm sorry for jumping on you like that. You must be from the new timeline. Vriska said there must one out there, because she met a version of herself that was alive." She shakes her head. "I don't know why we were doomed, though. I thought I did everything right."

How are you supposed to tell her it's all your fault? "It's me," you say, to reassure her. "I'm from your timeline. It's just... it gets complicated after that."

"I have a lot of time." Her ears lose a little tension, although they don't stand back up all the way. "Can you stay for a while and tell me?"

Terezi's been missing for a while. She can take care of herself, and you're not having much luck searching anyway. "Sure."

Jade has always been a good listener. She gasps and pats your arm at appropriate intervals in your story as you give her the broad strokes. I got new powers. Everyone died. Terezi told me how to fix it. I did.

"Everyone must be so grateful," she says.

"I guess so? They don't bring it up much." It's hard to be grateful when you don't understand what the alternative is. They don't know the fate they avoided, and you don't want to remember it. 

"It's funny that's what Terezi had you change, and that it worked. I've seen her a few times, and she doesn't like to mention it. But Vriska said the living version of her was really mean."

You've heard similar things in confidence. Besides Terezi, no one much cares if the Thief of Light comes home. "I didn't talk to her for very long. She kind of disappeared after that."

Jade frowns. "Wait... if you're from my timeline... how did that work, since there must have been another version of you?"

You had really, really hoped she wouldn't ask that.

"He died," you say shortly. "A little into the trip. To make room."

She doesn't gasp. Instead she breathes out, a quiet huff as the air leaves her. "How did we take it?"

You look away. "Not we. Dave sprite died too."

Jade doesn't say anything for a long time. She sinks down onto the edge of the stage again, and after a moment you sit down too, with a careful few inches between your shoulders. Hers are trembling.

"I can't even imagine," she says finally. "How am I? How... is she?"

"You're fine."

Her lips press together. "Of course. I'm always fine. I don't know why I asked."

"Have you... seen them?" You'd been reluctant to return to the furthest ring. If you ran into another John, dead at thirteen because of you, you're not sure what you'd say.

"No. And we've looked." Her voice shakes. "We looked so hard."

"It was a big choice the denizens gave us. Maybe..." You drag your foot along the ground. "Maybe they had to be gone all the way."

"It's not fair," she says quietly. And maybe it's because it's Jade saying this - Jade, who raised herself from childhood and put up with all your bullshit and is dead, dead in front of you while you're still breathing - you finally let yourself agree.

"It sucks."

"Will you come back?" she asks when you break your long silence and say you have to go. "You're the only one who remembers traveling together."

Everyone on Earth C has divided themselves up into groups that don't include you. There are only so many hours you can budget to movies or staring at the ceiling. "Sure," you say. "I can do that."

"I told everyone I met you, and people have been asking," she says the next time you visit. "They wanted to know where Roxy, Davesprite, and Rose are. We haven't seen them either."

"Roxy came back from the other timeline with me. Didn't I tell you last time?"

"I don't remember... maybe you did. My thoughts get jumbled a lot out here." She gestures toward the horizon, where enormous tea pots rise out of tangled jungle. With surroundings like this, you're not surprised she could get mixed up. She was always forgetful before. "What about the others?"

You'd only heard about the sprites squared secondhand - they vanished somewhere and haven't been seen since. "They... something weird happened to them. I don't know what's going on with that. But... I'd tell people not to expect them any time soon."

She bites her lip and nods. "Kanaya's not going to like hearing that."

"Sorry." An enameled cat painted on two stories of ceramic regards you accusingly. "I get Dave sprite a lot more now. I wish I could've told him that."

Jade doesn't look at you. "I don't remember the last thing I said to him. None of us were talking much by the end, and you don't think about that kind of thing when you see someone every day. There's always tomorrow."

You don't remember what you said to the people from your timeline either. You could change it - you can go anywhere in time and space, teleport right in and tell them, This is what you mean to me. This is what I want you to know. But what would be the point?

