#like a denizen is a browser of timelines or something.

[dingodad]

i wonder if the denizens being simultaneously web browsers and eternal gods who exist simultaneously across realities is supposed to imply that skaia's "well of potential from which every conceivable possibility arises" in some way IS the internet

[thewertsearch]

DAVE: so why wasnt this legendary pos in the sylladex you gave me [...] DAVESPRITE: it was stolen DAVESPRITE: by one of hephaestus's minions DAVE: hes the denizen right

The Denizens are the Browser Gods, which is painfully obvious in retrospect. No wonder John died to Typheus so easily...

...hey, wait a second.

If Typheus is still around, then what the fuck is this thing?

Option 1: It is Typheus, but he's not dead yet. Grandpa killed him in the session's future, and brought him back to the past alongside Dream Jade.

Option 2: This was never Typheus in the first place. It's just a representation of John's Denizen - a sculpture, doll, or puppet made to look like him.

Granted, I'm not sure why Grandpa would do either of those things. I suppose he could have known it was predestined, but I'm not a fan of 'fate' being a character's sole motivation.

DAVESPRITE: yeah lord of the forge [...] DAVESPRITE: hes a pretty ornery dude DAVESPRITE: kept raving about how he was waiting for the forge to come DAVESPRITE: which he needs to complete his work DAVESPRITE: but in my timeline the forge would never come DAVESPRITE: so he was extra pissed off

Anyway, Hephaestus is waiting for the Forge, a Sburb construct we were introduced to back in Hivebent.

It's probably worth noting that the Forge isn't spawned by the game. Kanaya's was a naturally occurring Alternian volcano, located beside her hive, which Entered when she did. Alt-Hephaestus was missing his Forge because it's Jade's volcano - and Alt-Jade never Entered.

It's a strange property for a Sburb construct to have. I mean, a game which can synthesize entire planetoids should have no problem creating a volcano - so why does the Forge need to be an extra-session object?

Well, it was implied the Forge could destroy Royal Rings - and these rings are the most powerful Sburb artifacts around. Perhaps they can't be destroyed by Sburb constructs at all - they can only be unmade in the fires of Earth, from which their session was forged.

That said, I don't think this is what Hephaestus wants the Forge for. He needs it to complete his work - which, when paired with the term 'forge', seems to indicate that he's creating something.

Maybe the Forge is some sort of uber-Alchemiter, and the kids need it, plus a Denizen's help, in order to perform the Ultimate Alchemy. In other words, Hephaestus's great work could be the universe itself.

It's also a little odd that Hephaestus - who is clearly Dave's Denizen - is waiting for a Forge on LOJADE.

To be honest, I didn't even think Denizens knew about other Lands. As the final bosses of the Players' personal Quests, I thought their influence would begin and end on the planets they spawn in.

Denizens are more complicated than we thought. Hephaestus is clearly more than a generic 'boss monster' - he's also a craftsman, a blacksmith searching for his Forge.

...oh, right! Hephaestus is a blacksmith! Maybe he does want to melt down the Rings, then - but just to get at their metal. I'd love to see what a god could forge with that kind of raw material.

[applestorms]

ooo wait i love that interpretation, BGD as both dirk and jake’s potential for (morally good?) power is great actually. also, big Agree about jake’s intelligence being hidden, the interpretation of the kids’ fetch modus being a representation of how they think fits that idea too (jake’s being too large to even fit on screen -> his intelligence being kinda unknowable even to him). pretty sure it’s also pretty explicitly referenced in BGD’s intro following that long ass conversation between 13yo dirkjake (“GT: I have no business knowing those things.” pg.4875). ok now for this one:

OHOHOH. okay very interested in hearing your elaboration, but my understanding of abraxas is mostly limited to the way they’re referenced in the hermann hesse novel demian (and also all the explanations of gnosticism given in those optimistic duelist lore videos i obsessively binged as a teenager, epic). for denizens specifically though, we’re mostly limited in canon to john and caliborn (and i guess roxy?) for more extensive looks at the denizens besides basic visuals & names. so john does his whole oil quest with typheus (and is killed early on by him thanks to terezi) and caliborn gets the house juju from beating yaldabaoth, both incredibly significant moments for the Alpha Timeline™️ of homestuck.

we get very little information in hs canon about abraxas as a denizen, only really knowing that they’re jake’s because of the web browser thing (and also maybe karkat? forget where the evidence for that comes from). outside of the text though, abraxas is stupidly relevant when it comes to the whole duality motif that surrounds the cherubs, and many other key themes/visuals in homestuck. carl jung calls abraxas a god both higher than and a combination of the christian god and devil- pistorius also says this when teaching emil sinclair about abraxas in demian, i believe- essentially the ultimate evil and ultimate good combined. the appeal of abraxas to emil sinclair’s study is this specific duality, something he struggles with throughout his life from very early on with the worlds of light (family, religion, safety) and dark (danger, social taboos) he describes from his childhood. in demian, pistorius is basically emil’s transitional mentor at a time when max demian himself is not present, so this teaching of abraxas is quite significant. it’s actually really interesting then if abraxas is in fact karkat’s denizen too, given that both jake and karkat have a lot of jesus imagery associated with them w/ the hope angels/golgothas & sufferer respectively; abraxas is kind of blasphemous w/ their whole God&Satan thing when it comes to christianity.

