#at most her and sollux might have a moment together about it.........

[insufferablemod]

thinking about the differences and similarities between aradia and dave and their doomed selves.......................... dave walking on a constant tightrope to keep himself and his friends on the alpha timeline, doing everything he can, giving up his personhood, walking over his own corpse time and time again, aware that one wrong move dooms them all meanwhile i know aradia was also aware of this but doesn't seem to care, partially cus of being a dead robot sure but also maybe because their doomed selves function in different ways. dave's act as a warning and safety net for the alpha timeline, they show him what he has to do to keep the alpha timeline safe aradia's are a tool, a weapon, the more of them there are the stronger she is which makes me think its likely that unlike dave, during the trolls session aradia didn't try and stop any doomed timeline offshoots. i don't think shes the type to have Encouraged them, actively dooming timelines, but it was a necessary part of her role. for them to win, they needed an army both aradia and dave also view the end result as the only important factor, the end justifies the means aradia talking to dead dave about how dave needs to be prepared to die a thousand deaths to complete their quest dave not telling jade that shes about to pump him full of lead both use it as an excuse/justification to do what they want in a way, ghost aradia wrecking random shit, but its fine, there's probably a reason for it, and if there's not, one more doomed timeline is just another doomed self to join the final battle dave's thing about being mad that no one else seems mad n how this way he at least gets to try n go for jack, even knowing hell die, he saw it happen so hes allowed to be reckless, hes allowed to let go the freedom and captivity of time you both have no control over anything, forced to follow the whims of The Alpha timeline if you want to survive, but it also absolves you of responsibility, it Had to happen this way we'd all have been doomed if it hadn't.

[beescake]

PLEASE PLEASE MEGADUMP THE ARASOL!!! PLEAAASEE MR BEESCAKE I AM ON MY KNEES BEGGING YOU

HFHGHD GLADLY aaa i’ve been adding notes to it here and there for months but just hesitant to post it bcs im 🧍‍♂️🧍‍♂️🧍‍♂️🧍‍♂

also this is just my own takeaway of the events, it doesn’t necessarily comply to the Ultimate Truth of Canon-Alignment or represent the actual facts of what hussie intended! v sentimental smh but hopefully its still interesting to read

i love when characters inform each other by proximity, it's one of my fave things to see in media :') it feels even more significant when two characters deliberately choose to stick together, so that when one operates, you can tell the other is similarly aligned in associative solidarity.

sollux is a keystone of this trope — whoever he aligns with is a wordless statement, a nod of approval. this stood out to me bcs the main four humans were alr friends by default, but once you reach hivebent you realize the trolls can actively choose who they want to hang out with.

and as we all know, after assessing every troll's biases/loyalties, sollux is the only one who maintains his selective preference for innately Good 👍 people.

aradia is such a beautiful character honestly, she evokes such incredible feelings in me. she might not have been consistently written with care but the best parts of her character are truly stunning. i think it's easy to remember sollux as the self-sacrificing one bc he's so open about it (and his friends frequently react to his Moments) but when you compare him to aradia, it's always struck me

how much more. raw it is

to be so alone as an agent of time, having to orchestrate immeasurably harrowing events nobody understands or gives a fuck about

with your role painted in the story as one who must tend to the needs of the narrative, responsible to match every next note

because when you're given the capabilities, it becomes your duty to carry it out.

it becomes expected of you to keep experimenting and arranging the machinations to work for everyone, dusting off hundreds of necessary failures to keep going

and having to be so unwavering in your drive knowing miserably that there's no one who can help you but yourself.

or alternatively: to make things fun! so other people won't think twice about letting you go off on your own.

sure she's had some very good buds, notably thanks to Team Charge v Team Scourge antics.

and yet, at the end of the day, the one friend that kept choosing her time and time again was the friend with the highest standards.

i can see why people like to define arasol as moirails/matesprits but surprisingly i find the nondescript, unlabeled aspect of their relationship more straightforward to understand.

there's no shortage of people who would accommodate sollux. most of the surviving trolls are his oldest friends bcs he’d chosen them well. his transparency with his feelings had built him strong friendships that won’t falter or break, regardless of how much of a dick he can be. they’ve already seen and accepted him at his worst, and they still like him for who he is.

contrast that with aradia, who'd been so approachable, friendly and reliable in her exchanges it was super fun to talk to her. but the moment she became depressed, all her connections broke down.

her friends became hesitant to interact with her (until she became god tier, “happy” and amicable again) because her gloom and resignation didn’t serve them. she dealt with it alone.

there’s def something of note here abt the disparity between the way male & female characters are written+perceived in homestuck (esp parallel arasol with davejade) but i won’t go into that lmaoo

with this in mind i like to think of sollux as a gift to her, a loyal companion given to complement and commend her resolve. she's capable of doing so much alone but hussie took the time to build her and sollux's relationship as one of a unit; a set.

the ambiguity of their status does complicate things, but i do believe it makes sense with their characters. aradia's relationship with romance is a rocky one, the dubious stringalong equius had with her is a pointed reminder that her feelings of attraction are ultimately controlled by the author writing her.

unlike the other trolls who can openly address and own up to their crushes, aradia had romantic emotions forced upon her (especially when hussie implies 'she kissed equius back on her own volition'). and it seems like her character is so intrinsically neutral abt attraction that even when forced by the almighty powers above, she's unable to retain it wholly.

however, looking back to pre-game when she could actually "choose" her own feelings, she did have a crush on sollux.

their soft spots for each other were so obvious to the point where other people could see it.

taunting aside, when vriska comments on their unit as bf/gf it actually informs the audience that arasol's relationship is romantic in nature despite not aligning with the quadrant system.

even while dead, aradia could still describe her care for sollux, expressing that she would like to see him happy. if they had more time to explore their relationship on alternia, it's possible they could've settled in a quadrant once they grew older.

but going back to the lack of labels, their dynamic was affected once more when aradia became god tier.

to me, her ascension was both the perfect culmination and possible closure of her character. it's the light at the end of her journey toiling through countless of timelines where she had to actively assess and participate. that's why it's cool to see her being silly and having fun giving guidance, passively exploring and watching other people do their parts.

and yet the joy of her freedom makes it hard to explore further introspection. if we take her by her word, she'd already come to terms with the hurt she's been through and forgiven those involved.

i can't help feeling attuned to how impersonal and detached it can be, to devote and meld your identity so completely with your designated position as Maid of Time until you've become hard for your old friends (and even some readers!) to personally connect to.

idk post-canon but i assume there’s some degree of similarity to be bridged here with aradia's god tier and how the hs2 humans' Ultimate forms was described as a consolidation of all their possibilities. since aradia's classpect is inherently of service to Time, going god-tier may have elevated her beyond personhood with the "game construct" possessing her entirely. sollux doesn't realize the extent of it bcs he's still mortal, but a part of him may have subconsciously understood this.

i think there is a core aspect to aradia that was lost to the dehumanizing glory of god tier — a core aspect that may have contained an element of why sollux enjoyed talking to her in the first place.

to him, aradia hadn't just been a nice girl, she was a cool girl. despite not having much in common, he's still willing to chill next to her so she's not alone while she does what needs to get done.

back on alternia, they held a mutual and equal-level regard for each other that could've definitely settled into something permanent. but now, he's placed himself in a position where he can be kept around or left behind at will. the parameters of the relationship are largely in aradia's court, so any label she suggests to identify their relationship with he's likely to accept.

but that's why it's so difficult to label it. because god tier aradia may not necessarily Want quadrants or relationship labels. rather than the initial romantic attachment, their commitment to each other had evolved into one fundamentally of companionship.

no label? ok fine. no matter what, he still thinks she's a good soul worth latching on to. the best, actually. aradia > everyone else.

even if it gets stilted at times. there's an unexpected struggle to connect when sollux's go-to default for talking points is his feelings about things, and aradia may not want to talk about emotions all the time.

not to mention god tier aradia became an observer, especially of chaos. but sollux's avoidance of involvement comes partially from his innate pressure to get involved if something goes wrong. and he can't always tell when something goes wrong, because aradia doesn't mind if things go wrong anymore.

it's a non-negotiable preference that causes them to take the occasional time apart, a new boundary that wouldn't have existed before the game and aradia's god tier.

but just like how his friends tolerated his moods, sollux accepts aradia as she is. with no quadrants, their connection doesn't break down because there's no implicit romantic expectations to be disappointed by or resentful over.

sometimes when i see hs content that deliberately distances sollux from aradia, i assume this is the dissonance people might have felt. people might find it "easier" to be cynical about them bcs of this strange tension.

but idc lmao. grab that shit by the neck

lack of easy resolutions and cleanly tied ribbons is pretty standard of homestuck and imo it doesn't make arasol's dynamic any less incredible. with the right affection and consideration, there's still so much potential to develop the nuance of their relationship outside of the popular quadrant-based depictions.

hs has a lot of really great character compatibilities but the way aradia and sollux are in their own special orbit is why i can write this much about them in the first place. it's that frail innocence between first loves that makes it so sweet to me, two kids who grew up too fast playing guesswork without being clear where they're going.

ultimately i do think you're meant to feel a little tragedy for just how much they care for each other, even if they can't quite establish it in simple terms.

maybe they keep taking breaks to progress their own paths. maybe they remain as anchor partners while seeing other people. but even if you decide to separate them, they're still (awkwardly) texting each other updates all the while. and when they reunite it feels like coming home.

and well. more than anything, i like to believe that they do want to be exclusive.

they're just afraid. after all, they're still learning how to love, beyond the projections of the foursquare quadrant system they had inadvertently distanced themselves from since young.

they might not have everything figured out, but they'll get there eventually if you just hold them together and write them there.

optional post-canon segment:

one of the limitations of main hs is that (monogamous) relationships are often written as the go-to solution to wrap up character growth; it's an easy "patch" to imagine characters getting their happy ending because they have a partner, and those who don't end up with someone don't get that closure (most notably jade).

hs2 reaffirms this by suggesting that aradia's character cannot progress without letting sollux go, because happily settling in a relationship automatically locks your potential.

that pathetic panel of sollux staring emptily into the sky is still my fave hs2 spoiler ngl i find the impact of their parting so emotionally provoking precisely bcs they were written in original hs to be each other's forever, coming back together again and again

but now, they're subject to the decisions of the post-canon authors who might choose to deviate from that.

it's not new for them to part, but now there's an underlying worry that her dropping him off this time might be the last time. while i think the prospect of shattering their stability to make them grow separately sounds fun on paper, no amount of me desperately hoping for a good execution is gonna guarantee it

idk. i guess prediction-wise im expecting sollux in classic dramatic-hs2 fashion to tell dave to back off aradia LMAO. otherwise it's just gon be sollux and karkat pathetically watching aradia and dave from a distance swimming in their unresolved feelings for narratively-powerful time players smh obvs it sounds corny as hell but who knows its still plausible

srsly tho i hope they take the opportunity to develop arasol's relationship in a fresh direction that doesn't hurt me too badly...... and i hope they force sollux out of his comfort zone. i like watching him struggle :-)

[palluniskillas]

Ideas for my 2009's humanstuck au:

• Nepeta, Sollux, Karkat and Terezi are close friends.(Karkat is their internet friend in common because he lives in Argentina and they live in the US).

• Nepeta is an otaku and fan of warriorcats, likes to rp with terezi and Feferi. Likes to draw and animate in her nintendo ds.

• Sollux is a computer wizard, a huge gamer (mostly plays Cod) and likes to spite Karkat and his gamer skills. He is a sarcastic king and charges people $20 to fix their computers.

• Sometimes Sollux pirates Nep's favorite animes for her and they watch them together.

• Terezi is blind in this au. She likes candy. A LOT(the reason why she wears braces) specially those cherry jelly gummies. She likes 90's fashion and watching dragon tales (couldn't be more proud about this fact)

• Feferi is a huge fan of everything sea related (coughmermaidscough). Attends to swimming lessons along with Eridan. Has a plethora of mermaid swimming tails. She also likes to take care of her fish pets, sometimes a little too much.

• Fef's mother is kind of absent, her big sister, Meenah, too. So the staff in her mansion take most care of her. Nonetheless, she always has a good spirit, even if she feels somewhat alone.

• Eridan is the typical snobby teen with straight A's and a rich family (which might be the reason for the A's). He often goes to parties with his "friends" in the academy, but really the only friend he has and understands him is Feferi. He often feels alone because his father leaves for business trips, leaving him with his excuse of an older brother.

• Eridan likes and owns all of the Harry Potter Saga (at the moment) but prefers not to nerd out in fear of rejection (only nerds out to Feferi). He is also an avid fan of greek history and mythology.

• Tavros (who is a pokémon encyclopedia) is close friends with Aradia, sometimes they trade pokémon cards and have a few matches. His family immigrated from Spain to Argentina.

• Tavros is best friends with Gamzee, they hang out often and have rap jam sessions with basic rap beats coming out of Tav's family computer.

• Gamzee is...you know how Gamzee is. He likes Porta and ICP, sometimes he ends up at the hospital for drinking too much soda. Likes drawing and making tye-dye tshirts. His father owns a huge furniture store but most people in town think the store is just a facade to hide more..criminal matters.

• Karkat sometimes hangs with Gamzee, but he's more close with Kanaya and Ter. He likes programming and playing Cod, but not as much as watching the pirated romcom cds he hides under his matress with Kan.

• Karkat also has a slight obsession with the telenovelas his dad watches(coughMaríaladelbarriocough), which are the same ones Kankri criticises for being too problematic.

• Kanaya attends a catholic school her mom is a teacher in with Karkat and Rose. She likes to buy fashion magazines and tries to copy the models with the patterns they provide. Has a small academic rivalry with Rose Lalonde, but there's also some sparks there.

• Aradia lives in the same neighbourhood as Karkat and Tavros, and is internet friends with Sollux, who she met on club penguin a few years ago. She is more of an outgoing kid, and is not often seen inside her house unless she is initiating an excavation in her backyard in search for bones. Any kind of bones.

• Aradia is also internet friends with Nepeta and Terezi (they talk sometimes in skype) they're planning to one day meet up in the future and play dnd together, with their new addition to the group, Vriska.

• Vriska lives in the US in Equius' neighborhood. She has been Terezi's friend on and off, because of differences between eachother. She also met Tavros on the online game "8 ball pool" and tries to teach him how to ace pool like her.

• Vriska is kind of the problem child in her school, a punk at heart. She skips school often and disrespects authorities. Nobody but Ter knows the reason behind this jealousy towards her older, more successful sister, Aranea (and perhaps some neglecting from her mother too).

• Vriska likes fantasy books (often where the hero is NOT weak and is VERY awesome) and likes to imagine herself in those worlds as a form of escapism. She also likes Avril Lavigne and has a pet spider, which is very demanding when it comes to food.

• Equius is the quiet but kind kid..if not a little weird. His family proudly owns a robotics company his father initiated in the 90's, Equius is the nervous heir in line.

• He is very close friends with Nepeta, to the point of having grown together. They have a small tradition of celebrating eachother's birthdays with a tea party. Nepeta likes her tea without milk, Equius prefers more milk than tea.

[davestriderascend]

the homestuck reread pt 2

this is a continuation of this post, where i recap my reread of acts 1-4. in this post, ill be focusing on just act 5, bc its literally like the length of 1-4 all on its own. act 5 started in 2010 and finished in 2011- it took about a year to make! act 1 started in 2009, meaning that this one act took the same amount of time to finish as the previous 4 acts!

act five is split into two acts, or "bifurcated." the curtains are red and blue, the act is neatly split into two plots, and we are introduced to the best and most important troll- sollux (jk). anyway bc of this i will also be splitting my recap into subacts, and then talking about the act as a whole!

Act 5 Act 1 - AKA, Hivebent

a5a1 is the act where we are finally, officially, introduced to the trolls. a5a1 is fast-paced, text-heavy, and made with the intention to summarize the trolls session as quickly as possible. its hussies way of catching us up on the trolls backstory, the plot relevant info from their session, and the midnight crew + felts role in sgrub (w implications for how that impacts the kids sburb session). were introduced to doc scratch, and we learn a lot more about the paradoxical nature of sburb/sgrub. thats pretty much the whole subact! while this act was coming out, toby fox released his solo album alternia, and a bunch of ppl collabed on a squiddles album!

The Plot

im going to mix it up a little and start w the plot this time. the plot of hivebent was fastpaced and crammed a lot of things into one subact. if you recall anything from hs that happened before the trolls were on the meteor, chances are it all happened in this act! the purpose of this subact was very obviously just to set up for the following subact, and i noticed a lot of people complained about the pacing on the formspring (were still on the first one, btw). personally, i understood immediately what hussie was doing, so it didnt really bother me at all.

the trolls session was brief, largely bc unlike the kids, they were all already familiar w violence and weapons and frankly overprepared for their session. they breezed through the quests and bosses, and without even godtiering (except vriska) they all managed to beat an extremely overpowered black king that had been prototyped 12 times, one of which was w feferis monster horrorterror lusus. aradia largely played jades roll in setting up the whole session, following nudges from mysterious sources to discover the ruins, get sollux to create the game, and push all of her friends into playing it. hivebent ends with the end of their session and their new fate on the meteor.

The Characters

karkat, obviously, is one of the main characters in hivebent. hes ornery and obsessed with leadership, and he fights with everyone all the time. however, we still see a lot of moments where he genuinely connects with even the most insufferable people, regularly giving all of his friends the benefit of the doubt and offering compassion every time the need arises. in a5a2, vriska credits him for being the reason why the trolls didnt devolve into competitive murder. while he might not have been the best leader, he was genuinely really good at keeping the team together, even when the thing uniting them was just bitching about his obnoxious memos. like dave, karkat was one of my favorites on my first readthrough, and like dave, hes been a lot less compelling for me this time around, but theres still a lot to enjoy about his dynamics with others.

in a lot of ways, vriska also holds the limelight. sometimes it kind of feels like act 5 is her act to me, but maybe thats just bc she was my favorite and therefore all i cared about. vriska and john are both like, just as compelling to me as they were my first read, and my feelings on them really havent changed at all. its incredible. vriska is just such a complex character, and its like. man to this fucking day i will see tumblr posts like man i wish we had female characters who x and im like vriska already did. she already did and she killed it and fandom hated her so bad for it. shes genuinely so refreshing as a character bc i feel like we really never do get to see women who are just loud and brash and cringe and messy and she is just. ugh. she is the moment she is everything fr.

kanaya is my GIRL. shes one of the most genuinely hysterical characters in all of hs and one of my favorite trolls. even before she meets rose and starts playing up the sarcasm thing she has a very dry, deadpan sense of humor, and very little tolerance for stupid people, as much as she is patient with them. shes a little goofy, a little silly, and her crush on rose oh my god its literally so cute. i completely forgot she had a crush on rose way back before she even met her. listen, i love her, shes so great

tavros gets a fair bit of focus as well, as an early troll in hs, and ill be honest. i paid like no attention to tavros whatsoever my first read, bc i just didnt find him very interesting. however, im finding him a lot more compelling on my reread! the parallels he has with vriska are really interesting, and its unbelievable how much fandom has watered him down. he really is kind of a dick? and i dont understand why youd get rid of that! it makes him a much more nuanced and complex character than the woobie shy boy i see in so much fancontent

terezi gets less attention than you would think before a5a2, but she certainly has her own role in this act. shes never really been my favorite, because i just dont really relate to her at all? so i dont have much to say other than like. man. she sure is there. her relationship with nepeta is cute i love when people rp along w her and i think its really cool how she manages to outmanipulate doc scratch (tho that might be a5a2?), and early karez! is actually pretty cute.

aradia and sollux occupy a much smaller role, which mostly starts and ends with their responsibility for getting the ball rolling. they made sgrub, they got everyone playing it. however, despite the incredibly small role they play, i love them both so much. sollux in particular was one of my favorite trolls when i first read hs, and whoa! shocker! he still is. hes so fucking funny. his relationship w karkat is hysterical and hes just a lot of fun as a character

nepeta and equius have an even smaller role. personally tho, i fukcing love equius, i think hes so fucking funny. he feels very much like a thirteen yo boy who spent too much time in video game lobbies and started saying racist shit as a result. hes weird and uncomfortable, but mostly harmless, when he isnt being a huge fucking bigot. nepeta on the other hand is one of the most iconic girls ever in fiction, which i must acknowledge even when she isnt one of my personal faves. shes vicious and tough and still super cute and girly and like, not in a femme fatale way, but just in a middle school girl playing warrior cats way. which is SO REAL? she is THE weirdgirl, man. its her. little girls everywhere are being so represented right now.

gamzee is uh. well ill be honest. he basically doesnt matter at all. he has almost no lines and no relevance and is just kind of there, really? hes such a nothing character in this act. even that infamous tavros and gamzee conversation? thats really late in a5a2. so he literally doesnt do anything worth noting. rip.

eridan and feferi are the very last characters introduced, and so they just have very little fucking page time. every time i read hs pesterlogs im always so struck by the imaginary version of feferi that exists in the collective fandom mind. people were never normal about either of them, and ive always found myself at odds with popular opinion when it came to those two. but idk that i should really get into that, just bc it seems like my life would be easier if i didnt.

im going to hold off saying anything about the midnight crew until a5a2, but i did want to comment very quickly on doc scratch. it is insane how much he influences in a5a1. like, vriska talks about how she had no intentions of killing aradia, or maiming tavros or terezi, and how she feels like its just going way too far, but she only did it bc of scratchs pushing and manipulation! he was grooming her, for ages. he also manipulated terezi, and kanaya, and aradia! none of them even realize the extent to which he manipulated them, he was so fucking slick about it. im also going to take this moment to mention that while it might not be clear in the comic, hussies talked a lot in the formsprings about how scratch literally only talks to girls, except for that one time he said one sentence to screw w karkat. he is like. so creepy. :')

The Albums

i think alternia was the very first solo album made for hs, and its not surprising it was made by none other than mr radiation. the albums pretty good, but honestly listening to it i just wanted to be listening to alterniabound. a lot of the alternia songs are remixed for alterniabound, and i like the remixed versions a lot better tbh.

and then theres.... squiddles. this album is a trip man. so many of these songs i was listening to and was just like. what the actual fuck. highly recommend sending to your non hs friends to mess w them, 10/10 way to spend your time. the unicorn song was particularly upsetting.

