#meatmeta

[the-meat-machine]

do you ever think about how roxy says that it was fefetasprite who helped her get sober?

do you ever think about how post-retcon roxy never had fefetasprite?

do you ever think about how badly roxy wanted to prototype her sprite with her mom? how she scooped up her mom's ectogoo just for that purpose?

do you ever think about post-retcon roxy lying awake at night listening to the incomprehensible screeching of her unprototyped sprite that she can't use to resurrect her mom because some alien jerk won't let her in case they need the sprites later for emergency resurrections?

do you ever wonder whether she turned to alcohol to push through the pain and loneliness?

do you ever think about how the post-retcon sprites got wasted on a bunch of bullshit in the end anyway so roxy's sacrifice was totally in vain?

and do you ever think about how, after all that, post-retcon roxy got unceremoniously killed off and replaced with a different version of herself and NO ONE FUCKING CARED?

because i do

[the-meat-machine]

It only recently occurred to me that the two characters the Condesce forcibly turns to her side -- Jane and Jade -- are her daughters. The two alien girls she raised in two different timelines. Different versions of them, but still. She brings her heiresses over to her side.

And it's interesting -- I've always thought there were hints that the Condesce is sincere, albeit very twisted, in her desire to take on an heiress. I can't imagine that HIC would ever cede power completely, but making her heiress(es) her second-in-command? I can see that. And indeed, that's exactly what she does.

My biggest reason for thinking that this is something the Condesce cares about is this passage from Meenah:

MEENAH: just makes me think about my kid descendant MEENAH: an how instead of having this cool friendsy relation with her i just got this uncontrollable urge to stab her to death so she dont threaten my supremacy MEENAH: which is a shame cuz she so cute 38( MEENAH: cod damn my royal blood and the cray junk it makes me have to do MEENAH: aw well MEENAH: maybe some day ill find an heiress who my genes dont instinctively make me wanna murder on sight MEENAH: then i can teach her the badass ways of being a boss n shit!

There are two things I'm taking from these lines:

Meenah (and by extension, the Condesce) has a biological urge to kill any other fuchsia-blooded troll she meets

Meenah would sincerely like to take on a protege (and specifically a female one) and "teach her the badass ways of being a boss n shit"

So does this also apply to the Condesce? Would she, deep down, like to have an heiress who wouldn't be a rival or a threat, but someone she could mentor? Personally, I think the whole point of Meenah's little digression here is to imply that she would.

Now, in HIC's own universe, she's never able to realize this desire. Hell, she probably never even considered that it might be something she'd want at all. Any fuchsia-blooded contender for the throne would be eliminated at all costs, and anyone below fuchsia was unworthy of consideration.

But then she makes her way into the human universe, and as part of her new master's plans, she has to take in a pair of human children -- one boy (Jake) and one girl (Jane). Then, later, she progresses into a different version of that universe and takes on another pair (John and Jade). She doesn't seem to care much about the boys.* But the girls? Perhaps she sees a bit of herself in them. These alien girls present her with a possibility that she's never considered before in all her millennia of life: heiresses she can take under her wing instead of kill on sight.

And so, when she finally gets the opportunity to corrupt two of the kids to her side, the ones she chooses are the alternate universe versions of her daughters.**

Of course, the Condesce can't just let her heiresses run around making their own decisions. That would be ridiculous. But she can unleash them from their self-imposed limitations, rid them of all those pesky morals and qualms that are holding them back. She can show them how to be badass take-no-shit bitches like true heiresses should be. And she'll groom them to take on high-ranking positions in her future empire, to help her keep the populace in line.

Hell, she'll even throw them a bone or two. Give them some gifts. Let 'em have some fun. Because I notice that despite HIC's utter revulsion for human reproductive practices -- a revulsion so strong it lead her to wipe out the entire human race -- she still allows Jane to hold Jake captive with the intention of using him to sire heirs. (Or should I say... heiresses.) The fact that HIC apparently not only doesn't object to this but seems to incorporate it into her plans is HUGE. She'll permit her heiress something she would never allow for any other human.