"I do know the last thing I said to Rose, though," Jade continues. "I still have all our conversations saved in Pesterchum. I reread them sometimes during our trip. I spent three whole years thinking of how I'd say hello."

"You never said hi?" You had briefly. Rose had wanted you to tell Roxy something. What had her message been? 

"No. First I was evil, and then I was dead."

"I don't know what you said in the new timeline, but you did meet then. Obviously."

She nods. "At least all of you could be happy."

Are all of you happy? You think of Terezi, still missing in the void looking for someone who's never coming back. You think about you. "Yeah," you say. "At least there's that."

Your visits get more frequent. After long breaks, the gap between your ages is too jarring. You're taller than her now. Were you really that young when you played the game?

She offers to bring Dave to say hi once, but you turn her down. "I could hang out with Dave on Earth if I wanted to," you say. "Although he hangs out a lot more with Karkat. They're dating, isn't that weird?"

"Not really. He spends most of his time with the trolls here. I see Jake more than I see him."

"I mean, because he's a boy."

One of her ears flicks back. "I never understood why people got so hung up on things like that. I never saw the difference."

"Wait, are you saying you would date a girl?"

She shrugs. "Maybe in another life."

You had another life, and it doesn't have much to recommend itself. It's your first one you revisit now. It's funny. When you were on the Prospitian battleship, all you wanted was to get off of it. You didn't think you were having any fun. So where are all these good memories coming from? The two of you sit together and revisit them. Remember when we made dinner together that first night? you'll ask each other. Remember when Nanna baked us all birthday cakes and we made wishes when we blew out the candles? Remember, remember, remember?

You haven't told any of the others about this. They wouldn't care - this isn't "their" Jade, after all - but also you want something of your own. Jade covers her mouth when you tell her about Rose and Kanaya's wedding and asks you to congratulate them for her. You explain your living sister spends a lot of time away exploring other worlds. One day you bring her a photo Jade sent you a little after her twentieth birthday of herself on an alien planet. Jade stares at it for a long time before handing it back and saying "So that's what I would've looked like if I'd grown up."

Sometimes you just sit quietly in each other's company. You don't tell her that you barely speak to anyone back on Earth, that you feel like all your friends are actors played by people who aren't doing a very good job, and if you push a tree too hard it'll fall over and reveal itself to be painted plywood like something out of the Twilight Zone. You don't say that for every year your dead sister, forever sixteen, doesn't show, you feel like you're carrying twice that weight, and that even though you're a Breath player, it's getting harder and harder to breathe. You don’t share that Caliborn has been bothering you for a rematch, and you’re thinking maybe you should take him up on it. It'd be nice to have a problem you can hit again. Maybe the others would want to come. It could be as close to old times as you’re going to get.

"Do you think I made the right decision?" you ask one day to break the silence.

She looks at you. She's realized you hate seeing her blank eyes and usually keeps her gaze averted. The sight still makes you flinch. "Oh John," she says. "I don't know."

"This timeline is because of me. I should have found a better way, a way everyone could've been ok. But I just... took orders. That's all I ever do. I take orders and get people hurt." It's hard to force the words out. They wobble and crack, but you don't cry. You won't cry. "I'm sorry. I never wanted things to turn out this way." The last bit is hardest. If you say it out loud, will all the stage dressings of the world you go back to fall down? Will the actors playing your friends believe you think they're not worth what you did? "I think I made a mistake."

"It's ok," she says.

"It's not ok." Your voice rises, and for the first time in years you feel heat prickling at your eyelids. "I was just trying to fix things." Your hands flicker with blue-white light and you know you could keep trying, go back to reset things again and again like a gamer angling for a high score, but you'll never get back that first life you lost. There's no way to win without leaving a million dead ends in your wake. Or if there was, you weren't good enough to find it. "All I was ever trying to do was save you."