Act 5 Act 2

this one is significantly longer than a5a1. a5a2 basically synthesizes hivebent with the kids story and builds towards the scratch- or, cascade, which is the biggest flash project to date. this is where terezi kills that doomed john, where jade enters the medium, where most of daves medium journey takes place, where rose goes grimdark, where all the kids godtier, where gamzee goes shithive, the one with alterniabound, the bit with doc scratch and the green background, all that shit. a lot happens! during this act, hussie also quits using the first formspring and starts a new one, in hopes of streamlining it and answering less nonsense questions, which she abandons by the end of the act, instead starting up a tumblr. there are also a lot of new albums released during this period, including the felt, vol 6: heir transparent, strife, alterniabound, medium, mobius trip and hadron kaleido, vol 7: at the price of oblivion, sburb, the wanderers, prospit and derse, the vol 1-4 compilation, and vol 8. so lets get into it.

The Plot

theres so much. so much happens. but what you need to know is that everything from right before jade enters the medium to when they scratch the session, blow up the green sun, and are about to meet up w the trolls, happens in this act. for the trolls, this pretty much means everything from the end of their session to when they meet up w the kids, including the gamzee shithive incident.

The Characters

lets get the easy shit out of the way first. most of the trolls, with the exception of the patron trolls (terezi, karkat, vriska, and kanaya), have very small roles in this act. their only real moments to shine are during alterniabound and the murderspree. i will say, alterniabound and the other meteor walkarounds do a lot of work in terms of like, fleshing out the trolls relationships to each other. all of it, really. pretty much all of the touching, cute relationship moments between trolls happen in these logs, including karkat and eridans weird bromance thing, karkats love for kanaya, like, all of feferi and solluxs relationship, sollux and terezis honestly really touching friendship, and like all of the good equius and nepeta moments (where previously their relationship had just come off as creepy and controlling). i could probably write a post just about alterniabound, so im not going to get into it here.

dave also actually doesnt have a lot going on in this act. dave spends most of the act timetraveling around, collaborating with terezi to get a bunch of very necessary but completely unseen shit going on. it isnt until much later that we really get any moments with him, but notable moments include: john valuing their friendship so much that he listens to dave instead of terezi, daves horror at roses suicide plan and determination to intervene, dave and roses way of cutting straight through each others bullshit and being real with each other in a way that they arent with anyone else, and daves extremely weird and avoidant reaction to his bros death (foreshadowing!)

rose, similarly, is offscreen for most of the beginning, doing grimdark bullshit. it isnt until right before she literally goes grimdark that we start to focus on her again. compelling moments for me: her reaction to her mothers death, and pretty much everything she says about her mom (their relationship is so complicated, but it is obvious that rose does actually really care about her and mourns her, in contrast to daves relationship with bro), the way everyone tells rose that the horrorterrors are lyign to her and tricking her but nothing... really bad seems to come of her going grimdark, and she doesnt lose control or anything? and, again, everything with her and dave leading up to cascade

vriska probably plays the biggest and most interesting role of all of the trolls in this act, serving as johns patron and leading him through to godtier. her relationship with john is really cute, actually, and its kinda fun how john simultaneously sees right through her and teases her, but also will go along with her shit and is actually very kind to her most of the time. most compelling to me is her conversations with john about guilt, weakness, and death

john and jade easily have the biggest roles in this act, though, with jade finally getting into the medium, prototyping jadesprite (and THAT whole mess), befriending the trolls, coming up with the password system, and putting a lot of the plans into place, and john being heavily featured as he goes through his game and is the first kid to make it to godtier. i kinda feel like id just be repeating what i said w act 4 tho, so lets keep going

the midnight crew! i said id come back to them. there is a lot of filling in the exiles backstory in this act, so that its pretty much full circle by the time it ends. the midnight crew in particular i found interesting bc we see enough of them (post introduction of the quadrant system) that hussie actually starts leaning into their card suits as quadrant roles! cd excels at settling disputes between parties, jack is super destructive, hb is obsessed w romance, and dd regularly pacifies jack and talks him out of impulsive plans that they both know would just make their lives harder. which is really cool!! it was a neat little touch that i really enjoyed

The Formsprings and the Tumblr

finally, finally, the first formspring came to an end. hussie claimed that there were just too many asks and people were starting to ask things that had already been answered, so they wanted to make a new one devoted to only the comic relevant stuff. and, well. it didnt work. it was better! but the formspring was still full of stupid, pointless bullshit and dumb nothing questions. there were a couple of running jokes that made their way into canon (shooshpap, fedorafreaks session) and some running jokes that just sucked (fat vriska. ugh.), plenty of the usual bigotry, and a few answers that were genuinely really interesting. still dont recommend reading it. obviously, hussie wound up torching this one too, as it wasnt really any better, and instead started up a tumblr! as of the end of a5a2, there were almost no posts and so i have nothing interesting to say about it other than it existed.

The Albums

ok so there are so many that were released like, right at the end, i am not actually caught up yet. so ill just talk about the ones i have listened to so far.

first up, we have the felt album. the idea for this one was similar to the mc album, where music helps set the stage and develop the environment and characters. the concept was an orchestral album that played with chronology, and the results are so cool. songs reverse and slow down and fast forward, and listening to it is just such a cool experience! i thought docs song especially really fit him.

vol 6: heir transparent. its a pretty middling album. its good, but i dont have anything particularly interesting to say about it. i hate the nic cage songs on here, but it has megalovania, which we all know is an irrefutable banger. i honestly kinda prefer the hs megalovania to the ut one.

strife! this was actually one of the first hs albums i ever listened to all the way through. time on my side is one of my all-time favorite hs songs, and heir conditioning STILL goes hard as hell. its a good album!! its fun.

i said earlier that listening to alternia just made me want to listen to alterniabound. this album is fantastic, and i think its also like, the first one w track commentary? which was really cool to read through! i think my favorite track is killed by 8r8k spider, but all of the themes just fit the characters so well and theyre really well done.

medium. this was another environmental album meant to sort of set a mood for the universe, and a solo album! i liked this one, but i dont have much to say about it. it was very pretty.

mobius fucking kaleido whatever. i hate this one. its a solo album and most of the tracks have lyrics and i just did not enjoy that one bit. the lyrics feel really corny, the like... art book thing?? is illegible, and it is just not for me.

vol 7: at the price of oblivion. this is the first album to have individual track art!! which, ofc, is all gorgeous. a lot of the songs on this album are so fucking good (except warhammer of zillyhoo. ugh. UGH.), and my favorite is terezi owns. it goes HARD. black rose/green sun is also really striking and perfectly haunting.

sburb is another solo, environmental album. the whole thing is a series of piano compositions, and its beautiful. really, really stunning work.

i listened to the wanderers while i was typing up this bigass post, and its really good! i think it perfectly fits the vibe of the desolate wasteland planet and the exiles silly little shenanigans, and i think of all of the like, themed environmental albums so far, this one does the best job at representing the energy for me personally (except probably squiddles, but ugh. squiddles). my favorite track is riches to ruins movements i & ii, i can tell it was remixed for heir of grief and i actually really love the og.

im still working through my relisten of prospit & derse, but like strife, this was an album i listened to over and over again long before i started this reread and i know i fucking love it. derse dreamers was always my favorite (theyre ALL good tho, NO misses), but who knows! maybe ill have a new one when im finished. i always really liked that the prospit tracks had really distinct piano, bass, and wind instruments (in parallel to john and jade playing bass, piano, and flute), and the derse tracks have really distinct synth and violin (in parallel to rose and daves instruments). its such a nice touch.

idk if vol 1-4 has any new stuff in the collection, and i havent listened to vol 8 yet, so ill just update about those whenever i write another recap.

Final Thoughts

uhhhh... im tired? lmao. ive been typing so long i cant remember if theres anything else. there was a lot more to say about this act than i thought thered be.

i guess, in summary, im really enjoying my reread so far. i think im reading with a much more critical eye than i did way back when (i started in 2014, for those of u just getting here), and im really paying more attention to certain characters i glanced over before or the actual mechanics of like, alternia and sburb and etc. ive retained more memory of the characters than i thought, but less about the plot than i thought, and my favorite characters have shuffled around a bit.

prior to my reread, i probably would have told you my favorite characters were dave, john, karkat, and then vriska and the rest of the strilondes. during my original read (almost a decade ago), my favorites were dave, vriska, sollux, dirk, and rose. now, id say my favorites are rose, kanaya, vriska, john, and sollux.

but yeah! i think thats about all i have to say, for now. stay tuned for. sighs. act 6.

update: wow, here it is! act 6, sub acts 1-3. also, heres a recap on the formspring and blogspot. youre welcome.

[purple-stuck]

I really adore your writing! Can I PLEASE request a purple Sollux drabble? Maybe interacting with gamzee?

hey, gz. wanna hang out?

Gamzee stared down at his phone, squinting his eyes at the purple text. Somewhere in his addled think pan he thought it was strange. Sollux hardly hung out with anyone in person. He was always a shut in, especially for Purple blood standards. Only clown who'd attended less church was probably Gamzee himself and that was only because Sollux sometimes made video calls. But, ever sense Aradia... it was a miracle he still answered texts.

Still, Gamzee wasn't gonna say no to his blood brother's company. Maybe Feferi helped him cope. Maybe he went pale for Karkat, those two had always been close. Hardly mattered.

WeLl, ShIt. SuRe MoThErFuCkEr. CaN't SaY nO tO a NiCe AnD pRoPeR hAnGiNg SeSsIoN. wAnT mE tO sWiNg By YoUr PlAcE, oR wHaT?

nah. ii'm at the door. ii wa2 iin the area and fiigured ii'd a2k.

Right on cue, there was indeed a knock at Gamzee's front door. Huh. Sollux must've been right at the door when he texted. Made sense. If Karkat was any indication, Sollux had a habit of just barging into a brother's hive like he lived there and playing all their video games. Probably remembered at the last second that he and Gamzee weren't that close.

When Gamzee open the front door, he found himself staring at Captor's chest. Even hunched over as he was, Sollux was still the tallest troll Gamzee knew. The boy managed to be both lankier and buffer than Gamzee somehow. Granted, that's not hard. It'd be a stretch to call any version of Sollux Captor buff, but any purple blood with a proper lusus was going to be thicker than Gamzee.

Gamzee stopped that thought dead before it sunk in any deeper.

"At least I know I'm not interrupting anything." Sollux said dryly. "That's not the hair of someone who had plans for the evening."

Gamzee snorted, appreciating that the ribbing was good natured. Sollux didn't regard him with the same contempt, say, Equius did, so it was hard to take anything he said as an actual insult. Same deal with Karkat, really. "So, what brings you around to my hive? Feferi finally convince you to go outside?"

Sollux's lips twitched into a smirk before he jutted his thumb behind him. "Nah. I'm just picking up an old hobby."

Gamzee's eyes trailed to the cart Sollux had parked at the bottom of the steps, a chill going down his spine at the sight of faintly blue blood trailing down it's side. "Oh..."

Gamzee's eyes twitched back to Sollux, who just sighed. "I'm on my second kill, so don't worry. I don't kill in odd numbers. Plus, I've seen you making diamond eyes at Karkat and I'm not that much of a dick."

Gamzee let go off a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. "Well, it's good to know I won't be adding to Aradia's fucking corpse collection-"

Sollux stiffened and Gamzee stopped dead. Shit. Fuck. He should know better. What was he doing bring up Aradia, fuck-

"It's... fine." Sollux sighed, bringing his hand to his temple as he steadied himself. "I'm fine. It's fine. She would've found it funny, anyways." Sollux forced a smile onto his face. "Besides, you're not wrong. She'd love to throw corpse parties for these motherfuckers in whatever rung of the Dark Carnival she wound up in."

Gamzee laughed politely and stepped aside to let Sollux in before the conversation got any more uncomfortable. Sollux plopped onto the couch, quickly propping his legs up on the table. "You got any video games? I somehow doubt you're much of a shooter fan."

Gamzee grunted, sliding him a faygo as he took his seat. "Nah. Tav got me into fiduspawn. You ever play that?"

Sollux snorted. "Funny story about that, actually. EQ got me into it. I was talking shit about it around him and he protested that NP was into it."

"Did he? Shit, man, good for him. He always kinda... rolls over around me. Motherfucker's always trying to please me."

"Well, yeah. It's NP we're talking about here. You'd complain is I started talking shit about Tavros."

Gamzee blinked. That was... oddly pointed coming from Sollux. Sure, every word sounded like a sarcastic insult when you put it in his mouth, but it sounded like he was trying to make a point. That suddenly serious stare wasn't helping, and it made Gamzee cough uncomfortably.

"Uh, yeah, I would." His eyes flickered towards the door. Towards the cart. "...Why?"

"You got any feelings for him?"

Now this was starting to get wildly out of character. Sollux was the last person to stick his nose into anyone's love life, unless it was to annoy Eridan somehow. Hell, people just being sappy around him annoyed him, which made this even more bizarre.

"Yeah, well, Tav, said he wasn't interested."

"He's not?"

"Look, bro, I appreciate it, but we don't need an auspistice. You can't mediate what ain't there."

"But you do feel something for him. You care about him, pitch, red, I don't care how." Sollux was almost looming over him now, even without standing up. Gamzee was beginning to wonder whether he should go for his clubs when Sollux sighed.

"Right, right. That.... probably doesn't make any sense to you. I'm sorry." He stood up, face not just sour like usual, but outright grim. "Let me show you what I'm talking about."

Sollux made his way to the door wheeled his cart inside, a chill went down Gamzee's spine.

"...Bro. Did you?"

"No. Gog no. Fucking Messiahs above, hell no! I cull trolls but I'm not a sick fuck who parades their corpses around in front of their friends."

Sollux looked down at the cart, at the body hidden beneath the crumpled sheet. He seemed far, far away for a moment, like his soul had been taken by the Messiahs themselves and his body was an empty shell they left behind.

"You... know Aradia's dead, right?"

Gamzee relaxed, more confused and sad now than afraid. "Yeah."

Sollux looked at him. "Do you know how she died?"

Sollux didn't need an answer and he didn't wait for one. The purple voids of his eyes showed behind his matching glasses. "It started... when Vriska abducted me."

"I was out doing my regular, bi-wipely rounds. Looking for two bodies for Aradia to preserve in a 'corpse party'. Or, more accurately, looking to make two bodies for her to preserve."

"I'd spotted a couple of burgundies, so I went to make my move. I'd barely seen Vriska's face by the time the bag was over my head and by then the needles were in my neck. My guess is she'd paid some FLARPers to help her. I know damn well she couldn't handle me alone."

"When I woke up, I was in Vriska's hive. She looked so... fucking smug when she had me all chained up. She explained what Aradia did to her. Talked about how she'd sent some ghosts her way... and she wanted to get even."

"So Vriska was going to have me kill Aradia."

"That's when the torture began. It was pretty amateurish, but that's all it needed to be. She just needed to distract me, make a crack for her to slip into... one opening was all she needed to grab my mind."

Sollux was staring down at nothing by the time he finished, bending the metal handles of his cart with his grip.

"I still remember the walk to Aradia's hive." He said, choking back something. "I could hear her scream in my mind before she even saw me."

Gamzee's hand landed on his shoulder, snapping Sollux back to reality. Sollux pushed the smaller clown back before clearing his throat. "So, the next time I left my hive, I decided to pay Serket a visit."

Sollux threw the tarp off to reveal Vriska's mangled body. Or, what was of it.

Gamzee took at a step back. The amount of patchwork Sollux had to do to get Vriska's upper torso back in one piece would be impressive if it didn't imply how grizzly the scene must've been before he started. Tellingly, Sollux didn't even try to put Vriska's legs back together. He just dumped the soupified slop into a box and put it on the bottom shelf of his cart.

"Jegus..."

"Yeah, I got carried away."

Gamzee backed up and fell onto the couch, mostly just to get away from the smell. Sollux pulled his two swords out of Vriska's head, wiping them clean in one quick stroke.

"So... why are you telling me this?" Gamzee asked.

Sollux seemed to think for a moment, staring at his reflection in the blades. "To try to understand." He waved his blades vaguely over Vriska's... "body" for lack of a better word. "Most of this was unnecessary. She died quickly but... it wasn't satisfying."

Sollux looked at Gamzee meaningfully. "I figured you could tell me why."

Gamzee's eyes widened. "Shit, man, you mean because..."

"Of Tavros. Yeah. Vriska killed him. The army won't take someone who can't walk and he has no where else to go. That's assuming someone like, well, me, doesn't just pick him up off the streets. He's living on borrowed time on a planet like this, and that's all her fault."

Sollux looked at Gamzee meaningfully. "So... is this satisfying to you?"

Gamzee sunk into the couch, staring up at the ceiling. "Fuck, man. You can't do this to a motherfucker. This is a lot to drop on me all at once." He looked at the corpse, trying not to curl his nose at the sight. "...I mean... no. Fuck, I'd hesitate to say anyone even deserves that, but mostly it just makes me feel... kinda sick."

Sollux slumped down. "I don't get it. This should be satisfying. We should be glad that she's dead, but we're not."

Again, Gamzee was there, suddenly resting a hand on Sollux's shoulder. "...Look, man. I'm sorry I'm not any help with this. Karbro is so much better at this shit than me, but..."

"...I guess it's not really her death that we're looking for. We're looking for a way to make it so all the problems she caused never happened. And... that's not gonna happen. I've accepted that Tav's not gonna get his legs back... and I think he's accepted that too. And, Aradia, wherever she might be now up in that Dark Carnival, knows that she's not coming back either. So... shit, maybe we should just... keep moving?"

Sollux stared at him blankly, before that default grouchy snarl crept back onto his face. "That's a really shitty way to end that spiel, you know that?"

Gamzee shrugged, that some color had bled back into Sollux's face. "Well, shit. I'm no Karkat and you know it."

"Yeah, you're not. I'd still be huddled up inside without that grouchy asshole."

Sollux sighed. Not tiredly, but like a weight had been lifted somewhat. With all that off his chest, Sollux tilted his head up. He nonchalantly lined up his swords and slid them down his throat, swallowing up his blades until only the hilts remained to dangled beneath his uvula. Gamzee squinted at him curiously.

"....What?"

"Shit, man, I have no idea how you manage to talk like that."

Sollux smirked, grabbing his faygo off the table and chugging it in two swigs. At this point, he was just showing off. "Very, very carefully. I'll teach you sometime."

Sollux threw the tarp back onto his cart and began peddling it out the door. "I'd better get going, the sun will rise soon." Gamzee waved him off as he opened the door, pausing just before he closed. "Oh, by the way. You owe me a game night. This one derailed."

Gamzee just nodded as Captor slammed the door, knowing that was Sollux-ese for "let's hang out sometime".

[autumnblogs]

Day 13: Double Mobius Reacharound

https://homestuck.com/story/2073

Of all the characters in Homestuck, Sollux’s self-hatred is probably the most exaggerated, exacerbated no doubt by his role in the death of his girlfriend and his psychic brain. I like him, he’s an alright guy, and I wish I had more to say about him to be honest. I guess if there was one thing I was going to say about him, I think I said it already - Sollux serves as a mirror image of Dave, and Sollux’s decision to bow out early probably foreshadows the way that Dave will eventually decide that fighting is not for him.

More after the break.

https://homestuck.com/story/2082

How does Paradox Space know which angel to use? This is a bit of an odd moment. Maybe I’m missing the refrance, but I’ve never quite understood why Terezi reacts this way, with all of the additional periods. Sollux seems quizzical, but Terezi doesn’t react.

Also, this is the first in a serious of lines I’m going to be examining in relation to Aradia. Keep that on the back of your thinkpan.

https://homestuck.com/story/2085

Sollux and Aradia have a very sweet, tragic little relationship, and even though it doesn’t last into the longterm, I’ve always enjoyed these two together.

https://homestuck.com/story/2101

Whether retroactively, or intentionally, the sensual scantily clad fairies in Tavros’ room are a lot more noticeable on re-reads. Tavros has a pretty unassuming demeanor, and I’m not here to trash him pointlessly, but I think that Tavros has some pretty troubling patterns of behavior that can go unexamined because of the fact that he’s a victim. More on that as we go.

https://homestuck.com/story/2112

Far from a passing fancy, Tavros’ interest in animals does seem to be genuine. I wonder if he had a little farm with a bunch of these critters. We never get to see much of his other Fiduspawn if he has any.

https://homestuck.com/story/2114

Karkat and Tavros both do this, which I think is interesting because of the fact that they have opposite relationships with sleep and dreaming - Tavros spends most of his time in game asleep and dreaming of Prospit, Karkat has horrible insomnia.

https://homestuck.com/story/2122

Our very first conversation with Vriska has her tune in pretty much entirely to bully Tavros. The interesting thing is, while Vriska’s treatment of Tavros is pretty objectively bad, the way that she harasses him is actually pretty closely in line with the way that other trolls treat their friends, mutual aggression and nastiness. Vriska’s aggression isn’t addressed at someone who’s responding in kind though - Tavros is gentle where other trolls are vicious, deferential where other trolls are assertive. It’s this contrast that makes the shamefulness of Vriska’s behavior obvious to pretty much everyone but her.

https://homestuck.com/story/2123

Gamzee and Tavros are a ship tease that didn’t really end up going anywhere, but one of the things I think is interesting is the way Gamzee’s language goes from extremely lackadaisical and chill to kind of energetically violent around Tavros. Most of the time, Gamzee’s pretty laidback, but there’s a lot of language relating to murder in Gamzee’s enthusiasm here.

https://homestuck.com/story/2127

While Terezi’s Dragon doesn’t really have much of a choice in terms of its relative absence from her life, the sparse communication between the two and emotional distance is, I think, a parallel with Rose.

https://homestuck.com/story/2128

Because of the fact that we don’t get as much of a look into the Trolls’ home lives, it’s less easy to narrow down what their “finer” anxieties are, but it’s clear that they follow the same pattern of having their sleeping selves wake up as a result of internal synthesis of some kind - confronting their subconscious anxieties, and consciously accepting a part of their reality that they’ve been deliberately shutting out.