Anyway. The Condesce cares about her daughters. Heartwarming <3 Yet another fun example in Homestuck of patterns of abuse and oppression being perpetuated through family bonds.

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Footnotes:

* Sorry for the June erasure, but in canon, HIC is unaware that this particular child may one day grow up to become a woman. If she did know, perhaps she would have taken on a third heiress. An interesting AU to contemplate, perhaps.

** It is interesting that the Condesce chooses Jade even though, in the post-scratch timeline, it was John Crocker who was "loyal" to her and Jade English who ran away. Does she just not consider boys to be valid heirs? Did she have some level of respect for Jade despite her betrayal? Or is she punishing Jade English's betrayal by stealing Jade Harley over to her own side?

[the-meat-machine]

In Defense of Ultimate Dirk

I am going to be honest: I have a hard time understanding why people think Ultimate Dirk is out of character. Because if there is one character I can believe would willingly take on the role of the villain if he thought it meant saving everything he held dear, it's Dirk.

See, Ultimate Dirk isn't Dirk just randomly becoming a villain. He's not suddenly acting mean for no reason. It's not even that he was destined to be a villain (though Dirk believes he was, and that plays into it). Ultimate Dirk is Dirk deliberately playing up his own worst traits in order to make himself the villain because that's the only path forward he can see -- not just for himself, but for everyone.

The way I see it, in the post-canon, Dirk's growing powers make him uncomfortably aware of several massive problems.

Problem 1

Dirk is a fictional character. All of his friends are fictional characters. And the story he's from is over. Without more canon coming out, Dirk is convinced that everyone and everything he loves is doomed to a slow slide into irrelevance. They will fade out of the public consciousness. Everyone will forget about them. And outside of the minds of the creator and the audience, Dirk et al. have no existence. Without more stories about them, there is no more of them. In Dirk's view, the end of canon is tantamount to death -- and not just for him. For everyone he cares about. This is the fundamental problem driving Ultimate Dirk. Nothing could be more important than ensuring that his friends' stories get to continue.

Problem 2

Dirk's growing Heart powers mean he is becoming intimately familiar with his friends' internal lives. More familiar than anyone would reasonably want to be. More familiar than anyone can be while retaining their own sanity and their respect for their friends. Dirk sees all the ways they're failing to live up to their potential. In fact, he can't NOT see all their little flaws, all the mistakes they make, all the bad decisions they justify to themselves, all the ways they could be more than they are but fail to live up to. To someone like Dirk, who feels intensely driven to guide his friends toward self-improvement, this must be absolutely maddening.

Problem 3

Dirk knows that his splinters are a Problem. Ultimate Dirk is the sum total of all Dirks, and that means that his consciousness now includes such luminaries as Bro Strider, Doc Scratch, Lord English, and Lil Cal. Ultimate Dirk knows intimately what his influence has wrought on Paradox Space, and it's not great! Splinters of his have had a hand in pretty much every awful thing that happens in Homestuck and in particular have deeply harmed Dave, the person who is perhaps most important to him in the universe. And now those splinters are part of him. He understands how they thought, why they did what they did. There are parts of him that feel that they were justified, even as he hates himself for it, hates himself for everything that he feels that he is. Everything he can see is pointing to him fundamentally being a callous, sadistic puppeteer. He's drowning in his own dismal persona and can't see any way to escape from it.

(One thing I'd like to note here is that Dirk's abilities as a fully realized Ultimate Prince of Heart, though extremely powerful, still have limitations. In particular, he cannot see the future. He can see what other versions of himself became, but he cannot see what he is going to become. But I don't think he notices that there's actually nothing that destines him to have to repeat his splinters' mistakes. His powers make him feel as though he already knows everything there is to know about himself. They make him inclined to see the Self as an immutable whole. It doesn't occur to him that the actions of his splinters don't have to dictate what he becomes. It doesn't occur to him that he could change.)