jake and karkat in general have a lot of connections to the cherubs, actually. karkat is presumably a lime blood but mutated to bright red (calliope & caliborn’s blood colors), his gray text is right in the middle of callie and caliborn’s, and his struggle between passivity (more natural to him w/ his blood aspect) and violence (the Alternian standard, thanks to doc scratch). jake’s whole intro page is basically a hehe wink tease with how much lord english shit surrounds him, and he is later explained to have direct influence on lord english’s attire and, yeah, name.

the whole point of a denizen is that they can be either defeated or worked with, so the fact that karkat and jake both have abraxas, the ultimate symbol of extreme duality, as theirs is. PRETTY MEANINGFUL, i mean you can basically interpret that as jake and karkat are the best subjects to defeat the cherubs right?? which makes sense, especially when considering their strengths in relation to the meat/candy distinction of the epilogues. if you don’t like the pumpkin route thing and want alternatives to both meat & candy, karkat’s aspect being blood and all about relationships, with his biggest strength during the troll’s session being his ability to keep everyone working together, is a good alternative to the shitshow of compulsively heteronormative relationships in candy. and in terms of meat, with jake…..

yeah no, the evidence in favor of ultimate jake just keeps stacking up, jesus fuck lol.

clawed my way through (some of) the epilogues and hs^2 again for dirkjake crumbs and i think there is a Genuine place for ultimate jake to fit into canon (or at the very least, lord jake english) since meat timeline jake never actually shows up visually in hs^2 and his final appearance in that timeline (minus a phone call or something w/ roxy? or was it kanaya fuck) is giving ult. dirk his spaceship and then proclaiming his undying love while desperately trying to get dirk to let him join him, to which dirk responds that he’ll “never let [jake] break [his] heart again” (ch39). agony.

two interesting things about the end of his arc in meat actually: for one thing, it’s kinda implied that along with giving dirk a spaceship, he also gave dave/karkat/roxy/kanaya/etc a spaceship to chase after him, so he’s at least taken some action to try to stop him. again though, we never see him after that point so like. the idea that he could just hope himself into becoming an ultimate self in the background is actually kind of a possibility?? like while the others try to chase dirk down, jake is figuring out how to brute force himself into ascension as a backup plan. second thing, dirk is very snarky in the narration about the fact that this dramatic goodbye he’s giving jake is the last time he’ll ever get to see him (jake see dirk, i mean) but ult. dirk also seems to lack power against alt. calliope when they fight over the narrative so jake ascending would actually pose a serious threat and might be able to override that, assuming dirk’s power over the narrative extends that far in the first place (thinking about that post talking about how narration is also a reflection of characters’ thoughts…)

candy timeline jake is also pretty interesting since he very notably starts being advised by BGD to be a kind of spy on the inside against jane’s. whole thing in that timeline. i actually completely cannot remember what jane does in the meat timeline, i think also some presidency bullshit, right?? that’s what the davekat thing was about??? but anyway BGD sounds pretty normal in all his dialogue, or normal for BGD at least, and is aware of both the game over timeline and ult. dirk’s bullshit enough to make fun of it so. idk maybe i’m just misunderstanding how ultimate selves work, but the fact that BGD wasn’t really “integrated” into ult. dirk feels significant to me, especially considering the fact that we can see caliborn/LE’s influence on ult. dirk so much (his narration in ch39 gives AR too, frankly, like the epilogues are obvs way more openly horny than hs proper but AR was always kinda like that too, especially about jake). hs^2 also ends super abruptly with some lore shit i skimmed half heartedly between calliope, roxy, and john again talking about his initial decision between candy and meat. that whole conversation pretty deliberately frames the decision between meat and candy as being parallel to terezi’s coin flip about whether or not to kill vriska, and roxycallie even tell john straight up that he needs to get vriska again to fix the story, perhaps assuming that’ll work again since it did when he was retconning the timeline? but imo, though maybe i’m biased cause i didn’t really review what vriska does post-canon again, it seems more fitting to me that jake would be the one to fix the bullshit timelines, considering 1. dirk is the one going bananas out of his fucking mind w/ control of the narrative, 2. thematically, pumpkins are the most logical, healthy alternative to meat and candy, fitting since caliborn explicitly aligns dirk and jake’s color scheme with them in the smut-drawing conversation and since (in the same breath) he establishes that he hates them and prefers meat/candy. but that’s getting into sherlock secret final episode levels of conspiracy, and i’m not sure i’m ready for that one