There’s probably a number of things that were instrumental to waking up for Terezi, not the least of which is accepting that Vriska is not the friend that Terezi thought she was - waking up to the fact that she was being used by an abuser in a co-dependent relationship. Coming to terms with her blindness could represent growth into a healthier sense of self, one where she finds validation internally and in healthy friend and family relationships. All that being said, her relationship with Vriska is still her most important relationship, and realizing that a problem exists is only the first step in solving it.

https://homestuck.com/story/2134

Time to stop being cagey about it, I guess. I have long viewed Aradia’s story as being one that is about surviving depression, which I say as a depression survivor. I relate heavily to the language that Homestuck uses to describe Aradia’s lack of passion and lack of enjoyment of things that she used to enjoy - especially the way that she lashes out destructively to try and alleviate her boredom and frustration.

https://homestuck.com/story/2137

On an unrelated note, Aradia has the Crosbytop. I believe I’m starting to remember how it got into her hands.

https://homestuck.com/story/2139

I’ve always thought that it’s interesting that Kanaya’s language directly mirrors Karkat’s from when he was harassing Jade, but their sentiment is almost precisely the opposite. She borrows another Karkatism almost immediately. So pretty much from the word go, we’re clued into the fact that Kanaya and Karkat have some relationship with each other that goes beyond the purely familiar, in the same way that Dave and John’s tendency to mirror each other’s language helps us to understand their friendship.

For a girl who doesn’t feel too many emotions, Aradia can be pretty sassy.

https://homestuck.com/story/2144

I have a friend who’s a bit of a Vriska kinnie (and feel like I’m pretty Vriska-esque myself), and one of the things that we both do that I’m seeing in Vriska here is fill dead air with chatter. I could be reading into it a little, but I think it should be a clue that Vriska is an intensely anxious kind of character.

https://homestuck.com/story/2145

In a parallel to Sollux’s introduction, we can’t immediately be Vriska. We couldn’t be Sollux because he was too busy stewing in his own self-criticism. There’s a push and pull going on between Vriska’s narcissism and her over-the-top self-deprecation.

https://homestuck.com/story/2150

I might be pulling this out of my ass, but I feel like there’s a case to be made for Aradia and Vriska actually being pretty strong parallels to each other - the only two trolls to get the tiger, faciliitators of destiny, devil-may-care grave-robbers. I don’t actually have a fully formed thought to really draw the two together, but I feel like there’s really something there. The way that Aradia puts Sollux to sleep here in order to ensure that the Right Disasters befall him is parallel to the way that Vriska puts people to sleep at clever points to make sure that Jack is created, and so on and so forth.

Maybe in the same way that Sollux serves as a parallel to Dave and helps us to understand what the right decision is for Dave, Aradia parallels Vriska and helps us to understand that roughly the same things are good for the two of them. Much later, (Vriska) basically chooses the same path of staying out of harm’s way and trying to enjoy the rest of her relatively eternal existence.

https://homestuck.com/story/2161

As soon as Karkat talks about Kanaya with anyone else, he further reinforces there is a friendship between the two of them.

Another quick note, as long as we’re here, I’ve kind of been putting this off, but I suppose with the one and only use of “autistic” as an insult in the comic, it’s finally time for me to bring this up:

Homestuck has a pretty problematic relationship with victims of abuse and people suffering from mental and physical disabilities. While on the one hand like, almost all of Homestuck’s main characters are disabled and abuse sufferers in some way or another, there are a lot of ways in which it’s not so charitable to them.

Some of it is stuff like this - early Homestuck uses the word retarded a lot as an insult, and has this single instance of autistic - all in all, that kind of language is problematic but in and of itself, not too egregious - Homestuck is a product of its time in that respect.

Stuff that I take issue with is more subtle - mostly stuff surrounding Jake and Tavros. I’ll have more to say on it later, but I wanted to find a good natural time to bring it up, and now seemed like a fine time.

https://homestuck.com/story/2162

Nepeta and Equius give us some information that helps grow our understanding of troll culture. We’ve already had some conversation about whose blood is better than whose from Sollux, but Equius starts to help us understand that some trolls take blood color extremely seriously.

These kids may not replicate the social anxieties of earthlings 1:1 but they still have plenty of things to be anxious about. The more I read Hiveswap the more I become convinced that most of these characters were never people we were meant to become terribly invested in - a lot of the function of the trolls, from a narrative perspective, is to give us parallels to the human main characters and insight into their lives, as well as to give us exposition on just how Sburb works exactly. And then most of them are pretty promptly killed off or put on a bus once their purpose is served (or in order to serve their purpose!)

Back to the subject of the social anxieties that the trolls have to deal with, Alternia is all about hierarchy baby.

https://homestuck.com/story/2173

Vriska may be a born cheater, but I’ve always sort of gotten the impression, based on the killer nature of FLARPING which is alluded to plenty in other situations, that if she’s cheating here, it may be the kind of cheating that is encouraged.

Between that and the way that Tavros and Aradia were discussing the “True Spirit of Flarping,” I can’t help but remember a description of the way propaganda works from some time ago. Propaganda doesn’t usually follow the story arc we are accustomed to, where we start with a character or characters who do not yet possess the tools or abilities they need to succeed, grow to overcome their weakness, and then overcome the problem that they couldn’t before.

Propaganda, instead, introduces us to characters who are already strong, facing enemies who are weak, or problems who are easy. They are strong because they are the heroes! Their enemies are weak. And the function of it is to intimidate the enemies of the person putting out the propaganda, and to rile up aggressive sentiment in those who are on the side of the propagandist.

We’ve already talked about how, in Homestuck “roleplaying” in both its more figurative and literal uses, is a way in which characters act out society’s expectations for them. In that way, I can’t help but view FLARPING as something of a propaganda tool itself, and one that’s pretty integral to Vriska’s way of thinking throughout the comic.

You’re either someone who is strong, or someone who is weak, and if you’re strong, you’re one of the victors, if you’re weak, you’re one of the losers, and you deserve whatever the victors decide what to do with you.

What I guess I’m building up to here is that there are real world societies that Troll Culture seems like an exaggerated parody of - particularly the more militaristic aspects of the Romans, and the Spartans. I’m going to wait for another time to write down all my thoughts about them, because this is turning into a bit of an essay, but suffice to say, it’s probably going to coincide with the one about Patriarchy whenever I get around to it.

https://homestuck.com/story/2175

There’s an interesting thing going on here between the way that Tavros is drawn (nearly identical to his imagine spot about flying around on Prospit), and the way that his erratic behavior isn’t actually all that different from the way characters normally do absurd and dangerous things here.

I’m by no means excusing what Vriska is doing here, but I think that between the fact that Tavros already wants to fly anyway, and the fact that again, characters do this kind of self-destructive thing in Homestuck all the time anyway, although to less of an exaggerated degree, Andrew is drawing a parallel between the narrative prompts from the Exiles, Vriska’s manipulations, and the intrusive thoughts that we already have on our own anyway.

Vriska manipulates Tavros the way that Doc Scratch manipulates her, although considerably clumsier, by getting him to do what he already wants to anyway.

https://homestuck.com/story/2177

That’s really all there is to say on the matter.

It’s like poetry, they rhyme.

In the same way that Bro manipulates Dave by imposing an idea of what it means to be a man on him - someone who can be beaten within an inch of his life, or beat someone else to within an inch of his life without batting an eye - Vriska tries to manipulate Tavros throughout his arc, and this kind of so-called “tough love” is just the start of it.

There’s a lot of supplementary material that delves deeper into Vriska’s rationale for her mistreatment of Tavros, but she makes it clear herself as we go through the comic that she at least justifies her mistreatment of Tavros by telling herself that the purpose of it is to toughen him up (so he can be one of the strong people, a winner who gets the girl.)

https://homestuck.com/story/2178

As he often is about what’s going on with other people when he’s distracted from thinking about himself by his own agitation, Karkat is probably right about Vriska - girls like her are a dime a dozen in the upper classes, and that’s the point. The point of troll society is to produce people like Vriska amongst the highbloods.

https://homestuck.com/story/2195

Let’s dig into Vriska’s self-stylization as an apocalypse buff for a second because it’s not something I think gets talked about a lot.

Apocalypticism is, in my estimation, kind of a form of generational narcissism. There are doomsayers in every generation, who claim that this is it - this new catastrophe, this new social situation, is the most important thing in the world to ever happen. The end is here. All of world history culminates in this.

I don’t mean to downplay the actual existential threats of our generation of course; climate change, late capitalism, that sort of thing. But I think Vriska’s Apocalypse Buffery fits pretty well into her need to be the most important person in Paradox Space all the time.

On another note, Luck in Homestuck is very closely related with a few concepts like Agency in Homestuck through the Aspect of Light. Terezi will later assert that luck doesn’t matter at all. What’s up with that?

Maybe Luck and Karma are two sides of the same coin (ha!) Both of them are pieces in the puzzle of Theodicy, that is to say, the metaphysics question of why there is bad in the world.

Someone like Vriska (at the beginning of her arc) would say that it’s happenstance - bad things and good things can happen to bad and good people, there’s no greater meaning behind it. Vriska has a hard time taking responsibility for her own actions - her locus of control is external, for the most part.

Terezi on the other hand mostly attributes everything to a person’s actions, hence the need to punish bad people, and reward good ones. Terezi would say that good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people. Her locus of control is internal.

Maybe the answer is both motherfuckin’ things.

https://homestuck.com/story/2202

Just as Vriska’s introduction is through a conversation with her victim, so Doc Scratch’s introduction is through a conversation with his victim. Or at least, his most immediate victim.

It’s like poetry, they rhyme.

https://homestuck.com/story/2204

Kanaya pretty well sums up here what I was getting at when talking about Terezi and Vriska’s different locuses of control.

There’s no real good or bad luck here. Good luck for someone is bad luck for someone else, often enough. What “good luck” means to Vriska is that events go down the way that she personally wants them to.

And so, by seizing control and power in situations where she is helpless, the Thief of Light ensures that she always has all the luck.

Kanaya might not be right, by the way, not 100%. I’m not a stoic. You can’t just magically wish away suffering by deciding that actually, you’re 0k with it, anymore than Aradia can. Like I said, the truth probably lies somewhere between Luck and Karma.

https://homestuck.com/story/2207

While the terrifying violent monitor and the emotionally abusive manipulator are bifurcated, Vriska has a lot of the same emotional responses to her guardians as Dave does to his singular guardian - notice the similar, self-soothing language that Vriska’s narrative employs compared to the way that Dave self-sooths when trying to convince himself that the way Bro treats him is just fine and normal.

https://homestuck.com/story/2211

Equius to me is a super interesting character, because on the one hand, he’s a joke character Andrew uses to antagonize the audience by being gross but Andrew also uses him to say the quiet part loud - Homestuck is already, to begin with, a pretty lewd webcomic full of horny characters whose emotional hangups and destructive relationships with societal norms sabotage their chances at happiness. That’s all Equius is. His entire function from start to finish, aside from a source of ribald humor, is to draw attention to the fact that everyone in this comic is looking for comfort in someone else’s body, comfort from the way that unrealistic societal expectations and their attempts to live up to them don’t match up to what’s inside of their heart. Equius is a parody of Homestuck inside of Homestuck. Absurdly overpowered, ridiculously horny, all twisted up inside.

https://homestuck.com/story/2220

The language here that Equius uses - degenerate - is evocative of the sorts of right-wing authoritarian hate mongers that Equius’ ideology stands in for. Equius, of course, has doubts about said ideology, which he starts to express through transgressive relationships pretty much as soon as we meet him, like the one with Aradia. The fact that he can’t make sense of the warring ideas inside of him almost literally kills him.

https://homestuck.com/story/2221

Except that what kills him literally is a shitty clown.

I think what’s going on here is interesting, because if you want to read Equius as like, Homestuck in a nutshell, Equius’ ideological hangups are co-morbid with his sexual hangups, and resolving one set would probably go a long way toward resolving the other set. Equius is, for lack of a better term, a deviant. The sorts of things that excite him (here, viscerally) don’t match up with his idea of how troll society is supposed to be.

Equius and Gamzee are confronting each other with a different vision for what Troll Society is supposed to be like.

https://homestuck.com/story/2222

In stark contrast to the shallow and insincere hostility of Trolls who are actually friends with each other, Vriska and Equius maintain a veneer of social grace as they mutually plan to backstab each other.

https://homestuck.com/story/2237

Vriska is pretty clearly projecting here, but she’s also 100% right. I guess when you know somebody, you know them. Or it could be happenstance.

Her view of redemption is also transactional. “I will make things the way they were before, and things can go back to being the way that they were,” she seems to say. It’s a very legalistic view of it, and while it might have a place in a justice system, even the extremely legalistic Terezi can tell that that wouldn’t actually fix anything. Maybe the physical and emotional damage could be repaired in theory, but if the actors in the situation don’t change themselves in fundamental ways, this is all just going to recur in the future.

Forgiveness isn’t something an abuser can earn - nobody has the right to claim that they have restored a relationship that they destroyed in the first place by demonstrating token repentance.

https://homestuck.com/story/2238

If Andrew already had in mind that Equius should in some way be a part of the gestalt of souls that is Lord English, he’s foreshadowing it early here by comparing Equius’ voyeuristic habits to Scratch’s.

https://homestuck.com/story/2244

I’ll lay my cards on the table and say I think that Doc Scratch can present the facts 100% and still be dishonest. I’m a compatibilist - I think that Free Will and Accountability are compatible with the idea of a deterministic universe. Doc Scratch doesn’t have to talk anyone into anything, but the material conditions that led everyone to the decisions that they chose to make were orchestrated by Lord English. Scratch may not be making any decisions here that effect the outcomes, sure, but the game was rigged in his favor from the start.

Again, I’m not excusing Vriska’s actions here. But for the same reason that we wouldn’t blame Tavros for jumping off of a cliff just because trying to fly is something he already wanted to do to begin with, I think it’s clear to anyone with eyes that Doc Scratch is at least partially responsible for creating this little monster.

Vriska’s complicated. Let’s move on so this whole post doesn’t turn into more Vriskourse. That’s the last thing anyone needs.

https://homestuck.com/story/2258

You know you’re going to anyway.

I guess what intrigues me so much about this section is the gradation between manipulation and coercion.

https://homestuck.com/story/2263

Vriska might be a born cheater, but Doc Scratch is a sore loser.

She’s pretty easy to root for when she’s against him.

https://homestuck.com/story/2269

Man, Act 5 Act 1 is just absolutely lousy with conversation about choice and luck.

https://homestuck.com/story/2276

Part of what creates ambiguity in terms of how much Vriska’s choices are her nature versus the conditions that shaped it is on display here in her conversation with Aradia.

Vriska doesn’t really know how to interact with people positively, like, at all. Nobody’s ever taught her. She doesn’t know what it means to be a friend to someone. She doesn’t know what it means to help someone. She doesn’t know how to be loved or forgiven.

Is this like the scorpion and the frog? Or does she have free will? (I’ll give you a hint, it’s the second one.)

https://homestuck.com/story/2280

This whole sequence is just a delight. The trolls are really just such disaster people, and if I can be excused, it’s easy to put more emotional distance between myself and say, Equius, than it is between myself and Vriska and Terezi. Like I said, Equius says the quiet part out loud, so there’s really nothing much to analyze there.

Aradia’s inability to control the ribbits is part of a general mood of a lack of control that she has as a character. Vriska’s lack of control causes her to rage at the heavens and lash out at the people around her. Aradia is just 0k with it, and neither is a healthy coping strategy. The result is that the two of them break a lot of shit.

https://homestuck.com/story/2305

For the first time in his life, Karkat is not alone.

https://homestuck.com/story/2319

I could really be mistaken here, but the way this whole sequence is presented here really feels, on an archival reread, to be telling me, “You do not need to care about these characters.” Certainly they serve a function in the story, but with the exception of a few of them (literally only a third of them), they serve as tools in an authorial toolbox to help flesh out the setting - not so unlike the Carapacians actually, but with a lot more personality.

https://homestuck.com/story/2323

Kanaya is threefold one of the few of her kind, making her extra special. While she is closest with Rose, she’s a clear parallel to Jade, who if memory serves, suffered frequent accustations of being a Mary Sue early on. Kanaya’s level of specialness (in terms of combined rare factors) outcompetes even Jade’s. Probably a part of the playfully antagonistic style of Homestuck in general.

https://homestuck.com/story/2338

It slipped my mind earlier that the honey on Sollux’s hands was being directly juxtaposed with Dave’s blood on his own hands, and here Kanaya’s.  All three of them are, to some extent or another, contemplating their mortality. As Kanaya said just a few panels ago though, death is confusing without the finality. Just another way that Homestuck plays with the nomenclature of endings and beginnings and intermissions and brings into question the usefulness of those categories.

https://homestuck.com/story/2343

I have always enjoyed the dynamic that Kanaya and Eridan share with each other, and I wish there were more conversations of her just dunking on him.

Also of note in this little conversation is the way that Kanaya and John mirror each other’s language. This is an example though where they could not possibly be mirroring it the way that Dave and John might be when they’re talking about Bec, or the way that she and Karkat might be. They have, it seems, the same penchant for mischief.

https://homestuck.com/story/2345

Like her counterparts from Universe B, Kanaya’s preoccupation with relationships and personal contact is made manifest through her Squiddle Lunchtop.

https://homestuck.com/story/2350

Both of the main Pages in Homestuck are characters whose primary usefulness is seen through their ability to make friends and broker alliances. I suspect that being a Page in Sburb is to some extent a bit like being an ADC in League of Legends.

The ADC or Attack Damage Carry, if you’re not familiar with the nomenclature, is a character who starts the game weak, and remains vulnerable throughout such that the whole team has to play babysitter. If you think that sounds unappealing to play, you’d be right - it can be pretty hard to find someone willing to play ADC, especially with the popularity of high-risk high-reward Asassins (not so unlike a thief!) who are their direct counter.

In spite of their relative vlunerability, the ADC has absolutely dominated the meta of League of Legends for the past ten years for the simple reason that there is absolutely no substitute when it comes to controlling objectives.

Maybe Pages are a little bit like that. Frustrating to be one, frustrating to have one around, but extremely rewarding to invest in. It’s too bad nobody can be arsed to give them the emotional support they need to flourish. Too bad they have such... intractible character flaws.

https://homestuck.com/story/2356

Kanaya’s inability to stop mothering people sabotages her chance at winning Vriska’s affection - no doubt because Vriska has misread the situation as Kanaya being her romantic rival for Tavros’s attention. For the better, I guess, since Rosemary is my shit.

Trolls sure are weird.

https://homestuck.com/story/2369

Vriska has already figured out the point of Sburb, and perhaps the ultimate riddle, although she clearly hasn’t figured out the ramifications of it yet.

In any case, it should be clear how she has interpreted Sburb’s directive - authenticate your own existence through reproduction.

Being a winner, having self-worth, being able to justify your own existence means being strong enough, smart enough, pretty enough to shape the rest of existence in your own image.

She’s missing a critical detail, and its absence means she has it completely backwards.

https://homestuck.com/story/2370

We already know what is on the other side of the portal. Vriska is making herself out to be the final boss.

The final boss and the treasure are the same thing, in her mind.

The struggle is the objective.

The fighting is the point.

https://homestuck.com/story/2374

Just wanted to take a second to say that this whole sequence is so unnerving and horrible that I was sure she was going to murder, violate, and/or eat him, not necessarily in that order, the first time I read through this.

The sad reality is, this is the fucked up courtship ritual of a girl who has no idea how to be intimate with other people.

https://homestuck.com/story/2391

And that’s where we’ll pause for the night, having finished nearly 300 pages as promised.

Hope I wasn’t getting too lazy there at the end.

I’m enjoying my weekend.

Hope that yinz enjoy yours once it rolls around.

For now, Alive and Not Sober, Cam signing off.

[theorynexus]

Unrelated to the Epilogues

Apologies for not getting back to liveblogging, yet; however, that’s going to begin again with my next post.   This one is simply to express some thoughts that have been kicking around in my head for a few days, which I did not get the chance to express because I was sleep deprived and then briefly sick. Namely:   All weapons (or Strife Specibi, I should say) in Homestuck seem to be symbolically representative of the character who owns them to some extent.  A few easy examples would be: * the Dualing Pistol (White Magnum/White Wand), which is elegant and precise, only needing to be fired once to provoke massive, impactful change, and doubly representative of Alt!Calliope’s subtle orchestration of events behind the scenes; * The Dudely [Fire]Arm[ament]s (Caliborn/Lord English’s canes/rifles), which the aforementioned doubled set is contrasted to: whilst they are equally intended to convey mastery of events (and particularly the people taking part in them), these are more brutish, and make their impact through repeated blows (a pool cue arranges things through a loud, meaningful break, and then many serious blows to follow--- and while these blows might in theory require precision in order to make the balls fall where they must, in practice, Caliborn’s talent is in ensuring that every hit eventually brings things to a favorable conclusion, rather than in the shortest route possible).   Brute force methods are used to bring about the desired conclusion--- an inevitable death, generally  ---and the overkill that Caliborn (the Lord of Death, in some ways) utilizes whenever his rifle’s sights fall upon a target (for it’s never a single bullet that hits) is representative of his general methodology and spirit. *  Dave’s broken/mended sword, split over time, is obviously representative of his own Aspect, how it gradually affects him (time heals all wounds, as the saying goes, despite the fact that he seems to become quite incensed with it at some points, and struggles with it to the point of refusing to embrace it for a very long time), and especially how his personal history ties into his personal arc (Dave is more affected by his time with his Guardian than perhaps any other kid, despite the fact that Jade is fused with the replacement surrogate that might arguably be said to have usurped the position from her grandpa, and this is also a reflection on the Aspect of Time in his life, I should think).     How Bro (Dirk) Broke his Heart, and how Dave struggled to mend it over the course of the series has been much better discussed elsewhere than I could attempt to express in the brief space I’m allotting to this discussion, here, though, and thus I shall cut this off right here, just as both brothers have a habit off symbolically cutting things off, themselves. ~~~ The train of thought that I am wanting to express herein started with a thought that caught me by surprise:   I continue to have no idea what, precisely John’s Strife Specibus is supposed to represent, you see, so when I remembered that there was a method of inheritance called Gavelkind, it struck me that it could be related to this, as a pun.  Unfortunately, this seems like a dead end, unless it is a very forward thinking joke about every member of his party taking up the main character mantle after he dies in the “more canon [more relevant in Dirk’s eyes]” Meat Epilogue (or, alternatively, Davesprite and Rose’s inherited self from the timeline having to clean up John’s mess after the idiot got himself obliterated in the deal he made with Typheus after Terezi tricked him).     It could also be related to him forging the group through his Heir of Breath inspiration toward a path mechanic, but what are the chances of it being that simple an answer?   Unfortunately, said inheritance business seemed more promising than it was, because I was initially confusing it with the Elective method of kingmaking that is to be found in German historical culture. That truly fits with who John is, and resonates with the “I’m not your leader, I’m your friend” humblepie that was served up to us (and everyone else in his party). ... This line of thinking was useful, however, because it led me to thinking about Karkat’s own weapon.  Obviously, the “Heh, heh, Communism” line of thinking briefly occurred to me, but more relevantly, I thought of the reason why the sickle is used as a symbol of Communism.  It is a classic symbol of the lower class--- farmers, in particular  ---which hints at the very beginning to Karkat’s rather humble origins. While many people might like to think of his mutant blood as “potentially higher than fuschia,” or some such nonsense, more realistically, one has to realize that Karkat was placed in the lowest of low positions: not only was he the only member of his kind, but he would have been without a Lusus and immediately abandoned to death, if the worshipers of his Ancestor had not ensured that he had the dimmest possibility of a relatively normal life. At the same time, he wanted to defy this lowborn status and become a mighty general in )-(er Imperious Condescension’s army.   While this initial spark of revolution was not much, it is representative of all that was to come-- you see, the sickle is to some extent also a symbol of revolt, and while peasant revolts would generally be brutally put down throughout history (just as the waves of opposition to the Condesce were in Alternian lore), this would not in fact be the case with Karkat, or the session that he (and Aradia) would lead. You see, Karkat’s own ideals and the weapon that represents them are but the tip of the iceberg.  The Beta Trolls’ entire session was littered with themes of rebellion against the established social order, and the consequent turning of it upon its head.   First and most obviously, it would be two Lowborn trolls that would come to lead the two “teams” which the session had to offer. Both of these figures acquired this position by usurping it from Bluebloods, who might traditionally have taken up this role in a circumstance where the empress-to-be didn’t show interest in leadership and the Purple Blood in the group appeared to be an incompetent, serially inebriated sack of garbage. This theme particularly shown through in [concupiscent] romance, where we saw pairings that, without exception (other than possibly the crush that Ms. Leijon bore for Karkat, which saw no fruition and arguably did not count for anything, just as Eridan’s flushed feelings for Feferi didn’t “matter” in the end, and Kanaya x Vriska, while being a borderline issue for this topic, doesn’t count either, also due to it just being a crush), all saw subversion of social hierarchy:

Equius x Aradia, Gamzee x Tavros, Feferi x Sollux {I just noticed that these relationships all have the same social distance from one another for some reason.}, Terezi x Karkat. Vriska x Tavros is one-sided, and thus debatable, but also fits this pattern, intriguingly enough. Equius was hit with this subversive force in their social lives particularly hard, possibly because he was the Heir of Void, and thus was more inundated with forces of subtext than the rest of the group [particularly since he was a failure in that role].   Not only could he not resist the drive to submit to those it was “perverse” for one of his “station” to bend the knee to, when the opportunity to truly embrace the anti-normative forces that he had been dipping into (despite his Classist upbringing) came, he was so confused and uncertain that he could not properly understand what he was being pushed to do, and the necessity of it--- and thus froze, allowing himself to be swept away by the Rage Gamzee filled him with. These themes play out in Operation Regisurp, both in name and its practical implementation.  Furthermore, I have just, in the course of writing this post, come to the conclusion that this is why Gamzee had to be the final obstacle to the true end of the Beta Trolls’ session.  He was a crystallized manifestation of the old regime, and its established order:  Gamzee acted as a shadow of the Condesce’s will, the Hemospectrum’s implications, and the brutal reality that was Alternia.    It was thus quite fitting that Karkat was the one to stop his rampage, for he was the Knight of Blood who cajoled everyone to work together as a single team, rejecting the classical restrictions that would have spelled DOOM for their party in favor of bonds beyond the literal nature of the blood that flowed through all of their veins.   Furthermore, I think this is why that confrontation ended in the Shush Pap scene.   Not only was it true that Karkat had literally zero percent chance of actually killing Gamzee in the fight (and a very small chance, indeed, to defeat him through violence), but this would to some extent additionally be an endorsement of the old Alternian way of life.  Rather than through violence, Karkat used his bond with Gamzee to find a solution, and by this means, turned him away from his role as brutal Subjugglator--- though unfortunately this also meant that Gamzee would take a turn for the worse, becoming even more firmly cemented in his role as a servant to the Mirthful Messiah’s. ... Heading back to the meaning of Karkat’s weapon for a moment, I think that the sickle has another implication to explore: it is an implement of the harvest.  Karkat initially wanted to be a sort of grim reaper, slaughtering Alternia’s foes and claiming glory for himself and for his empress. While he was correct in thinking that he just needed an opportunity to prove himself (and thus, he was embracing the symbolic “one must wait until the fruits of the harvest are ripe” implications of the sickle in his own life), the climax of this narrative arc would come when Karkat found himself at the head of Meenah’s united army of all the trolls in the afterlife and bravely charged to meet a foe he knew could destroy the soul with very breath--- and the very real equivalent of the Grim Reaper, himself ---wielding the closest thing he had to a weapon painted with the rainbow (Fuschia an Lime Green bound together betwixt bands of black and white, thus singled out amidst all the colors of the light spectrum). This was his ultimate rejection of the Alternia that was, as he challenged the hidden hand that had twisted it into the place of horror it had been; and upon the fulfillment of that destiny, Karkat would vanish.

Yet, by some miracle, this was not the end: in a place separated beyond barriers of space and time, he would awaken, and but a short time later, he would be granted the Ultimate Reward that had once been wrenched from his grasp. ....................................................................................................................... One last matter of note:  It should be pretty obvious, considering the fact that universes are shaped to reflect the wills and designs of the Players involved, but I am pretty sure humans’ singularly colored blood is an explicit rejection of the hemospectrum, and the particular color that was “chosen” may very well be reflective of the important role Karkat in particular played in the session. What may not be so obvious is how fitting, symbolically, it is that it is a human that stands triumphant over the corpse of )-(er Imperious Condescension.  Curse baggage aside (which still has been irksomely unexplored, to my knowledge), the fact that it is essentially the Beta Trolls’ rejection of her world order that does the empress in feels very right and, upon reflection, is quite beautiful.   Obviously, there’s also a nice splash of revenge playing into that too, as visibly denoted by the weapon used and the handle wrapping, in particular.  I am curious as to the implications of Roxy’s typing color being the same as the blood of said fishy tyrant, though. That, I can’t quite figure out.

[abundantchewtoys]

Homestuck^2 re: Chapter 11: “History's Most Notorious Haters”

"History's Most Notorious Haters"? Sounds like something Dirk, Vriska or Meenah'd say. :P

So, last we "saw" Dirk, Terezi had had a fateful encounter with Rose's spawn.

... Ah yes, Dirk was intending to start fresh re: seeding the planet. And actually go about it more seriously. Wonder how that'd turn out.

---

> 2877

Uhhhhhh... That actually looks like it could be Caliborn's handiwork, only it's drawn neater than he would. That command though.

What? "Knight: Keep it real". What knight? Not Dave right? So: Davebot? ... Did Alt Callie, Jade and Davebot board a selfdrawn rocket? If so, Alt Calliope kind of sucks at drawing, which is hilarious.

---

> 2878

Oooooh, yes! So the wormhole that Calliope opened must've opened above Earth C, from which they boarded a vessel, the third that's under way to Deltritus, pfffff. Oh, and I f*cked up, I mentioned Jade where I should've written Aradia. Alt Callie is in Jade's body, after all.

I'm looking forward to seeing how Ultimate Dave behaves. Aradia might be the best person to guess whether his soul is influenced by inhabiting a bot.

Pfff, target practice with Jade's dumb fruits.

...

OH HELL YES THESE TWO TOGETHER. Didn't think that would match so greatly! :D (I also wonder how much of their banter is flirting, after three years cooped up together.)

So, Aradia implies she's reached ascension as well, over the years somewhere. Well then. Guess that must be part of the reason she was okay with just chilling on Candy Earth for all time. Girl's seen it all by now.

And Dave has taken to his robot body like a fish takes to oxygenated water, I see. He's having a field day (year(s)) with it.

Alt Calliope is definitely behind the narration here, speakerless as though it may seem.

And wow. So... Where Dirk has gotten a vast understanding of his own self, Dirk and Aradia mostly just experience every passing moment in every timeline at the same time.

Hah, so Calliope was actually in two places in spacetime of Universe C at the same time, circumstantially. Where Lord English was always "already here", Calliope is always "already there". :P

But now that Jade escaped her influence, will she become more active on this ship? And will we not see the others for a while, until Calliope revisits their narrative?

---

> 2879

Wow, alive Aradia is such a joker. Sad that John never got to see this side of her, he only encountered the creepy.

And wow yeah, Dave went off on a tangent there, I didn't even notice. Both of them actually left their loved ones behind on Earth C. Dave's loved ones must even think he's dead, unless he went back to Jade?

Guess we might see something in the coming flashback! I mean sure, it seems like it's going to be just about Aradia saying goodbye to Sollux, but hey! Dave's an Ultimate Knight of Time, he could have found the time to say goodbye.

Blaperile's got a good point, the "months in the past" seems to imply this takes place not after three years but sometime during their trip to Deltritus. The () do show it's a flashback to Earth C, at least.

---

> 2880

Oh, Sollux actually watched them leave? Boy, he was "in one of his moods", but seeing her actually leave on him must've stung a LOT.

What... What has he done since then, though? Did he find his way to Karkat... Wait, how would he? He's still blind! ... So he did not actually watched them leave. Still, he looks like he knew what was up.

---

> 2881

Wow, they left in broad daylight! I wouldn't have guessed!

...

D'aaaaaah, [S] page! I wonder how small the animation's gonna be. And if it'll focus on just Sollux? I mean, ... He wouldn't really HAVE much to gaze WITH, right? Because he's still blind. So... Just a black page? Or actually showing more of Earth C, from this fateful day? Maybe how John finished his day after hearing about Dave?

---

> 2882

... PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFf

So dramatic, I have to admit.

Well, I guess Sollux HEARD them leave. *pops raspberry*

---

> 2883

Welp, poor Sollux. Didn't think this through. Stairs, his eternal enemy.

Guess he might still be stumbling through the ectobiology meteor at the end of the day in Earth C's timeline.

---

> 2884

Oh wow. Hah, so Dave might actually be lugging around some unresolved feelings from what he did just after ascending. Which goes to further prove, Ultimate Selves still have baggage. They're not tricksters.

Meanwhile Aradia seems to know where she and Sollux stood perfectly.

Also, Dave is needling Alt Calliope. Just cause they're aligned on taking on Dirk doesn't mean he's okay with how Calliope took over one of Jade's alt bodies.

It would even seem that Calliope is needled in SUCH a way that she's trying to move the trip along. Even though she MUST narrate everything objectively and not leave anything relevant out.

Which means Dave can keep needling her. This is too good!

---

> 2885

Uuuuuhhhmmmm... I think that's symbolical.

Unless Calliope was so petty as to launch them into a weeks-long head-over-heels spin. :P

---

> 2886

Wow. So they DID get Calliope to switch clothes. Hey, maybe that's why Jade on the other timeline was in another outfit too.

Pfff, Calliope tried to sugarcoat the timeskip, but she ruined it by trying to continue the previous conversation, which Dave immediately picked up on.

And! Calliope is actually engaging with Dave and Aradia! That's remarkable! It seems her fascination with the Time aspect overrules her desire to remain an observer first! And, well, on the other ship her attempts at bonding (over juice and such) didn't really float.

That "BEST KARKAT" mug though.

So, uh, Aradia is now free game to use in your fan adventures, it would seem. She just up 'n left for a couple hundred years. :P Doesn't even matter when, she can probably timetravel back into the other timelines by now, now that's she an Ultimate Self.

Dave's AC thrown into the sun, tssk, tssk.

---

> 2887

Aradia picking up Calliope's mannerisms! Alpha Calliope's mannerisms, hilariously.

---

> 2888

Yes Dave, now there's two of them. You are surrounded by eternal children.

(I started to wonder from Dave's comment on 2886 - did he in fact still age before becoming his Ultime Self, how ever slightly?)

---

> 2889

... Oh, it's a BEST NARRATOR mug. Dave's getting two-timed (*cough*) here, now he knows what Jade felt like with the Karkat's.

---

> 2890

This must be when Jade took back control of her body! That must've been a mental whiplash to Calliope. Though she did do a good job dividing her attention over those two "narrative frames".

[riverboundao3ff]

Riverbound, Chapter 1

Your name is MSPA READER, and you are currently vibing outside of the known multiverse.

Well, you don’t really use that name anymore, on account of it not actually being a name. Names sound something like Emily, or Muhammad, or Patrick, or Shamita, or a million other put-together syllables and sounds.

Names are something personal. A title is anything but.

You do have a new title, though, one you like much better.

The Guardian.

Because that’s what you became when you yoinked the timeline away from the control of Ultimate Dirk and that Director lady, whoever she was. You looked Canon-With-A-Capital-C in its ugly face, spit on it, and then bent over to wipe your ass with the fabric of reality itself. Out of desperation, love, and most importantly sheer spite, you took it upon yourself to defy fate so that there is at least one timeline where everybody gets to live happy lives. This was victory at its finest. This is what it felt like to finally get everything you wanted. Your friends? Safe. Multiverse? Secure. Hotel? Trivago.

In the vast and rich history of pro-gamer moves, you believe you might have made the most powerful move of all.

After using the Green Sun- no, sorry, the Green Sun to make your own timeline, you did what any other person would do and took a big fuckin’ snooze, curling up around your universe like a mama cat protecting her kittens. You earned it.

And, if you were being completely honest with yourself, that’s how you would have spent the rest of time.

It’s not like you didn’t want to live. No, living was good. It’s just… you were so damn tired. You’re tired of always running from place to place, person to person, era to era. You’re tired of being injured, scared, and alone no matter how many friends you made. All the gods of the Furthest Rings know you’d gone through more in like a year than most people go through during their entire lives. Couldn’t a bitch just enjoy eternity in the void?

Apparently not.

The dreams began innocently enough. Playing video games with Dave, John, and Karkat. Exploring Jade’s island with Jake and Bec. Baking with Jane. Kanaya teaching you and Sollux how to sew. FLARP-ing with Vriska.

Laying side-by-side with Roxy as you two watched the sun rise. Role-playing with Nepeta. Movie night with Eridan. Getting high off your ass with Gamzee and scaring the shit out of some teal visiting their kismesis a few hives away. Discussing politics with Feferi.

Escaping that hellhouse the Soleil twins called their home. Watching those eerie lights in the corpsefield beside Fozzer. You and Remele beating a purpleblood to death.

You barely realize how nightmares had invaded your mind until you woke up with Karako’s yowls of terror in your ears. You didn’t have ears anymore, though, or a physical form, so it just sounded like your favorite clown son was screaming all around you in the abyss.

Okay. This was fine. This was fine, you kept telling yourself. After everything that’s happened to you, you were bound to develop PTSD at some point. That was completely natural.

Except this wasn’t just PTSD. This was something else entirely, because even when you were awake you saw the faces of your oldest friends burning in your mind’s eye. Something churned in your gut, ancient and primal. It was a feeling you knew well, and was usually accompanied by you launching yourself into whatever stupid shit you found next. The longer you tried to ignore it, the stronger it became, until you were permanently wrapped up around yourself like the most pathetic ball of Guardian that had to have ever existed.

You knew long before you actually put words to what was going on.

Of course. Of course it wasn’t over, because why would you ever get to have anything for yourself? Why would you ever get to just rest? For the first time in… who even knows how long, you sob hysterically into the sleeves of your hoodie.

A galaxy twinkles in the outer shell of your universe, lighting up the zig-zag sign on your chest. Mallek’s lazy smile fills your thoughts. If at all possible, everything hurts even more, until you can’t even cry to let out the pain.

Did he miss you? Did all of them miss you?

Oh, God, Daraya. You promised her you’d take her to Earth sometime, and then you just totally fucking vanished from the face of Alternia. What a fucking dick move. Granted, you hadn’t meant to do it, but still!

Your traitor-asshole brain reminds you of the fact that all of them are dead now. As in, Tyzias tried to lead a rebellion against the Alternian Empire, and then they all got killed. Your traitor-asshole brain also notes that it’s all your fault for encouraging those kinds of ideas.

Way to go, you absolute tool.

Except… they don’t have to be gone. You are the Guardian of your universe, and you make the rules. It feels so wrong to even think about it, but… yeah. You’re basically a god now. You can do what you want and nobody has the power to stop you.

Which brings about a whole new plethora of fuckery. If you were to go back, if you were to rewrite history… are you any better than Ultimate Dirk? Granted, you’d do it out of love, not because you’re a power-hungry bastard, but still. Shenanigans of this level are not to be taken lightly, even by sad Guardians with absolutely nothing better to do.

You sleep on it, which of course results in you waking up bawling like a baby as you remember the best roleplay sesh of your life, which was when Wanshi proudly gave your Soldier Purrbeasts OC her full name: Twinklemoon. You had a Soldier Purrbeasts OC named Twinklemoon. That’s why you were crying.

That’s it. You couldn’t stand it anymore.

You need advice, and you know exactly where to get it.

<>

You find her on the 8rigantine, furiously scribbling something down on a chart with a bunch of little figurines in the middle of it. You know better than to just haul your little friendslut ass up there while Vriska Serket is in the zone, so instead you knock on the hull and call up to her.

“Hello! Lady Spinneret, an old friend is in dire need of some advice!”

It takes about two seconds for a familiar spiky head to poke over the side of the deck. Vriska’s one dark eye lights up upon meeting your gaze, followed by a toothy grin that’s both menacing and completely genuine. She reaches back to grab something behind her. A rope ladder drops down and nearly nails you in the noggin, just like it did whenever you dropped by to FLARP with her.

“What the hell, bitch! I missed you!” she yells. Despite everything, you can’t help but smile. Vriska’s wild personality and no-bullshit attitude was just what you needed.

You’re very proud of yourself when you scale the ladder with ease and scramble up onto the deck without getting too much out of breath. With the amount of insane shit you’ve gotten yourself into during your travels, getting into shape came pretty easily. You’ve been told by several reliable sources that your legs are to die for.

“The 8-ball foretold your arrival. I brought snacks.” Vriska points to a bag next to her chart, not looking up from where she was drawing an impressively detailed kraken-looking thing. “Eat something before you start gabbing.”

That was sound logic, so you drag the back closer to you and start rooting around for something good. You find a bag of stinkroot chips, open that bad boy up, and start munching. Damn, did it feel good to eat something, and to also have a corporeal body to eat things with.

As you gather your thoughts, the hairs on the back of your neck prickle with the sensation of somebody’s eyes on you. You instantly look up to see Vriska staring at you. Her expression is blank, but her good eye held all the energy of a thunderstorm.

You swallow your chips. “What is it?”

“You look… different,” she says, setting down her pencil. “It’s like I can really see you now.”

“Huh?”

Vriska huffs, but she still doesn’t take her eye off you. “Before, you kinda looked like… I dunno, like somebody cut out a whole in reality and shoved the silhouette of a person inside? Like, I know what you looked like, but I couldn’t tell you the color of your hair, or what facial structure you have, or, like… dude, you have freckles.”

“I have freckles?” You reach up and touch your cheekbone, feeling the soft skin. Oh, hey, there’s some acne. Dammit. “Are they cute?”

“Sure? I think freckles are more of a human thing, so you’d have to ask John or Jade or whatever. Also you’re blonde, like Rose,” she tells you, thoughtfully scratching at her chin. “You’re still short as fuck, though. I could probably punt you off the poop deck.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Congrats on not looking like a hole in reality.”

You finish off your chips and flop back to stare at the night sky. With all the time you’ve spent on Alternia, you can now name a lot of the constellations. Right now, the Empress’s Trident poked up at a forty-five degree angle behind the pink moon. “I think I know how we can overthrow the Alternian Empire.”

Vriska’s pencil falls out of her hand.

You continue. “Have you read any records on a rebellion that occurred about… like, fifteen sweeps ago? I don’t know the exact date.”

Vriska’s mouth opens and closes a couple of times, and then she nods. “I sure fuckin’ did. Sollux did some of his mumbo-jumbo and got me some documents. He called it an early wriggling day present, but I know he wants to help my little… agenda. How do you even know…?”

“Because I helped encourage the right people to do it. I was there, Vriska. Those kids were my friends, and now they’re dead.”

She’s silent for a moment. “The leader was a teal named Tyzias.”

Your eyes are hot with tears. “I knew her. We met because she tripped on the sidewalk while carrying a shitload of her homework, and I helped her pick it all up when it went everywhere. She had a matesprit named-”

“Stelsa,” Vriska mutters. “Holy shit. She worked closely with some jades who lead their little army. They caused a hell of a lot of damage to the Empire before it all went down, I’ll give them that.”

Neither of you speak for a long moment, which you appreciate as you try and hold your messy self together. The longer you think about your old friends and all the good times you had with them, the more you’re certain about what you want to do.

They deserve to be here.

Your blood pressure spikes just thinking about it.

It’s Vriska who puts your thoughts into words. “You want to go back and help them win the rebellion.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s fucking crazy.”

“Yeah.”

She scooches over to you so she can stare down into your soul. “If we combine our resources and collaborate back and forth between the past and the future, we can make it so less people die. We could even take out that pathetic bitch of an Heiress they had back in the day. With your powers…”

“It’s possible I could compact time itself to create a world where we… where we can make things right. We could even help Feferi…”

You can’t bring yourself to say it in case you jinxed something, but by the look on Vriska’s face, she knows what you mean.

“It could work,” she breathes.

Slowly, you sit back up. Your heart was pounding so hard you felt it in your skull. “How do you think the others would feel about it?”

“Oh, they’d shit themselves,” Vriska snorts. “A full-scale rebellion across time and space?”

“True.”

“But it could work!” she repeats, staring into empty space.

“And they’d have a huge advantage they never had before. Me,” you say, talking to yourself more than to Vriska. You’d created this universe with your own power. It was time to protect it. “Vriska, I need to go before I chicken out. Tell the others what’s happening and that I’m sorry if this all goes to shit.”

“Wait!”

You look back at her as she grabs your arm, claws digging into the fabric of your hoodie. “I… you need supplies. No frickin’ way you’re going anywhere without at least a hydration flask.”

You know what she’s trying to say, and your chest fills up with all the warmth of a bonfire. God, you love this absolute bitch of a kid.

Vriska drags you to your feet, and then you’re both sprinting for her hive.

Amazingly, you don’t die trying to keep up with the cerulean as you charge up the stairs to her respiteblock together. You’re still out of breath by the time you reach the top, though, but Vriska’s already grabbing a backpack and tossing shit into it.

“Get me that jacket off the door,” she orders as she tosses in what looks like a small medical kit. You obey and throw her the jacket, the black leather one with the bright red hood.

She then waves you over, and you slip around her desk to see what’s up. In her hands is a black sheath, with a matching handle sticking out at the top.

Vriska pulls the sheath off to reveal the blade: a brilliant silver-blue metal that nearly glowed in the darkness. It’s incredibly beautiful and very scary to look at.

“I’ve had this thing forever, so I’m giving it to you, okay? Don’t fucking lose it. Press that little gray button at the top of the handle to heat up the blade. Good for starting fires and cauterizing wounds.” She shoves the jacket into the backpack and hands you the dagger.

“Vriska, I don’t know what to say,” you begin, but she smacks you.

“Shut up and strap it to your belt. You better come back soon. I want a detailed report on everything. Single-spaced,” she snaps.

You grin. “Yes, ma’am. I should be back, in like, ten nights. Maybe eleven.”

“Ten,” Vriska growls. “I’m coming for your ass otherwise.”

“Noted. Tell everybody I said hi.”

“Obviously.”

You reach into that little part of yourself, which in turn reaches back out into that chaotic river that is the flow of time. You throw the anchor down and wade upstream. It’s a little rougher than usual, but you won’t let that stop you. There was no turning back now.

Time travel is always like trying to hit a moving target, but you have great aim, and when you find what you’re looking for you feel your face split into another huge smile. There’s nothing different about this part of the river than any other, but you know. When it comes to the people you care about, you always know.

Everything feels more real to you than it has in years. Two moons shine even brighter in the sky, the chilly air stinging your face, and you’re no troll but it still feels like you’re going home.

You open your eyes.

“Ten nights,” you say to Vriska, and you let yourself fall through the current.

Your name is MSPA READER, and you are currently vibing outside of the known multiverse.

Well, you don’t really use that name anymore, on account of it not actually being a name. Names sound something like Emily, or Muhammad, or Patrick, or Shamita, or a million other put-together syllables and sounds.

Names are something personal. A title is anything but.

You do have a new title, though, one you like much better.

The Guardian.

Because that’s what you became when you yoinked the timeline away from the control of Ultimate Dirk and that Director lady, whoever she was. You looked Canon-With-A-Capital-C in its ugly face, spit on it, and then bent over to wipe your ass with the fabric of reality itself. Out of desperation, love, and most importantly sheer spite, you took it upon yourself to defy fate so that there is at least one timeline where everybody gets to live happy lives. This was victory at its finest. This is what it felt like to finally get everything you wanted. Your friends? Safe. Multiverse? Secure. Hotel? Trivago.

In the vast and rich history of pro-gamer moves, you believe you might have made the most powerful move of all.

After using the Green Sun- no, sorry, the Green Sun to make your own timeline, you did what any other person would do and took a big fuckin’ snooze, curling up around your universe like a mama cat protecting her kittens. You earned it.

And, if you were being completely honest with yourself, that’s how you would have spent the rest of time.

It’s not like you didn’t want to live. No, living was good. It’s just… you were so damn tired. You’re tired of always running from place to place, person to person, era to era. You’re tired of being injured, scared, and alone no matter how many friends you made. All the gods of the Furthest Rings know you’d gone through more in like a year than most people go through during their entire lives. Couldn’t a bitch just enjoy eternity in the void?

Apparently not.

The dreams began innocently enough. Playing video games with Dave, John, and Karkat. Exploring Jade’s island with Jake and Bec. Baking with Jane. Kanaya teaching you and Sollux how to sew. FLARP-ing with Vriska.

Laying side-by-side with Roxy as you two watched the sun rise. Role-playing with Nepeta. Movie night with Eridan. Getting high off your ass with Gamzee and scaring the shit out of some teal visiting their kismesis a few hives away. Discussing politics with Feferi.

Escaping that hellhouse the Soleil twins called their home. Watching those eerie lights in the corpsefield beside Fozzer. You and Remele beating a purpleblood to death.

You barely realize how nightmares had invaded your mind until you woke up with Karako’s yowls of terror in your ears. You didn’t have ears anymore, though, or a physical form, so it just sounded like your favorite clown son was screaming all around you in the abyss.

Okay. This was fine. This was fine, you kept telling yourself. After everything that’s happened to you, you were bound to develop PTSD at some point. That was completely natural.

Except this wasn’t just PTSD. This was something else entirely, because even when you were awake you saw the faces of your oldest friends burning in your mind’s eye. Something churned in your gut, ancient and primal. It was a feeling you knew well, and was usually accompanied by you launching yourself into whatever stupid shit you found next. The longer you tried to ignore it, the stronger it became, until you were permanently wrapped up around yourself like the most pathetic ball of Guardian that had to have ever existed.

You knew long before you actually put words to what was going on.

Of course. Of course it wasn’t over, because why would you ever get to have anything for yourself? Why would you ever get to just rest? For the first time in… who even knows how long, you sob hysterically into the sleeves of your hoodie.

A galaxy twinkles in the outer shell of your universe, lighting up the zig-zag sign on your chest. Mallek’s lazy smile fills your thoughts. If at all possible, everything hurts even more, until you can’t even cry to let out the pain.

Did he miss you? Did all of them miss you?

Oh, God, Daraya. You promised her you’d take her to Earth sometime, and then you just totally fucking vanished from the face of Alternia. What a fucking dick move. Granted, you hadn’t meant to do it, but still!

Your traitor-asshole brain reminds you of the fact that all of them are dead now. As in, Tyzias tried to lead a rebellion against the Alternian Empire, and then they all got killed. Your traitor-asshole brain also notes that it’s all your fault for encouraging those kinds of ideas.

Way to go, you absolute tool.

Except… they don’t have to be gone. You are the Guardian of your universe, and you make the rules. It feels so wrong to even think about it, but… yeah. You’re basically a god now. You can do what you want and nobody has the power to stop you.

Which brings about a whole new plethora of fuckery. If you were to go back, if you were to rewrite history… are you any better than Ultimate Dirk? Granted, you’d do it out of love, not because you’re a power-hungry bastard, but still. Shenanigans of this level are not to be taken lightly, even by sad Guardians with absolutely nothing better to do.

You sleep on it, which of course results in you waking up bawling like a baby as you remember the best roleplay sesh of your life, which was when Wanshi proudly gave your Soldier Purrbeasts OC her full name: Twinklemoon. You had a Soldier Purrbeasts OC named Twinklemoon. That’s why you were crying.

That’s it. You couldn’t stand it anymore.

You need advice, and you know exactly where to get it.

<>

You find her on the 8rigantine, furiously scribbling something down on a chart with a bunch of little figurines in the middle of it. You know better than to just haul your little friendslut ass up there while Vriska Serket is in the zone, so instead you knock on the hull and call up to her.

“Hello! Lady Spinneret, an old friend is in dire need of some advice!”

It takes about two seconds for a familiar spiky head to poke over the side of the deck. Vriska’s one dark eye lights up upon meeting your gaze, followed by a toothy grin that’s both menacing and completely genuine. She reaches back to grab something behind her. A rope ladder drops down and nearly nails you in the noggin, just like it did whenever you dropped by to FLARP with her.

“What the hell, bitch! I missed you!” she yells. Despite everything, you can’t help but smile. Vriska’s wild personality and no-bullshit attitude was just what you needed.

You’re very proud of yourself when you scale the ladder with ease and scramble up onto the deck without getting too much out of breath. With the amount of insane shit you’ve gotten yourself into during your travels, getting into shape came pretty easily. You’ve been told by several reliable sources that your legs are to die for.

“The 8-ball foretold your arrival. I brought snacks.” Vriska points to a bag next to her chart, not looking up from where she was drawing an impressively detailed kraken-looking thing. “Eat something before you start gabbing.”

That was sound logic, so you drag the back closer to you and start rooting around for something good. You find a bag of stinkroot chips, open that bad boy up, and start munching. Damn, did it feel good to eat something, and to also have a corporeal body to eat things with.

As you gather your thoughts, the hairs on the back of your neck prickle with the sensation of somebody’s eyes on you. You instantly look up to see Vriska staring at you. Her expression is blank, but her good eye held all the energy of a thunderstorm.

You swallow your chips. “What is it?”

“You look… different,” she says, setting down her pencil. “It’s like I can really see you now.”

“Huh?”

Vriska huffs, but she still doesn’t take her eye off you. “Before, you kinda looked like… I dunno, like somebody cut out a whole in reality and shoved the silhouette of a person inside? Like, I know what you looked like, but I couldn’t tell you the color of your hair, or what facial structure you have, or, like… dude, you have freckles.”

“I have freckles?” You reach up and touch your cheekbone, feeling the soft skin. Oh, hey, there’s some acne. Dammit. “Are they cute?”

“Sure? I think freckles are more of a human thing, so you’d have to ask John or Jade or whatever. Also you’re blonde, like Rose,” she tells you, thoughtfully scratching at her chin. “You’re still short as fuck, though. I could probably punt you off the poop deck.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Congrats on not looking like a hole in reality.”

You finish off your chips and flop back to stare at the night sky. With all the time you’ve spent on Alternia, you can now name a lot of the constellations. Right now, the Empress’s Trident poked up at a forty-five degree angle behind the pink moon. “I think I know how we can overthrow the Alternian Empire.”

Vriska’s pencil falls out of her hand.

You continue. “Have you read any records on a rebellion that occurred about… like, fifteen sweeps ago? I don’t know the exact date.”

Vriska’s mouth opens and closes a couple of times, and then she nods. “I sure fuckin’ did. Sollux did some of his mumbo-jumbo and got me some documents. He called it an early wriggling day present, but I know he wants to help my little… agenda. How do you even know…?”

“Because I helped encourage the right people to do it. I was there, Vriska. Those kids were my friends, and now they’re dead.”

She’s silent for a moment. “The leader was a teal named Tyzias.”

Your eyes are hot with tears. “I knew her. We met because she tripped on the sidewalk while carrying a shitload of her homework, and I helped her pick it all up when it went everywhere. She had a matesprit named-”

“Stelsa,” Vriska mutters. “Holy shit. She worked closely with some jades who lead their little army. They caused a hell of a lot of damage to the Empire before it all went down, I’ll give them that.”

Neither of you speak for a long moment, which you appreciate as you try and hold your messy self together. The longer you think about your old friends and all the good times you had with them, the more you’re certain about what you want to do.

They deserve to be here.

Your blood pressure spikes just thinking about it.

It’s Vriska who puts your thoughts into words. “You want to go back and help them win the rebellion.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s fucking crazy.”

“Yeah.”

She scooches over to you so she can stare down into your soul. “If we combine our resources and collaborate back and forth between the past and the future, we can make it so less people die. We could even take out that pathetic bitch of an Heiress they had back in the day. With your powers…”

“It’s possible I could compact time itself to create a world where we… where we can make things right. We could even help Feferi…”

You can’t bring yourself to say it in case you jinxed something, but by the look on Vriska’s face, she knows what you mean.

“It could work,” she breathes.

Slowly, you sit back up. Your heart was pounding so hard you felt it in your skull. “How do you think the others would feel about it?”

“Oh, they’d shit themselves,” Vriska snorts. “A full-scale rebellion across time and space?”

“True.”

“But it could work!” she repeats, staring into empty space.

“And they’d have a huge advantage they never had before. Me,” you say, talking to yourself more than to Vriska. You’d created this universe with your own power. It was time to protect it. “Vriska, I need to go before I chicken out. Tell the others what’s happening and that I’m sorry if this all goes to shit.”

“Wait!”

You look back at her as she grabs your arm, claws digging into the fabric of your hoodie. “I… you need supplies. No frickin’ way you’re going anywhere without at least a hydration flask.”

You know what she’s trying to say, and your chest fills up with all the warmth of a bonfire. God, you love this absolute bitch of a kid.

Vriska drags you to your feet, and then you’re both sprinting for her hive.

Amazingly, you don’t die trying to keep up with the cerulean as you charge up the stairs to her respiteblock together. You’re still out of breath by the time you reach the top, though, but Vriska’s already grabbing a backpack and tossing shit into it.

“Get me that jacket off the door,” she orders as she tosses in what looks like a small medical kit. You obey and throw her the jacket, the black leather one with the bright red hood.

She then waves you over, and you slip around her desk to see what’s up. In her hands is a black sheath, with a matching handle sticking out at the top.

Vriska pulls the sheath off to reveal the blade: a brilliant silver-blue metal that nearly glowed in the darkness. It’s incredibly beautiful and very scary to look at.

“I’ve had this thing forever, so I’m giving it to you, okay? Don’t fucking lose it. Press that little gray button at the top of the handle to heat up the blade. Good for starting fires and cauterizing wounds.” She shoves the jacket into the backpack and hands you the dagger.

“Vriska, I don’t know what to say,” you begin, but she smacks you.

“Shut up and strap it to your belt. You better come back soon. I want a detailed report on everything. Single-spaced,” she snaps.

You grin. “Yes, ma’am. I should be back, in like, ten nights. Maybe eleven.”

“Ten,” Vriska growls. “I’m coming for your ass otherwise.”

“Noted. Tell everybody I said hi.”

“Obviously.”

You reach into that little part of yourself, which in turn reaches back out into that chaotic river that is the flow of time. You throw the anchor down and wade upstream. It’s a little rougher than usual, but you won’t let that stop you. There was no turning back now.

Time travel is always like trying to hit a moving target, but you have great aim, and when you find what you’re looking for you feel your face split into another huge smile. There’s nothing different about this part of the river than any other, but you know. When it comes to the people you care about, you always know.

Everything feels more real to you than it has in years. Two moons shine even brighter in the sky, the chilly air stinging your face, and you’re no troll but it still feels like you’re going home.

You open your eyes.

“Ten nights,” you say to Vriska, and you let yourself fall through the current.

Your name is MSPA READER, and you are currently vibing outside of the known multiverse.

Well, you don’t really use that name anymore, on account of it not actually being a name. Names sound something like Emily, or Muhammad, or Patrick, or Shamita, or a million other put-together syllables and sounds.

Names are something personal. A title is anything but.

You do have a new title, though, one you like much better.

The Guardian.

Because that’s what you became when you yoinked the timeline away from the control of Ultimate Dirk and that Director lady, whoever she was. You looked Canon-With-A-Capital-C in its ugly face, spit on it, and then bent over to wipe your ass with the fabric of reality itself. Out of desperation, love, and most importantly sheer spite, you took it upon yourself to defy fate so that there is at least one timeline where everybody gets to live happy lives. This was victory at its finest. This is what it felt like to finally get everything you wanted. Your friends? Safe. Multiverse? Secure. Hotel? Trivago.

In the vast and rich history of pro-gamer moves, you believe you might have made the most powerful move of all.

After using the Green Sun- no, sorry, the Green Sun to make your own timeline, you did what any other person would do and took a big fuckin’ snooze, curling up around your universe like a mama cat protecting her kittens. You earned it.

And, if you were being completely honest with yourself, that’s how you would have spent the rest of time.

It’s not like you didn’t want to live. No, living was good. It’s just… you were so damn tired. You’re tired of always running from place to place, person to person, era to era. You’re tired of being injured, scared, and alone no matter how many friends you made. All the gods of the Furthest Rings know you’d gone through more in like a year than most people go through during their entire lives. Couldn’t a bitch just enjoy eternity in the void?

Apparently not.

The dreams began innocently enough. Playing video games with Dave, John, and Karkat. Exploring Jade’s island with Jake and Bec. Baking with Jane. Kanaya teaching you and Sollux how to sew. FLARP-ing with Vriska.

Laying side-by-side with Roxy as you two watched the sun rise. Role-playing with Nepeta. Movie night with Eridan. Getting high off your ass with Gamzee and scaring the shit out of some teal visiting their kismesis a few hives away. Discussing politics with Feferi.

Escaping that hellhouse the Soleil twins called their home. Watching those eerie lights in the corpsefield beside Fozzer. You and Remele beating a purpleblood to death.

You barely realize how nightmares had invaded your mind until you woke up with Karako’s yowls of terror in your ears. You didn’t have ears anymore, though, or a physical form, so it just sounded like your favorite clown son was screaming all around you in the abyss.

Okay. This was fine. This was fine, you kept telling yourself. After everything that’s happened to you, you were bound to develop PTSD at some point. That was completely natural.

Except this wasn’t just PTSD. This was something else entirely, because even when you were awake you saw the faces of your oldest friends burning in your mind’s eye. Something churned in your gut, ancient and primal. It was a feeling you knew well, and was usually accompanied by you launching yourself into whatever stupid shit you found next. The longer you tried to ignore it, the stronger it became, until you were permanently wrapped up around yourself like the most pathetic ball of Guardian that had to have ever existed.

You knew long before you actually put words to what was going on.

Of course. Of course it wasn’t over, because why would you ever get to have anything for yourself? Why would you ever get to just rest? For the first time in… who even knows how long, you sob hysterically into the sleeves of your hoodie.

A galaxy twinkles in the outer shell of your universe, lighting up the zig-zag sign on your chest. Mallek’s lazy smile fills your thoughts. If at all possible, everything hurts even more, until you can’t even cry to let out the pain.

Did he miss you? Did all of them miss you?

Oh, God, Daraya. You promised her you’d take her to Earth sometime, and then you just totally fucking vanished from the face of Alternia. What a fucking dick move. Granted, you hadn’t meant to do it, but still!

Your traitor-asshole brain reminds you of the fact that all of them are dead now. As in, Tyzias tried to lead a rebellion against the Alternian Empire, and then they all got killed. Your traitor-asshole brain also notes that it’s all your fault for encouraging those kinds of ideas.

Way to go, you absolute tool.

Except… they don’t have to be gone. You are the Guardian of your universe, and you make the rules. It feels so wrong to even think about it, but… yeah. You’re basically a god now. You can do what you want and nobody has the power to stop you.

Which brings about a whole new plethora of fuckery. If you were to go back, if you were to rewrite history… are you any better than Ultimate Dirk? Granted, you’d do it out of love, not because you’re a power-hungry bastard, but still. Shenanigans of this level are not to be taken lightly, even by sad Guardians with absolutely nothing better to do.

You sleep on it, which of course results in you waking up bawling like a baby as you remember the best roleplay sesh of your life, which was when Wanshi proudly gave your Soldier Purrbeasts OC her full name: Twinklemoon. You had a Soldier Purrbeasts OC named Twinklemoon. That’s why you were crying.

That’s it. You couldn’t stand it anymore.

You need advice, and you know exactly where to get it.

<>

You find her on the 8rigantine, furiously scribbling something down on a chart with a bunch of little figurines in the middle of it. You know better than to just haul your little friendslut ass up there while Vriska Serket is in the zone, so instead you knock on the hull and call up to her.

“Hello! Lady Spinneret, an old friend is in dire need of some advice!”

It takes about two seconds for a familiar spiky head to poke over the side of the deck. Vriska’s one dark eye lights up upon meeting your gaze, followed by a toothy grin that’s both menacing and completely genuine. She reaches back to grab something behind her. A rope ladder drops down and nearly nails you in the noggin, just like it did whenever you dropped by to FLARP with her.

“What the hell, bitch! I missed you!” she yells. Despite everything, you can’t help but smile. Vriska’s wild personality and no-bullshit attitude was just what you needed.

You’re very proud of yourself when you scale the ladder with ease and scramble up onto the deck without getting too much out of breath. With the amount of insane shit you’ve gotten yourself into during your travels, getting into shape came pretty easily. You’ve been told by several reliable sources that your legs are to die for.

“The 8-ball foretold your arrival. I brought snacks.” Vriska points to a bag next to her chart, not looking up from where she was drawing an impressively detailed kraken-looking thing. “Eat something before you start gabbing.”

That was sound logic, so you drag the back closer to you and start rooting around for something good. You find a bag of stinkroot chips, open that bad boy up, and start munching. Damn, did it feel good to eat something, and to also have a corporeal body to eat things with.

As you gather your thoughts, the hairs on the back of your neck prickle with the sensation of somebody’s eyes on you. You instantly look up to see Vriska staring at you. Her expression is blank, but her good eye held all the energy of a thunderstorm.

You swallow your chips. “What is it?”

“You look… different,” she says, setting down her pencil. “It’s like I can really see you now.”

“Huh?”

Vriska huffs, but she still doesn’t take her eye off you. “Before, you kinda looked like… I dunno, like somebody cut out a whole in reality and shoved the silhouette of a person inside? Like, I know what you looked like, but I couldn’t tell you the color of your hair, or what facial structure you have, or, like… dude, you have freckles.”

“I have freckles?” You reach up and touch your cheekbone, feeling the soft skin. Oh, hey, there’s some acne. Dammit. “Are they cute?”

“Sure? I think freckles are more of a human thing, so you’d have to ask John or Jade or whatever. Also you’re blonde, like Rose,” she tells you, thoughtfully scratching at her chin. “You’re still short as fuck, though. I could probably punt you off the poop deck.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Congrats on not looking like a hole in reality.”

You finish off your chips and flop back to stare at the night sky. With all the time you’ve spent on Alternia, you can now name a lot of the constellations. Right now, the Empress’s Trident poked up at a forty-five degree angle behind the pink moon. “I think I know how we can overthrow the Alternian Empire.”

Vriska’s pencil falls out of her hand.

You continue. “Have you read any records on a rebellion that occurred about… like, fifteen sweeps ago? I don’t know the exact date.”

Vriska’s mouth opens and closes a couple of times, and then she nods. “I sure fuckin’ did. Sollux did some of his mumbo-jumbo and got me some documents. He called it an early wriggling day present, but I know he wants to help my little… agenda. How do you even know…?”

“Because I helped encourage the right people to do it. I was there, Vriska. Those kids were my friends, and now they’re dead.”

She’s silent for a moment. “The leader was a teal named Tyzias.”

Your eyes are hot with tears. “I knew her. We met because she tripped on the sidewalk while carrying a shitload of her homework, and I helped her pick it all up when it went everywhere. She had a matesprit named-”

“Stelsa,” Vriska mutters. “Holy shit. She worked closely with some jades who lead their little army. They caused a hell of a lot of damage to the Empire before it all went down, I’ll give them that.”

Neither of you speak for a long moment, which you appreciate as you try and hold your messy self together. The longer you think about your old friends and all the good times you had with them, the more you’re certain about what you want to do.

They deserve to be here.

Your blood pressure spikes just thinking about it.

It’s Vriska who puts your thoughts into words. “You want to go back and help them win the rebellion.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s fucking crazy.”

“Yeah.”

She scooches over to you so she can stare down into your soul. “If we combine our resources and collaborate back and forth between the past and the future, we can make it so less people die. We could even take out that pathetic bitch of an Heiress they had back in the day. With your powers…”

“It’s possible I could compact time itself to create a world where we… where we can make things right. We could even help Feferi…”

You can’t bring yourself to say it in case you jinxed something, but by the look on Vriska’s face, she knows what you mean.

“It could work,” she breathes.

Slowly, you sit back up. Your heart was pounding so hard you felt it in your skull. “How do you think the others would feel about it?”

“Oh, they’d shit themselves,” Vriska snorts. “A full-scale rebellion across time and space?”

“True.”

“But it could work!” she repeats, staring into empty space.

“And they’d have a huge advantage they never had before. Me,” you say, talking to yourself more than to Vriska. You’d created this universe with your own power. It was time to protect it. “Vriska, I need to go before I chicken out. Tell the others what’s happening and that I’m sorry if this all goes to shit.”

“Wait!”

You look back at her as she grabs your arm, claws digging into the fabric of your hoodie. “I… you need supplies. No frickin’ way you’re going anywhere without at least a hydration flask.”

You know what she’s trying to say, and your chest fills up with all the warmth of a bonfire. God, you love this absolute bitch of a kid.

Vriska drags you to your feet, and then you’re both sprinting for her hive.

Amazingly, you don’t die trying to keep up with the cerulean as you charge up the stairs to her respiteblock together. You’re still out of breath by the time you reach the top, though, but Vriska’s already grabbing a backpack and tossing shit into it.

“Get me that jacket off the door,” she orders as she tosses in what looks like a small medical kit. You obey and throw her the jacket, the black leather one with the bright red hood.

She then waves you over, and you slip around her desk to see what’s up. In her hands is a black sheath, with a matching handle sticking out at the top.

Vriska pulls the sheath off to reveal the blade: a brilliant silver-blue metal that nearly glowed in the darkness. It’s incredibly beautiful and very scary to look at.

“I’ve had this thing forever, so I’m giving it to you, okay? Don’t fucking lose it. Press that little gray button at the top of the handle to heat up the blade. Good for starting fires and cauterizing wounds.” She shoves the jacket into the backpack and hands you the dagger.

“Vriska, I don’t know what to say,” you begin, but she smacks you.

“Shut up and strap it to your belt. You better come back soon. I want a detailed report on everything. Single-spaced,” she snaps.

You grin. “Yes, ma’am. I should be back, in like, ten nights. Maybe eleven.”

“Ten,” Vriska growls. “I’m coming for your ass otherwise.”

“Noted. Tell everybody I said hi.”

“Obviously.”

You reach into that little part of yourself, which in turn reaches back out into that chaotic river that is the flow of time. You throw the anchor down and wade upstream. It’s a little rougher than usual, but you won’t let that stop you. There was no turning back now.

Time travel is always like trying to hit a moving target, but you have great aim, and when you find what you’re looking for you feel your face split into another huge smile. There’s nothing different about this part of the river than any other, but you know. When it comes to the people you care about, you always know.

Everything feels more real to you than it has in years. Two moons shine even brighter in the sky, the chilly air stinging your face, and you’re no troll but it still feels like you’re going home.

You open your eyes.

“Ten nights,” you say to Vriska, and you let yourself fall through the current.

[mtjester]

New 8eginnings

Contractstuck: AO3 | Tumblr

The night buzzed with insects. As usual, the air was hot and humid, even inside the hotel Terezi, Tavros, and their band of “protectors” had set up as a semi-permanent residence. It wasn’t grand, but it wasn’t a hovel, either; Tavros had moved his mafia money into a new and not entirely legal location, and it was serving them well in their exile. Terezi had covered their tracks thoroughly, partially with the help of Sollux. No one, not even Rufioh, not even the mafia, knew where they were. They could last months at the rate they were going, living “the good life” off the beaten road in the tropics.

They laid next to each other on one of their beds, staring up at the ceiling. Terezi held two sealed envelopes in her hand, a habit she had developed lately.

“Can you remember what they looked like?” Tavros asked, ending the long silence.

“No,” she said. “I can remember everything that happened, but they’re just shadows now.”

“Yeah...for me, too. I can’t remember their voices or anything.” Tavros glanced at Terezi as she drew in a long sigh. “So, on a scale of one to ten, what is the update on your emotions for today?”

Terezi thought for a moment and finally settled on, “Four.”

“Wow, that’s kind of low. What, um...what are you thinking? Are you...regretting our decision more than usual?”

“It’s not regret, Tavros,” Terezi said. “We did what we needed to do.”

“Yes, that’s true, but sometimes what you need to do isn’t the same thing as what you want to do.”

“I wanted to do it. We both did.”

“Yes, but...also, we didn’t, because there were additional factors, and it’s okay to acknowledge those factors and feel emotions like regret.” He hesitated, looking at her now-blind eyes. She tightened the grip on the envelopes in her hand. “Remember what Jade and Dave said to us about having a healthy relationship with our emotions?”

“I’m really starting to wonder if they’re the ones who should be giving us emotional advice. The longer we’re with them, the more it’s clear they have their own problems.”

Tavros let out a small laugh. “Yeah, but Rose trained them, and she at least knows real things about psychology.”

“I have my doubts about her, too,” Terezi joked with a smirk. It wasn’t long before the smirk slipped. “But they are getting the job done, so I can’t rip on them too much. My guess is that Rose is almost done nullifying the contracts, and that’s why we’re losing our memories of them.”

“That makes sense. So, when we don’t remember them at all, even their names...that’s when the contracts are nullified entirely?”

“Seems that way.” Terezi gnawed on her lower lip for a moment and, with another sigh, finally said, “I guess...I do miss them. Even Gamzee. He sucked, but at least I could blame him when I made bad decisions. Now, it’s just me when I fuck up. And...I’m starting to think that I felt like I deserved it. All this tropical paradise stuff is beginning to rub me the wrong way. We ruined people’s lives, and here we are, drinking coconut water and going swimming with all the money our demons made for us, like this is the right thing to do. Blargh, I feel like shit just thinking about it.”

Tavros turned onto his side to look at her. “I try to avoid those feelings most of the time with all the denial I can muster,” he said. “If we feel that way, then we’ll return to the cycle of abuse that led us to do bad things in the first place, and it will just fuel the suffering in the world some more.”

“Which one of the idiot brigade fed you that line?” Terezi asked. 

“I forgot,” Tavros replied, laughing. “But I agree with the sentiment. We have to stay positive and practice self-love aggressively, even when we remember all of the things that we did to justify hating ourselves, or else we will go back to being terrible human beings who are easy for bad people, such as demons, to take advantage of.”

Terezi pressed her lips together into a grimace. “They make it sound so easy. ‘Just love yourself!’ Sure.”

“Well...that’s why we’re sticking together, even though we have no reason to be connected anymore, right? So that we can love each other aggressively when we can’t love ourselves,” Tavros said. He reached out and touched her hand so that she could read his sincerity. Her grimace slackened a bit.

“Yeah. That was the most competent thing the idiot brigade has taught us so far.” She intertwined her fingers with his. 

“Do they know that you call them the idiot brigade?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. Okay.” He laughed again. They fell back into a more comfortable silence.

“...Hey, Tavros?” Terezi said.

“Yeah?”

“Do you really want to open these envelopes again when all of this is over?”

“I...don’t know. Should we?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you want to, right?”

“I don’t know about that, either. Do you?”

“...I had fun with Gamzee,” Tavros said after a pause. “I got along with him. I wouldn’t mind talking to him again someday. And...you liked Vriska, right?”

“But would it be good for us?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t know either.” They looked down at the envelopes in Terezi’s hand. One had the name “Terezi” written on it in bold letters, and the other said, “Tavros.” She closed her fist around them, crumpling them up. “We don’t have to sign a contract with them again,” she said. “That’s what Rose said, at least.”

“We would just see them? Like how we can see Dave and Karkat?”

“When you know a demon’s sign, you can see them. You wouldn’t have to see Vriska, and I wouldn’t have to see Gamzee. And we wouldn’t have to feed them. That would make a difference.”

“Yeah...but what about temptations to have the boons a demon can provide, such as what landed us in this problem in the first place?”

Terezi looked down at the envelopes for a moment longer, and then she sat up and dropped them into the drawer of her side table. She closed it with a snap. “We’ll be strong,” she said, flopping back down onto the mattress. “We won’t open them until we’re sure we’re ready. Until we can really love ourselves first and won’t give into moments of weakness. We have a lot of work to do before then.”

“I was thinking, actually, about donating all the dirty money that I got, as a first step to redemption,” Tavros said. “That way, we can start to clear our consciousness and make up for all of our terrible sins of the past.”

“We can keep some of the money,” Terezi said with a wicked smirk. “Wealth never hurt anyone’s self-confidence.”

“Well...maybe a little bit. At least until we can go back to work again, if we can go back to work again…”

“We’ll figure something out,” Terezi said. “I can think of a couple gigs I could sort out for you. Maybe I could give law school another shot.”

“Really?”

“Why not? It can’t go worse than it did the first time.”

Tavros grinned. “Yes, good. Maybe we’ll be okay after all.”

“You know, I think we might be able to make this work.”

The insects continued to buzz outside, and eventually, the light in the hotel room extinguished. Outside, Karkat, Dave, Jade, and John sat on the curbside, dripping melting ice cream onto the road.

“So?” John asked, glancing sidelong at Karkat, who was gazing blankly into the distance.

“So what?” Karkat said.

“Is it working?”

“It’s been working. I’ve been hauling ass this whole trip.”

“I know, but is it working working? Are they going to be okay?”

“It’s none of your business!”

“I think it’s been working,” Jade said with confidence as she slurped up the dripping ice cream. “They’ve been really taking our lessons to heart lately! Right, Dave?”

“Sure have. Hell, they’ll be opening up a restaurant and buying a dog by the end of the week. Real new start material.”

John leaned back. “So how long do you think they’re going to need us?”

“Forever, I hope!” Jade said with a laugh. “This is the best vacation we’ve had in a long time!”

“It’s not a vacation!” Karkat snapped at the same time John said, “It’s the only vacation we’ve had in a long time.”

“I doubt they’ll be kicking us out any time soon either way,” Dave said. “We’re the shit. They’re all about hanging out with us. They hit us up every day.”

“They’re fun to be around, too,” Jade said. “Maybe we can still be friends when this is all over.”

“Maybe Rose will hire them,” John said with a shrug. 

“Wait, really?”

“I don’t know. She could!”

“She should! Hey, Dave, go tell Rose that she should hire them! Terezi even has some legal training! And Tavros...can probably do some office stuff and help Kanaya?”

“Hell yeah,” Dave said. “But after I finish this ice cream.”

“Why don’t you just call her yourself?” Karkat said. “You have a phone. It’s morning over there.”

“You’re right!” Jade pulled out her phone and dialed the number of the agency. They all leaned in as the phone rang, ready to give a glowing report. 

On the other side of the world, as Kanaya picked up the phone, Rose murmured the last spell of the ritual. Two contracts, pulsing with gold light, deepened to red as they caught fire. The embers floated away into the abyss, and, as they slept, the demonic symbols faded from Tavros and Terezi’s skin.

[snowtimeisbesttime]

Thoughts and questions on Pesterquest Volume 4! Tip: I am so fucking mad.

-Jade's theme is a remix of Carefree Victory, but with a few... different motifs. Veeery subtle, just a robotic voice rapping (no idea what it says though) and a dude beatboxing. Tirona also had a remix of the same song back in Friendsim...EDIT: This remix's got all the kids' instruments jamming out, and the beatboxing's Dave's addition. Still no idea about the robot rapping though.

-It was to be expected that Jade would be hit the hardest by our No SBURB AU; I thought she still dreamed on Prospit... she just can't catch a break, can't she now?

-(Turns out Pesterquest's No SBURB AU also goes for all human / Earth-based fanventures! That's actually kinda neat)

-...what is NOT neat is that unless MC moves people between universes (which they probably will do), it looks like we won't get Davekat nor Rosemary here.

-Good to know that the butterfly Grandpa Harley blasted to smithereens that one time likely wasn't an outlier in any way besides screentime!! wait fuck i wanted to go for the joke angle but MC says the island is very empty later on shit it's another layer of sadstuck now

-The kids register the MC (who actually has a name of their own!) as a blank kinda friendy loking thign (with a dash of First Guardian unpredictableness), though our pals from Friendsim saw them as a normal (as much as can be) alien... We'll have to wait and see how the Hivebent trolls see them (besides wondering wh0's that douchebag, of course)

-Aradia also gets floofy hair!!!!!!!!! And we get to see her!!!!!!! And Sollux too!!!!!!!! (what does she know though?????)

-Of course Jade's kinda jealous of our fancy space powers....... (crying cat)

-I can't believe the Manthro Chaps are just Jake's fursona(s)

-There's a few early / classic Homestuck jokes, like Jade's name being Gigi (because she's GG; I've got no idea what the story behind “Lynn” is) and Squiddles being a TV show! And of course Jade relates (without needing future knowledge) to Inkabelle, who spends years lost and alone but is rescued in the end...

-Bec remains a good boy and best friend, and of course he reminds us of a good girl and best lusus: Ladyy. And also of a rat bitch, unfortunately.

-HAUNTSWITCH (the town) IS MENTIONED!! And there's someone there making sure Jade gets stuff sent her way... whoever they are, they're probably the only person who knows where her island is.

-I'm positive this fic's already been written at least once, because I read it and it was great, but: alternate universe where Joey and/or Jude take Jade in when Grandpa dies, and she gets to have a happy childhood, and never ever believes she deserves to be alone and miserable and to suffer more than the average person- or at all even. (Jade and Joey could bond over their dislike of Grandpa's trophies... and the fact that he abandoned them both.)

-Considering this quote: “Frost floods your veins and nestles into your heart with a burning chill, for reasons that you don't quite understand”, when MC finally gets their memories it's going to be a Big Fucking Moment. I have a theory that they might be Timebound (and a Scorist) because they've kept Mallek's hoodie as opposed to all the clothes they got from other friends, but those are hints to Blood and Heart if I've ever seen some.

-She's been bottling up her emotions practically her entire life. And now we've destroyed the only thing she had to look forward to. At least she gets to vent a little, even if it doesn't last long.

-Methinks Bec may have had very good reasons to keep Jade at least out of the temple (not so sure regarding on the island), even if the game is (seemingly.) no more. Because we've got a Bec Noir lookalike on Prospit, with red powers, who immediately gets rid of the teleport pad in the frog temple.

-And explicitly after going to Prospit -after entering the Medium, SBURB's domain-, Jade decides that it's fine if life basically screws her over in all ways, because it's her fate. Her good (or perhaps, better) end is a bit of a silver lining, but not that much. Once a player, always a player indeed...

-Of course we had to get the kids all together for this one, even if MC took their time to figure out they could do it. It's good to know that they'll have some happy moments at least...

-Unless my game glitched out, Rose's theme does not play when we zap to her house, while John's and Dave's do. She instantly figures out that Jade's feeling down because SBURB didn't happen, and John sees the writing on her walls, though he wouldn't have had a chance to mention Dave's. (Curiously, it looks like MC can't see those.)

-When we zap to Dave's room, she almost gets a shuriken to the face; and while Rose is the type to try and keep a cool and collected façade, that seems to be the catalyst for shit starting to leak everywhere, as opposed to hitting the fan: she asks MC about Dave's brother -who she finds psychologically fascinating-, and starts thinking about the ethics of using the retcon powers. Lastly, she says that we don't have to worry about this now.

-...Wasn't Rose aware that something had changed from the beginning? Didn't she literally do Light stuff in her bad end? Couldn't she perceive MC's narration? (Dave did say that they just mumble away sometimes, but he's a Time player (one of the most meta aspects), and nobody else's said so before; as far as I remember the only one who also seemed to be aware of it was Marsti, Voidbound.)

-So. Are we going to have to deal with the (with sincere apologies to all rats) Ultimate Rat Bitch, like what happened in Friendsim? Because it sure fucking looks so. there might or might not be a direct reference to the epilogues, besides what i've written here. We'll just have to wait and see how things turn out, once we befriend everyone in Pesterquest. (is this the third, pumpkin route???)

-(Admittedly, Bec Noir's Prospit red zappy cousin's description is vague enough that it could possibly apply to an Alt!Calliope-possessed dead Jade; with the black tendrils being the Witch hood and the wings maybe coming from consuming Lord English back then? But it's a pretty long reach, not even counting that its wings are explicitly said to be leathery where cherub wings are feathery, and most importantly, that this is not her style. All the evidence points towards U!Dirk.)

[dahniwitchoflight]

Candy 24-28

Yeah interacting is one way of putting

I think the closer Meat and Candy come to eachother though the closer they’re both gonna self destruct

“It will stay here for millions more years, where it will remain indefinitely on a barren, desolate Earth C, waiting to host a single cherub child, chained to its bedroom. But for now, it hosts these three.”

Alright so Earth C doomed to failure confirmed, it needs to be a barren desolate wasteland if it’s gonna be the literal planet for Calliope and Caliborn’s birth

oh my god.

That’s why Gamzee raised the baby cherub

what seemed so out of character for someone like Gamzee to do so long ago now makes perfect sense

He thought it was his role to raise Caliborn in that stupid ass LE/Dirk philosophy

Aww, Terezi’s dying ):

Aradia and Sollux are acting as Alltie’s like, double attendants?

Is that like, a flipside of Gamzee’s whole mirthful messiahs thing where he is on LE’s Side?

I mean, Aradia is pretty 8D and Sollux is pretty D8 as characters

That was a really good conversation from Terezi and John

It really does like, firmly solidify to me that Terezi and John retconning the fact that Vriska died to Terezi’s sword way back then was absolutely the incorrect way of handling things

it’s the cornerstone for how things have been ripped apart all this time since then i think

when it first happened, it was tragic and necessary and developed the characters into a certain way of being

Terezi’s got depressed and into a bad state of being, so now, we’ve been given the flipside and shown what would happen if Vriska had been spared in that moment

and the answer is

the same goddamn thing, Vriska leaves her, Terezi can’t get closure from it and her life spirals downward from there

except here were sort of shown what might have been her saving grace, an actual system of support from someone she cares about, and someone she can support in return

what an actual relationship is actually supposed to be

the reason why constant relationships didn’t solve her problems everytime she made new ones is because they were relationships built solely on whims, feelings, maybe some physical passion

but none of them actually offered any actual support or companionship

wanting to love someone really really hard and wanting to be loved by someone really really hard doesn’t solve your problems no,

but having someone to help you through those problems and work on them with you does actually help solve problems

I think that’s the key difference here in asking “which relationship would “”fix”” Terezi” the answer being the only actual two-way relationship she might have ever had

Channel change time for Karkat

and an alive Meenah, I forget how that happened in Meat but eh

anyway next page

“But if he doesn’t care that much, and there’s nothing to it, then why does he do it? Why does he seem to put care into the nonsense he badgers her with? He supposes he could ask the same of many features of his life. Why does he care? Why does he put the time in? When you can’t shake the feeling that nothing here has much intrinsic meaning—or rings as “canon,” to drop a term he has to admit has worn out some welcome in his vocabulary—how does one justify even leaving the house? “

that phrase there, “Nothing Here has much intrinsic meaning -or Rings as Canon” feels like a double meaning

on the one hand, John is saying nothing in this world feels like it’s actually real

on the other hand, the phrase can be read as “There are no Rings of Canon in this world” as physical objects

and we just got done seeing a page about the Life Ring

I wonder if those rings are not also imbued with some idea of not just Life, but canon?

and if that’s the case

maybe the two rings really are each half of what would become the house juju cursor thing

going on with the symbolic metaphor of two opposite objects mutually self destructing and creating something new

maybe when you destroy both rings by bringing them together, in the wake of their destruction would form the original plot hole - the cursor juju, a literal canon shaping hole in the plot

it’s kind of like the idea of two similar dimensional things coming together to make a higher dimensional thing, themselves seemingly being removed from those lower dimensions in the process

like, what happens when you fundamentally merge two perfectly identical 2 dimensional circles?

you get a singular 3rd dimensional sphere and no more 2d circles

so what happens when you merge two 3rd dimensional circular rings? 

a literal 4th dimensional “hole” in canon where they once were

that’s my thinking anyway

anyway back to John having a breakdown over Terezi’s death

man Candy sure is something, I can’t really decide which one I found more interesting Candy or Meat

I felt like there was maybe more to react to in Meat, but there’s interesting bits in Candy as well

oh damn though ten year time skip on the next page O.o

oh fuck we skipped the war and gone straight to the dystopian nightmare havent we

their curfew is 13 minutes after midnight??? that’s so odd, also that makes it either 12:13 or 00:13 however you look at it

oh look, It’s JohnVris 2.0

huh, Karkat and Meenah got a love story out of it too

Now I wanna see a photoshop of like, Big Boss or whathisface from metal gear but just like trollified and with karkat’s horns

So Candy is definitely representing this idea of a character’s potential for the kinds of story arcs they might have, no matter what ends up happening

John stepping into his dad’s shoes and becoming a loving husband and father

Karkat becoming a revolutionary against a twisted tyrannical planet

these individual story beats all fall in line with their characters and what they might have been, had sburb never have been involved in their lives in the first place, is what I think

Roxy pops out a baby and become a mom after having a romance with a dashing young man is basically Rose’s Mom Lalonde’s storyline

Rose eventually becoming a key figure in a rebellion on a tyrannical version of earth is the same story here on Earth C as it was in the history of Roxy’s original planet as HER Mom Lalonde

but its the context of the story that makes it different or not

but these core tenants of the kinds of things and choices all these characters would do doesn’t really change all that much when you strip them down into their simplest forms

so in a way, even though nothing here is canon, it’s giving the audience and idea of what the story would be like if it was canon, how characters might react or grow up to be and the potential they have for doing certain things

but doing that also takes away all the nuance and symbolism of why it’s relevant and important for each story, and context matters intensely

John seems to reconcile with Jade and Dave if he’s the best man at their wedding

and if Dave is marrying Jade and John’s here and their all okay and it’s being held at Jake’s mansion....

no their making it clear theyre siding with Rose and Kanaya, but not as much as they could be I guess

Damn Roxy, I expected better of you, really? But she’s honestly just trying to gravitate towards the thing that makes her personally the happiest, with no regard to how she’s throwing everyone under the bus, p selfish of her

and for real, she’s with the people she always considered her closest friends

Jake’s actually the one going against their grain the most, but that might be because the closest person to him is already dead, and then his runner up is viewing Jade as his alt universe grandma. his channel with Jane is ruined and well, Jake wasn’t close with Roxy or Callie

people just value certain relationships over others sometimes

damn this one ends on a really somber note though

extremely filled with nostalgia of missed potential

Candy is where nothing went right for anyone technically

Oh shit it’s real Vriska, who fell into the black hole in Meat yeah?

Yeah with the way shes screaming about needing to see what happens when you beat the final boss it’s that Vriska hoo boy

hilariously channeling the desperation of the people who read this when it first dropped no wonder though

I am noticing in Candy that despite more and more history being generated, I have less and less to react to

that one line though about what the passage of time must feel like to immortals, that feelings of what used to feel like a day now only feels like a couple hours, what used to feel like a week now feels like a couple days

time gets faster the more you live it

pretty soon a day will be but a blink of an eye for people like John

[gamzee-the-capricious-fanfic]

Chapter 6

Notes: This is the Chapter with a lot of bad shit in it so beware

You come to with a groan. You feel disoriented and you don’t know where you are. Luckily you know who you are so that is a plus. You manage to finally open your eyes, squinting immediately at the light above. You attempt to sit up but a wave of pain, dizziness, and nausea make you lay back down. You close your eyes again, your whole body hurts but especially your shoulder, the throbbing pain is intense. You just lay there for a bit, it appears no one is around you else they would most likely be pestering you with questions and concern. You open your eyes again and look around. You are on the couch of your dorm, you are not sure how you got there. You also notice that you don’t have a shirt on, you guess that makes sense considering your injury needed tending to. You sigh, there’s no way you just fainted, you would have come to much sooner so that leaves the other and more unpleasant option, you must have had yet another seizure.You had been doing so well, the medication had really helped. But you suppose such shock to the body could trigger it. You will have to keep that in mind for the future. 

You hope you didn’t cause any problems for Kanaya and Rose. Considering past incidents you have the tendency to throw up when you have a seizure. Speaking of throwing up you start to feel the intense urge to do so now. You lurch up to a sitting position quickly but the action causes an intense wave of dizziness and the room spins and nope you throw up on the floor. You retch up stomach acid, which you suppose is better than the alternative, easier to clean at least. You pant a bit, desperate for air and you close your eyes. You can’t stop trembling and the movement causes more pain in your shoulder. This shit motherfucking sucks. You slowly lay back down trying to not trigger another throw up sesh. Getting up right now is not an option it seems. 

You hear the door open and you open your eyes to Dave looking at you. “Jeez dude, do you throw up every five minutes or something?” 

“Oh fuck off Strider.” 

He looks at you for a moment more before grabbing a rag from the kitchen and walking over. He starts cleaning up your mess. “I can do that.” you mutter. “Just need a motherfuckin minute or two to get all up and fine.” 

 He snorts. “Sure dude, you look like fucking shit, doubt you’ll be getting up any time soon.” 

You growl softly, he might be right but you don’t want to admit it. “Whatever bro” a few seconds pass before you say: “Thank you though.” 

He just nods and finishes cleaning. Once he’s done he stands up and looks at the floor checking to see if he missed anything. “Alrighty, looks like new, now preferably clown boy don’t throw up on the floor that I just cleaned or else we are gonna have some beef.” 

You chuckle. “S’not my fault no one thought to put a trashcan in my vicinity now is it?”

He shrugs a bit of a smirk on his face, “You’re not wrong.” He drags a little trashcan over to you. Then starts heading for the door again. Before he leaves he looks back to you. “You should probably just sleep some, that always helped when-” He cuts himself off. “Just trust me.” Then he leaves. 

You sigh. You wonder what he was about to say, but oh well. You feel exhausted. Guess you’d better take his advice. 

A day passes before you can move around and a week and a half before you feel back to full strength. In that time you find out that Xaleeb is actually in your health class. You wouldn’t have noticed this except that now he keeps looking back and glaring at you periodically. It’s kind of weird. In fact you are in health class right now, and he’s doing it again. You sigh and look over to Karkat. “When do you think this motherfucker will stop doing this shit. It’s fucking weird, like damn bro, just get over it.” 

Karkat just shrugs and before he can really answer you the professor walks in raring to start the lecture. Usually this is when you would start to zone the fuck out but when she announces the topic you freeze. Great. We are talking about seizures today. You sigh again and Karkat gives you a look. “Great, get to learn all about how fucked up I am” you mutter under your breath.

Karkat rolls his eyes. “C’mon Gamzee, it’s not that bad. It’s not like the professor is going to single you out or anything.”

Hm, true you guess. And he is right, until around the middle of the lecture. As a rule all of your professors are aware of your little issue but most would have the tact to not mention it. Except this one it seems. She was just going through symptoms that occurs before a seizure when she looks at you and says: “Gamzee, would you say these are pretty accurate in your experience.” 

Karkat looks at you wide eyed for a second before giving the professor a ‘what the fuck’ kind of look. She notices Karkat’s look and looks back at you apologetically.  You just paste a fake smile on and nod to answer her question regardless. You can’t help but notice Xaleeb snickering and whispering to the troll next to him. Oh, it’s the female troll who’s arm you broke. Great. Your biggest weakness, just laid right out there for everyone to know. You try to breathe evenly, you are really pissed off and you are trying desperately not to show it. The professor just didn’t know better. Karkat paps your arm trying to soothe you. You just shake your head slightly. You are not going to lose your shit over this. At least this is your last class today. When class ends you mutter to Karkat that you are going to take a walk, he looks a bit concerned but nods. 

You start heading towards your “kinda secret but not really” spot with a sigh of frustration. All you want to do is just get a little bit high, is that too much to ask? Probably, you think with a soft grumble. You arrive at your spot in a state of increased agitation. You pace for a minute running your fingers through your hair ruffling it up more than it already was. Finally you manage to come to a stop long enough to search for where you happened to hide your weed stash and lighter. After a minute of searching you growl with even more frustration, you could have sworn you put it right where you were looking. Just your fucking luck that someone would have somehow found your little stash spot. You let out a string of curses under your breath, you almost think Karkat would have been proud of you for the interesting amalgamations of words you managed to string together. You bite your hand lightly still rumbling with irritation. You stand back up still so caught up in your irritation that you don’t hear the steps behind you.

Abruptly a hand grabs your shoulder and spins you around then shoves you against the brick wall behind you. You can’t help but to yelp in surprise. In front of you stands Xaleeb, the blue blood from before, behind him you get a glimpse of his cronies before he shoves his phone screen up to your face. His phone screen is rapidly flashing black and white. For a second you are wildly confused, “Wha-” Then it clicks, he’s trying to induce a seizure. Wow, low blow motherfucker. You fucking laugh and his cruel smirking face changes to one of confusion. Like that is going to fucking work, with your medication you should be just fine you imagi--. You feel it then, your body starts to lock up. Oh. Oh fu--

You come to with a groan, your head is pounding, in fact your whole body just hurts. You are laying on your side and you’re pretty sure your hands are tied behind your back. You feel something around your neck too, some sort of chain you think. You mutter with your eyes still closed, unable to muster the strength to open them. “Motherfucking shitfaced bastards with your goddamned flashing lights really fuckin up my day here.” A hard kick to your stomach makes you shut the fuck up and gasp for breath. This really isn’t your day huh. After a few wheezing breaths you manage to open your eyes to the group of blue bloods standing around me. “Literally kicking a troll when he’s down huh? So valiant for some motherfucking ‘highbloods’ huh motherfuckers.” You give them all a mocking smile that earns you another kick to the stomach. After catching your breath again you manage a dark laugh. “One trick hoofbeast huh?” 

The female blue blood who kicked you snarls and looks as if she is going to hit you again but the leader, Xaleeb, snaps his finger and she halts, looking disappointed. If you weren’t still in such a shitty situation you’d be grateful, one more hit and you probably would have hurled up your guts. Really isn’t doing your throat any favors. Finally Xaleeb speaks: “You have quite a vile mouth for a ‘downed troll’. If you were smart you would be begging me for mercy, but well, I’m sure you are more stunted upstairs than you are physically.” You roll your eyes but while he speaks you manage to get your phone out of your back pocket, your back is still against the brick wall so no one notices you carefully get it. You are suddenly very grateful for a feature Sollux helped add to your phone, if you push the home button 5 times quickly your phone automatically sends Karkat an emergency text. Ya know, just gotta not die till he gets here.

You quickly get your phone back in your pocket as Xaleeb approaches you. He has a self-assured smirk on his face that pisses you off, in the most platonic hateful way of course. He lifts his foot and places it against the side of your head putting a slight bit of pressure on you. You growl. “Still not begging for your life huh? I could just..” He puts more pressure on your skull and you hiss in pain. He gets a maniacal smile on his face, the sadistic fucker is enjoying this way too much. You manage to growl out: “Fuck you motherfucker.” He lifts his foot off of your head and you almost sigh in relief. “Well now that is an idea isn’t it~.” You look up at him incredulously. “What the fuck. Why would I ever fuck you motherfucker.”

“You have it backwards I’m afraid, and I never said you had a choice in the matter.” His sadistic smile only grows. 

“I’m tired of this sick joke, just fucking beat the shit out of me or whatever you intended to do so we can get this over with.” You snarl at him. There’s no way he is serious. That would just be sick and twisted. But he doesn’t look like he is joking. He grabs a part of the chain that is wrapped around your neck and he pulls on it pulling you to a sitting position. The chain tightens around your neck and you can’t breathe, he put a motherfucking barkbeast choke collar on you. Panic starts to fill you as the pressure on your neck doesn’t go away. A choked whimper makes its way out of your throat and Xaleeb releases the chain allowing you to breathe. You glare at him as you gasp for breath. He crouches down in front of you. 

“Tell me, have you ever pailed anyone before?” He cocks his head slightly staring intently at your face. You just growl at him. 

“I’m going to assume that is a no?” His smile widens. “That’s just perfect.”

 You try to scoot away from him but the brick wall is directly behind you. Oh god, you hope Karkat shows up, this is getting too real. You look past him and the others tryin to see if there’s anyone else around. Xaleeb grabs your horn and slams your head into the brick wall. You hiss in pain. “No one is coming to save you dipshit.” 

“Ah well, can’t blame a motherfucker for trying huh?” You give him a mocking smile. 

He laughs, “That mouth of yours is going to get you into more trouble you know that right?” He grabs your horn again and shoves you to the side and you, unable to catch yourself with your hands tied behind you, get a face full of dirt. You groan in pain, god that fuckin hurt. C’mon Karbro where are you? Things aren’t looking good, did the text not go through? You followed Sollux’s instructions so it should have, but.. No one is coming. No. Karkat will show up, you just have to stall for time or something. Xaleeb smiles down at you. “Look at you, absolutely helpless.” 

You snort with laughter. “I wasn’t so helpless last time now was I?”

Xaleeb nods towards the female blue blood and she smiles. She approaches you and kicks you in the side, hard. You wheeze painfully, you're pretty sure she might have broken something. You guess maybe it is payback for breaking her arm last time. Xaleeb chuckles, “Now, where were we? Ah, yes, I was going to show you all the ways I can break you. Ruin you. No one will want you after I am done with you.” 

He starts unbuttoning his pants and you go cold. He is really going to do this. You hold back a whimper, you are not going to show weakness to this asshole, just gotta find a way to stall. “Can’t believe you’re so eager to fuck me.” You chuckle condescendingly. “Is fucking someone motherfuckin higher than you a fetish for you? Motherfucker that’s just sad. Honestly you remind me of a friend of mine, except he’d probably beg me to fuck him.” Sorry Equius, you really don’t mean that. 

Xaleeb just keeps smirking down at you. “You know, no matter what you say you are still at my mercy right now. And well, I do actually have a fetish. You wanna know what it is?” He kneels down beside you. “I get off on causing people pain. And oh I can barely wait to hurt you. To hear you scream and beg me to stop. But I won’t. And when I’m done I’ll watch as everyone else here gets a chance to use you.” 

You tremble slightly, your bloodpusher feels like it is going a million miles per hour. This can't be happening. Oh God, oh fuck, Karkat please, you beg, please fucking hurry up. One of the trolls grabs you by the back of the shirt and lifts you to your knees. You struggle a bit but it doesn’t do you much good, your body still feels weak. You feel cold hands slide up under your shirt a bit, you feel sick. “Wow, gonna feel me up now too huh?” 

Xaleeb laughs. His hands drift to the waistband of your pants. You want to beg him to stop but you get the feeling that he would just enjoy it even more. You just growl as he slowly reaches forward to unbutton your pants, he’s taking his time it seems. “Gonna take all day with this shit then?” 

You hear him chuckle. “No, I just want to take my time here, It’s for your benefit really. To really show you that no one is going to come and save you.” Your pants are unbuttoned now and he slips his hands down a bit further running them over your hips. You really want him to stop. 

“You sure are confident aren’t you?” There’s a slight tremor to your voice that you hope he didn’t notice. 

He hums softly, “Yeah, I am confident. I mean, who would fucking care enough about you to come save you?”

You snarl. “Maybe you are just jealous that so many trolls care about someone so fucked up when no one gives a shit about you motherfucker. You are nothing, motherfucker.” The only indication that he was at all affected by your words was his claws digging into your hips slightly. 

“Says the one at my mercy. Hm, how many times now have I had to remind you?” He tuts softly as he finally starts to pull down your pants. Your breath hitches a bit. “You sick fuck!”

He slides your pants down to your knees. Your face feels hot as his fucking cronies leer at you. “You all are some sick motherfuckers, can’t believe so many of you get your kicks from this.” 

You feel one of Xaleeb’s hands drifting up your inner thigh. “DON’T FUCKING TOUCH ME MOTHERFUCKER!” You are absolutely shaking with rage. 

He viciously tugs on the choke collar cutting off the low growl you were making. “Aw, look, he’s angry~” 

You cough and struggle to breathe for a minute. Your throat is very painful and breathing hurts. You hope he hasn’t caused any permanent damage. Suddenly he pushes you forward and you yelp as your face smashes into the dirt. Now everything neck upwards hurts and you are pretty sure your nose is bleeding. But even worse than that is that now you are in a very vulnerable position. You try to struggle back up but the troll who lifted you by the shirt now holds you down. You hear fabric shifting behind you then you feel something slimy and wiggly- oh god that’s his bulge- run against your inner thigh. You feel like you could throw up. You let out a stream of curses that would make even Karkat proud when you feel him sliding up against you. Oh no, any moment and he could- A scream rips out of your throat as he viciously shoves into you. Oh god it hurts. Beyond the pain you can hear him groan with pleasure. 

You scream more curses, filled with intense rage but he makes you scream in pain again as he starts roughly thrusting into your nook. Tears stream down your face and you bite your lip hard enough it bleeds as you try to hold back your sounds of pain. Fuck. Fuck! FUCK! Your breathing is ragged as you once again try to struggle away. The troll holding you down pushes you down harder making it almost impossible to move. You dig your nails into your palms unable to do anything else with your hands.  You want it to stop. You want it all to just stop. Why hasn’t Karkat come to help you? “Has it hit you yet? The fact that no one can stop this? That you deserve this?” He groans again. “And damn, let me tell you, for a cullable fuckup of a troll you do feel quite good.”

 You choke back a sob. You try to tell yourself he is wrong, you don’t deserve this, and… and… Karkat must be coming… right? Xaleeb’s words echo in your head with each rough thrust into you. No one is coming. No one can save you. You deserve this. It feels like forever before Xaleeb’s movements become more erratic. His bulge twists around inside of you and makes you cry out in pain. You are left whimpering painfully as he shoves deep into you. He moans loudly and you shudder with disgust as he fills you with genetic material. You feel over-aware of the genetic material dripping down your thighs. You can just imagine the blue staining your skin. The imagery make you gag. You feel Xaleeb slide out of you and god every bit of you hurts. After a few seconds he kneels beside you making sure you can see him. You snarl at him. “Bet you wish this was done huh?” His smile is cruel, satisfied, it makes you sick. “Well, four more trolls to go~” 

Your stomach drops, you had almost forgotten that this was nowhere near done. You wish you could come up with something more than the “Fuck you.” you manage to say to him. He just smiles. You hadn’t noticed the female troll had moved behind you till you feel her bulge shoving into you. You cry out again in pain, she really wasn’t that big but you were already ripped up and raw from Xaleeb that the pain was almost equally as agonizing. Xaleeb just watched your face as you screamed and cried. It felt like forever before they were all done with you. The last one had been the worst after Xaleeb. He had been the troll holding you down and he was considerably bigger than Xaleeb even. Save the best for last right? You almost laugh hysterically at that. Almost. 

Said troll now lifts you up and slams you against the brick wall, your arms get the brunt of it and you hiss in pain. You glare at Xaleeb and the other trolls. Xaleeb crouches in front of you. “Now that was satisfying now wasn’t it?” 

The trolls around him chuckle and nod. You fucking hate them. “When I get the fucking chance I’m going to rip you all into shreds and I’ll be the one satisfied then.” You snarl full of rage at them. You go into excruciating detail about how you would kill each and every one of them until you reach what you would to to Xaleeb. When you get to him he tugs on the choke collar again, holding it tight so you can’t breathe. “I think that is quite enough of that. You know, I am REALLY tired of hearing your voice. You don’t know when to shut up don’t you?” 

You struggle desperately to breathe but he doesn’t release his hold on the choke collar until you are just barely struggling. You gasp desperately for air as soon as he does. You are trembling uncontrollably, you weren’t sure just then if he was even going to release his hold. He grabs your face, lifting it up till you are forced to look at him. You growl softly. He doesn’t look amused, in fact he looks annoyed for a moment then his face lights up. “Well now, I think I can solve this little problem.” 

You give him a confused look. “Open your mouth. Now.” 

“Fuck no!”

“You want another round of everyone or do you want to do as you’re told?”

You hesitate, you really don’t want to go through all that again. You can’t. You grudgingly open your mouth unsure of what he is planning. “Stick your tongue out.” 

Hesitating a moment more you do as he asks. He grabs the tip of your tongue rather roughly and you wince. You never noticed the knife in his other hand until your tongue feels like it is on fire. You shriek in pain then choke on the blood filling your mouth. You cough up some of the blood and start hyperventilating slightly. He just cut off part of your tongue. You can vaguely hear him laughing but you no longer feel like you are there. That is until he punches you in the face, the immediate pain bringing you right back. “Come now, can’t have you zone out just yet. First off, and this should be obvious, don’t fucking tell anyone about what happened here. Tell no one about who did this. And if you do, then we will do worse to that mutant moirail of yours.” You growl. “Or, what about that shit-blood you moon over.” You shut the fuck up. “Good boy.”

He stands up satisfied then gestures for everyone to head out. All of them obey except one who approaches you and sneers, he reaches towards you and you lunge forward your teeth crunching down one his hand. You can feel his bones splintering as he shrieks. Finally, someone screaming besides you. That female bitch of a troll kicks you in the ribs repeatedly until you release the other troll’s mangled hand. She guides away the sobbing troll and to your surprise Xaleeb doesn’t come back to punish you further. They just leave you there. 

You sit there for a bit, blood dripping down your chin before you shift forward a bit. You need to get your hands free. One thing at a time. You look around for a second and spot the knife Xaleeb used earlier, it has your blood coated on it. You are surprised he had left it. You take a breath and then slowly manage to scoot your way over to it. Once you can reach it you grab it and try to saw at the rope tying your hands together. It takes a while and you cut your arms a few times but you manage to free your hands. Once your hands are free you tug your pants back up. It's a bit of a struggle as your body is so sore but you manage. You lay down on your side for a minute, just physically exhausted. You just need a minute you think. You pull out your phone from your pocket once again. You turn it on and open up your messages. Nothing. Karkat never responded. You laugh hysterically. Xaleeb was right. You feel raindrops hit your face. Great. This is all just great. 

[caledfwlchthat]

Characters:  John Egbert, Dave Strider, Karkat Vantas Ships:  John/Dave/Karkat, John/Dave, Dave/Karkat, John/Karkat Other Tags:  Post-Retcon Meteor, Dream Bubbles, Internalized Homophobia, Internalized Xenophobia, Closets, Coming Out, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Ashen Romance | Auspistice, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Troll/Human Sloppy Makeouts, Polyamory Negotiations, Pillow & Blanket Forts, Fat Vriska Jokes, Unreliable Narrator, References to Depression Rating:  Not Rated

Hi followers, now that Polyswap reveals are out (a few days ago now), I can fess up to writing this 20 kw JohnDaveKat thing about making out in literal supply closets, that I wrote for @cassandraooc (check out her art and AO3, she’s tops!).  Shout-out also to @katreal-fic for her help as a sounding board and general pompoms while I was writing this.

R^4 fans:  this was my May/June, I have not forgotten you!  But if you like all the dream bubble romance and the awkward poly negotiations Rose and Kanaya have been having about Dave, you might give this one a look too.

Process discussion (as best as I can recall it) under the cut, as with other swap assignments I’ve done, for anyone who’s interested in the (long, spoilery) story of what the hell I was thinking exactly when I wrote this thing.

So my giftee’s prompts were -- by her own admission -- written in a bit of a sleep-deprived haze (I had to laugh as I read them, haven’t we all been there at some point, I know I lost some sleep over mine).  We were each required to provide between three and six prompts for polyships (3-6 characters each) that we wanted to see depicted in gift fic or art.  Cassandra’s OT3 was JohnDaveKat, which sported a string of elaborate sub-prompts (“medievalstuck!”, “soulmates!”, “haunted house!”, etc.) -- along with an invite to not use any of those and just write whatever I felt like.  Other prompts for Dave/Sollux/Karkat, Jane/Callie/Roxy, and Rose/Kanaya/Jade were basically completely open-ended.

I’m trying to remember exactly how I seized upon the idea I ended up executing.  Although some of my other works feature polyships, such as Kankatrezi (The Cafe Mocha Caper) and Daverosemary (foreshadowed in R^4), the process of how they got together is important for me in ways that I don’t care about as much for canon ships.  I felt some resistance to just picking one of the ships and starting to write it as if it was already established.  Also, people who know my writing know that I like to stick close to in-game or post-game AUs, or at least the broader Homestuck setting, rather than non-game AUs or other settings that remove the characters from the context that made them who we recognize them to be.  So I was going to need some runway and a satisfying premise to run along it with.  But by golly, if Cassandra wanted JohnDaveKat, she was gonna get JohnDaveKat.

The JohnDaveKat prompt I personally found most hilarious and awesome was

John gets turned into a Trickster, and finds Karkat and Dave. In the ensuing candy fueled mess, a lot of pent up emotions and secret crushes get revealed, including Dave realizing and admitting that John was probably his first crush on another boy though he was in denial at the time, and Karkat admitting that his own pitch crush for John never went away. (For his part, John finds out that he might, in fact, be a bit of a homosexual.)

Another JohnDaveKat prompt that turned out to figure in heavily later with the work I ended up producing was

John decides to surprise Dave and Karkat with a visit, only to find them already *quite* busy. Before he can think of what to do or do enough thinking at all to leave, he gets caught, and Dave notices evidence of interest, knows Karkat's still got some pitch feelings, and has some of his own, suggests maybe John stay a bit and they talk over some things and maybe do other stuff later too.

Going with Earth C could also bring the Epilogues material into play, and I briefly toyed with an Epilogues-related scenario that could score multiple polyships at once, before remembering that the Epilogues are hugely polarizing and maybe I want to be double sure about my giftee before giving them such a gift in a fan swap.  A combination of Tumblr-stalking, re-reading the prompts and discreet inquiries showed that my idea wasn’t going to work, largely because Ultimate Dirk is a legendary piece of shit and his presence over against End-Of-Act-7 Dirk would cause real friction with Cassandra’s requests -- which leaned fluffy and offered bonus points for “DirkJake” and “Dirk and Dave being good bros who love each other”.  Maybe I could have just done something similar in a separate Earth C AU without a lot of the Epilogues baggage, but by that point the specific discarded spin on the idea had so thoroughly colonized my brain that I just had to ease the whole thing carefully onto the shelf.  I’d still be keen to write that other fic sometime.  Just not for this particular fill.

So, I took a break for a few days before revisiting the prompt and asking what else I could do.  When I think of John, Dave, and Karkat together, my mind goes immediately back to the “EVERYBODY STFU, I HATE YOU BOTH ETC” memo, in which Karkat tries to dissuade Dave and John from encouraging Terezi’s and Vriska’s flirtations, respectively.  This convo is burned into my head because I’ve VA’ed it -- I draw a lot of inspiration for character dialogue from the time I’ve spent doing goofy voiceovers for them.  And there is a lot of grist for the mill here:  Karkat alluding to his pitch crush on John, Dave making fun of Karkat for being gay (while not realizing or admitting how he might be projecting), John being totally clueless about whether he’s attracted to Vriska.  All of these are compatible with the “pent-up emotions and secret crushes” Cassandra asked for, and favors Dave <3 Karkat <3< John as a baseline.

Now, one of the reasons I love writing dream bubble fic is because I am fundamentally lazy.  I can basically use any canon Homestuck pesterlog as a prompt and run with it.  So that’s what I did here.  In the moment that they realize that it’s a dream, the participants are forced to reckon with the way dream bubbles respond to their innermost thoughts.  Deep desires manifest in weird ways; emotional distances contract, go non-Euclidean.  Despite this, the association with dreams simultaneously offer a layer of abstraction or remove to Dave and Karkat -- allowing them to access and slake those deep desires without having to take responsibility for it, either with themselves or each other, during waking hours.  In that sense, John opening the closet is like walking in on them a second time -- the dream bubble itself is their main outer closet, and they already know the jig is up when John diverts the pesterlog down Memory Lane.  This then raises the question of whether they might have wanted John to discover them, deep down?  Perhaps John’s convenient remembering is a sort of wish-fulfillment dream summoning.

From there I already sort of had the fic’s contours and decided it would be best written from John’s POV.  The other nice thing about the dream bubble setting was that it let John participate even during the meteor journey, when Dave and Karkat must have been messing around trying to reverse-engineer their own sexual preferences.  How gay is Dave, and how troubled is he about it at this point in his history?  How does he feel about John finding out?  Does Karkat somehow have some symmetrical hangups that leave him struggling as much as Dave, or is he just a giant crab?  (The literal vs metaphorical closet thing was accidental at first, but once I discovered that I ran hard with it.)

There were still some problems I struggled with, such as how to get John to fall for Karkat pitch-ways when he’s said in canon that he isn’t gay, and when Karkat has said in canon that he’s not pitch for John anymore.  The second problem is easily dispatched by pointing out that Karkat isn’t a reliable narrator of his own preferences, by construction.  As for the first -- John might be no Casanova, but he loves his friends and is fiercely loyal to them, and he also saves his anger for either really important moments (like his GAME OVER fight with Caliborn) or utterly trivial moments (like Con Air not being as good as he thought).  This seemed like a good place for the former.  Once that was laid out, the trio coalesced nicely -- Dave and Karkat need John to keep them honest, and John needs Dave and Karkat to keep him anchored.  John <> Dave and Dave c3< (John <3< Karkat) were dynamics that just showed up on their own.

The interpretation of the ending is left open, but the other difficulty I left unresolved is the timeline mismatch between pre-retcon and post-retcon, and the question of which John it was exactly that showed up in Dave and Karkat’s shared dream.  Pre-retcon Davekat didn’t happen because Dave and Karkat were fighting over Terezi, but post-retcon John died in the explosion of LOWAS and couldn’t live happily ever after having so gloriously enabled post-retcon Davekat.  And I wanted them to live happily ever after.  The two most obvious interpretations I could think of were (a) the three are all on Earth C and dreaming together of each other -- or, more poignantly, (b) pre-retcon John is starting to integrate some of post-retcon dead!John’s memories.  The second possibility leads in the direction of Ultimate John (what would that even be?) so I made sure to place the ending in a time frame that gives the Epilogues a miss -- although the background DirkJake also signals that this is probably an AU that diverges after the ACT 7 victory.

All in all this was really fun to write!  There were lots of other great prompts in the collection, but the ones that grabbed me looked like they would spawn more 20-30 kw novellas and I need to get back to my poor neglected serial!  I’m looking forward to making my way through the treats that others posted, eventually adding some of my own, and of course going through Cassandra’s other stuff.  (Maybe that awesome fantroll Friendsim project will be the next thing to eat my life after this.)

[cerulean8looded]

25!!!!!!!!

okay that one i literally made bc i look like john, love just dance, and want to be loved but here we fuckin go

25. John being a just dance twitch streamer and all the boys being gay for it i mean youtubers au

so im thinking that all of them make WILDLY different content. lets start with the beta kids.

so john has a gaming channel, clearly, and he decides he wants to lose some weight in a fun way that also helps his channel, so he starts the just dance thing. other than that, he mostly plays things like minecraft, five nights at freddys, all your basic bitch stuff, along with a fair few horror games. he really likes minecraft and sims 4 though.

rose has a witchcraft channel. she practices witchcraft and makes videos about spells and sigils and crystals and all the other cool stuff that goes along with that. i dont know much about witchy stuff anymore, its been a while since i was into that stuff, so id have to do a bunch of research for her.

dave has two channels: irony channel and music channel. the ironic one is where he posts anything to do with sbahj, and just generally fucks about, does weird trends and stuff. he never shows his face on his music channel, never shares his name, and it’s all remixes, so no one hears his voice either.

jade has the most chaotic but pure channel. she does anything she feels like doing, from kids show reviews to “Look at this cool pumpkin i grew” to “heres my favourite gun”. she has no theme, and never plans to change this.

Trolls

aradia is similar to jade in chaotic energy, but she tends to stick to stuff like creepy antiques she finds, weird animal bones from the fields she just wanders about in and that kind of odd stuff. she also talks about dark conspiracy theories a bit.

tavros mostly focuses on animals; animal care, animal facts, how to spot animal illnesses, how to deal with hostile but injured animals in the wild, what to do if you see an animal you think might have rabies, all that kinda shit. theres always at least one animal in every video, whether its a ferret in his lap, a cat walking over him, a snake around his neck, a guinea pig on his shoulder, and so on.

sollux does a gaming and tech help channel. he plays any game that people claim is difficult and tends to beat them so fast people think he’s hacking. he slaves over every fnaf game to try to beat the custom night first. as for tech help, hes basically that guy who runs the channel on how to fix discontinued apple products.

i lost my fucking karkat paragraph, im furious. basic recap of what i lost: he does general content like dan howell and phil lester kinda, with a couple staple series, such as his rant series, where his followers give him a topic and he rants about it for about twenty minutes (after editing). he also does livestream versions which can sometimes last for several hours per rant.

nepeta does cosplay videos with whoever she can rope into helping her (usually terezi, vriska, equius, or feferi) plus a lot of fandom videos in general. she usually comes off really lighthearted in her videos, but she also makes a lot of important comments about fandom culture and shipping wars etc. on her second channel she does vlogs, which exposes her absolute gremlin side. these vlogs often feature things such as her climbing up a tree, getting stuck, and screaming until equius saves her.

kanaya does makeup and fashion advice videos, mostly with a vampire theme to them. occasionally she’ll do cosplay makeup too. her favourite videos to do are when her subscribers send in pictures of themselves and their closets, along with some general information on what they wont wear and all that, and she gives them advice on how to spruce up their look a little and declutter their clothes, etc. she likes feeling like shes making a difference to people.

terezi focuses on true crime mostly; cold cases, current cases, sometimes she runs through the process of solved cases. she prefers to do unsolved stuff, since it gives her the ability to talk about her own theories on it, and she does often get it right, but for particularly interesting cases she will do a video anyway. she also does a little bit on mental health and the reasons behind crimes and shit.

vriska is another kinda general youtuber. she does whatever the hell she wants, plus anything anyone says she cant do. she also lets some of nepetas fandom stuff leak into her content. no one really knows how she got so many subscribers. she also has the most merch out of all of them.

equius makes videos on whatever happens to be his current hyperfixation at that moment. hes the most inconsistent. one week hes picking apart the homosexual subtext in certain scenes of jaws, the next hes teaching you how to put together a microwave. he does a lot of lgbtq+ videos too; his most popular video is of him and nepeta and some others at pride and most peoples favourite part is nepeta racing around a small clearing with equius on her back while vriska cackles behind the camera

no one is really sure what gamzee actually does. his videos are all filmed on a phone camera and are never edited. he doesnt have an intro or an outro. sometimes it seems like he forgot to start filming until halfway through whatever he was talking about, but he never repeats the bits the camera missed. theres no theme, no clear goal, no one knows whats happening and theyre pretty sure hes high in every video. one time he posted a video that was over 48 hours of the phone just pointing at a wall, which appeared to be covered in blood just out of sight of the screen (as in you could see the edge of it but not the actual blood) and there appeared to be a hand sitting at the corner of the screen. everyone was fucking terrified for a while, but the next video posted to his account was karkat explaining that hed had a bit of a mental break and thrown a jar of jar at the wall (the “blood”) and that the hand was just a doll. hed taken out his phone to film a vent video, but promptly forgot about it, dropped it, and went to do something else. he finally remembered over two days later, posted it without thinking and called karkat. a few weeks later he started posting again like the whole thing never happened.

eridan’s content mostly focuses on harry potter and magic (which he definitely doesnt believe in because that would be ridiculous), but he makes a lot of environmental PSA videos about littering and pollution and stuff. in his fandom videos he comes across as just really excitable and doesnt seem like he cares about much else, but he really shows off his intelligence in PSA type videos. he also posts a lot of videos of him just talking about whatevers going on in his life, usually whenever he gets a new crush. his most popular video is the one he made right after seeing johns just dance streams for the first time, because he looked like he was about to cry or scream the whole time.

and feferi! her content mostly focuses on social and political issues. she talks out against “canceled”/purity culture a lot and tends to end up involved in discourse for it. shes that person in the middle of the argument whos literally only stating facts and saying that we shouldnt jump to unnecessary conclusions, but somehow ends up being accused of being jack the ripper or some shit for it. she isnt afraid to share her honest opinions and makes sure to remain as polite and level-headed as is humanly possible when responding to others.

i was gonna do the alpha kids and dancestors too and like share some plot and that kinda stuff but this is long as fuck, so we’re gonna stop here for now! feel free to request again for even more info dumping. also i just wanna say that i planned none of that gamzee stuff i had no idea what i was doing when i started that

[tropicalgoon]

Spoilers for the Homestuck Epilogue below.

First things first, i had caught up reading Homestuck on the exact day the Gigapause started (10/16/13). So long pauses and people arguing about canon was pretty common. Then the comic ended but later we got snapchats. Once the snapchats started coming people were unsure how ‘canon’ the snapchats were. Also    

i was surprised with how fast the rest of the Epilogue came out. I figured it would have been drip fed like the comic was but reading it now i can see why that was not the case. If you haven't read the Epilogue i have one thing to say.

PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO THE CONTENT WARNINGS THEY ARE NOT JOKES.

With that out the way, i think the biggest shift in the Epilogue vs the actual comic is that everything is way more mature. While Homestuck was full of angsty, snarky teens and a lot of jokes, ironic and not, the Epilogue overall has a more somber, powerless mood to it.

Also one more thing, i do not have a fav character or ship. So that might be why im upset about how it is.

Now i read the Candy choice first so ill talk about that. Now as soon as i saw the juju i knew it was going to have an effect. And i was right, the juju makes people feel okay with their surroundings and so when John ate it he felt at ease with the chaos his life and friends were becoming. But hoo boy did everyone suck all around. 

i knew Gamzee was gonna be back and i was not wrong. i think the whole iVe bEeN GeTtIn mY MoThErFuCkIn rEdEmPtIoN On sO EvErYtHiN I Do iS GoOd was a funny bit but maaaaaan did it get a lil crazy. Jake has always been a doormat and easily manipulated. So nothing too new there but it was nice when he ran off with lil tavros. Also i guess hes the earth c equivalent to a kardashian.

 It really surprised me how fast Roxy got together with John. In fact the Candy Roxy is way different than the meat Roxy. i guess thats the juju at work. Rose was sick with an “illness” but soon after the candy was ate she got “better”. What actually happened was she stopped trying to open her mind to the infinite degree and just let herself live in the moment and be truly happy. It was nice to see her and Kanaya have a happy life, at least until everything went bad. As for Dirk i felt bad for him because he always had that whole meta textual self importance thing going on so when he offed himself i was like oh no. Its nice that him and Dave had bro-sesions.

And now time to talk about Jade, Dave, and Karkat. It feels like Dave and Karkat have mostly stayed the same with a few big differences.1) they both are a little less insufferable, 2) Karkat has accepted he is a leader and 3) their tip toeing around relationships was kinda annoying. Which brings me to Jade. She was butting into all three of their relationships trying to force them to admit feelings. While ive seen some people say Hussie killed Jade i personally dont think so. Jade was always a headstrong, stubborn person who would go after what she wanted and i mean she was on an island by herself for most of her life if she wants to have fun let her. 

Jane really went off the deep end. Which i dont think was so far off her canon personality in the comic. Her denying being xenophobic while being incredibly xenophobic was funny but also pretty real. While i didnt like they way she interacted with Jake it honestly fits in with what happens in the comic. (the trickster stuff, the crockercorp kidnapping). Her whole shadowy rise to hidden power was inevitable also i feel like she was really echoing the Condense on earth. Allowing Gamzee to spread his faith while funneling her wealth and fame into passing the policies and laws she wants. I do not think its out of character for her and Dirk to hate trolls since their lives were so affected by them. 

Johns depression clouding his judgement and making him not want to react was sad to read. It really felt like he was just drifting around, letting all of the situations and chaos just wash over him. So when he was talking to Terezi and she helped him make sense of things it was a nice turn of pace.

Speaking of Terezi, its sad how long she went chasing after (Vriska). As of this moment i dont really think the quadrant system is really in place anymore (at least relationships with humans in it). With John and Terezi talking to each other it really felt like blackrom.  “1F 1 W3R3 3V3R TO DO BL4CKROM 4G41N, 1T WOULD H4V3 TO B3 LOW K3Y”. It is sad her obsession with finding (Vriska) led to her dying in the void.

Seeing Aradia and Sollux was a surprise but they really didnt add much to anything (esp. Sollux). It was kinda funny how much of a dickhead Cade (Calliope Jade) was towards her. Cade was interesting. i really feel like she acts like she did in the comic. 

(Vriska) returning was also not a surprise. She THE most known character. Of course she would be back, but not by her own accord. She wants the spotlight, she HAS to have it. Now that she is trapped on earth c she is now out of canon and so she is out of the spotlight. Thats why she was wailing about needing to SEE it. I think its kinda funny she ends up having a quick fling with Gamzee, and he tries to sell her on his redemption arc bullshit. It really shows how far her obsession has let her fall.

And now its time for meat. Honestly im glad i read candy first because meat was really nice to read after candy. As i said with candy, i figured meat would be the more active of the two (duality like the cherubs). 

First off it was really nice to see how much Dave believes in Karkat and how he thinks Karkat would be leader earth c NEEDS. In Meat they still have their relationship drama with themselves and Jade. I really feel like shes slightly more direct in this one. After the blowup 

John dealing with Roses instructions, finding and bringing together the younger versions of themselves so they could go fight a younger Caliborn and getting sucked into the the house juju was not a surprise since its been theorized thats what would happen. Of course Rose did not warn him, or even tell him what to do. Even when the younger versions of Johns friends die and get hurt he still tries to save them. 

Jake is a very powerful figure in the new earth, he doesnt even realize it. Which leads to everyone trying to get him on their sides. I honestly feel like this is partly his page powers (but then again the classes and aspects dont mean all that much) but he has always been unconfrontational and a doormat. Dirk, Jane, Dave, and Karkat only want to use him for his ass and fame so they can further their agendas. 

i think its rather fitting that (Vriska) doesnt get to see how the battle against Lord English ended. It was GREAT to see Davepetasprite^2 make a comeback and fight Lord English. She KNOWS the final battle isnt her battle but she is still THE ONE who turns the tide. She’s the one who has brought the winning piece so its still a victory of hers by proxy. Also she does not have the talk with Vriska (rose and kanayas kid) on a clown throw pillow so she does not get to do the self reflection she needs. Instead she gets sucked into a black hole.

The Jane and Dirk combo was not surprising, they both had the hangups about Jake and i feel like it ended the same way. Once they got what they wanted it was no longer exciting, or mysterious. But reading the political sabotage and Dirks plans coming together made me realize he was using her for his own gains too. 

Now the whole Rose dying because her physical body couldn't contain the infiniteness of infinity was truly heartbreaking. Especially when Dirk was fucking with Kanaya. i do not know how much of Rose was being manipulated by Dirk and how much was her wanting to end her chronic suffering(2real4me). Addressing all of the....implications around those two. i really do not think they ran off to be together. i believe Rose is the first person Dirk has really connected with on a actual personal level. From what ive seen he does not really treat people as well... people. I think him and Rose are feeling the, “i am the only real person here and everyone else is a puppet” feeling John and Terezi was talking about. But unlike John, Dirk was never one to sit idly by, hes a mechanic after all. All the pieces have to be in place.

The whole bit with Cade and dirk taking control of the narrative was something i feel like has been building up for a long while. The unreliable narrator has been established a few times in the comic, in friendsim, and now in the epilogue. But it does raise a good question about who has been narrating the story and can they be trusted to give us the truth. We saw Dirk acknowledge that he is not unbiased and says things as he sees it. Cade says shes unbiased and just gives the whole truth but all i can think about is how she made Jane carefully cradle the juju and put it on the mantle. Watching Dirk outsmart Cade was defiently exciting to read. I cannot wait to see where all of this is leading to. 

Do i think thats the end of both of Davepetasprite^2 and Lord English? No, as the comic has always said,” Don’t turn your back on the body.” We dont know where they ended up but we’ll just have to wait for more to come out and i cant wait. Does Rose, Dirk, and Terezi (i guess) have an agenda, yes. Do i have any goddamn idea what that is? Nope, and im fine with that. Overall i enjoyed both of them.