The "Solution"

So. Here is what I think is going on with Ultimate Dirk:

Dirk needs there to be more Homestuck. He wants his friends to live up to their potential. Forcing them to do so would be villainous… but a new villain is exactly what the story needs in order to continue. So, why not kill two birds with one stone? He can embrace the villainy he thinks he's destined to fall into anyway, puppeteer his friends to drag them in the directions he thinks they should go, and thereby spark a conflict that will kick off new stories and make his friends into even greater heroes. Really, he has the power to save his friends from oblivion. What sort of dick would he be if he didn't?

And if the course Dirk is planning ends with his own Just death at Dave's hands, well, it's only what he deserves... isn't it?

[the-meat-machine]

dirkuu is pale

I see a lot of people assuming that Dirk/Caliborn is blackrom. In fact, I used to think so too. But the more I've thought about these two, the more I've come to realize that there's a different quadrant that describes their relationship much, much better: moirallegiance.

I want to preface this by saying that neither of these characters are trolls, so one can't expect their feelings to map 1:1 onto troll quadrants. But if you are looking for a quadrant to characterize their relationship, I think that pale romance is a much closer analogue for what's going on here than troll kismesissitude -- and certainly far more on the mark than cherub kismesissitude, which is a whole other can of worms.

So let's start with that. Caliborn is from a species that "naturally" experiences blackrom, so why don't I think cherub-style blackrom is what's going on here?

Cherub vs. troll kismesissitude

We get a fair amount of information about troll blackrom throughout Homestuck, but one thing I want to highlight about it is that it's not just pure, vitriolic hatred. There's a core of respect there, of wanting your kismesis to be better than they are. Karkat explains it well when talking to John about his black crush on Terezi (emphasis mine):

JOHN: i'm just saying i find her, like, somewhat annoying, and REALLY aggravating a lot of the time, but that's it! KARKAT: BUT THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THE FEELING IS! KARKAT: IT DOESN'T START OUT AS FULL BLOWN ANTIPATHY, AND IT RARELY EVEN REACHES SUCH AN EXTREME LEVEL OF HOSTILITY EVEN OVER LONG TERM BLACK RELATIONSHIPS. […] KARKAT: WHAT YOU'RE *TRYING* TO SAY IS, YOU HAD FRUSTRATED, NEGATIVE EMOTIONS TOWARD HER, BUT THEY DON'T COMPREHENSIVELY ACCOUNT FOR YOUR ATTITUDE TOWARD HER. KARKAT: MEANING, THERE ARE SOME THINGS ABOUT HER YOU ACTUALLY LIKE, BUT THE NEGATIVE FEELINGS MAKE IT HARD FOR YOU TO PUT YOUR FINGER ON THEM, OR EVEN WANT TO ACKNOWLEDGE THEM. KARKAT: THAT IS ABSOLUTELY STANDARD. WHAT GOOD WOULD IT BE HAVING A KISMESIS WHO DIDN'T POSSESS QUALITIES YOU ACTUALLY ADMIRED ON SOME LEVEL? KARKAT: THAT WOULD BE BORING, AND IT WOULDN'T EVEN WORK. THERE'D BE NO TENSION, NO PUSH AND PULL IN THE TURBULENT EMOTIONAL LANDSCAPE. THE SUBTLE POSITIVES ADD FUEL TO THE NEGATIVE FEELINGS, OFTEN GIVING THEM A REASON TO EXIST AT ALL. THEY INFLAME THE AGGRAVATING FACTORS, REMINDING YOU DEEP DOWN HOW MUCH YOU WOULD LIKE AND ADMIRE THIS PERSON IF IT WASN'T FOR ALL THEIR INFURIATING FLAWS, AND THE INCREDIBLE SENSE OF FRUSTRATION THAT CAUSES ALONG WITH ALL THE ASSOCIATED HOT-HEADED FEELINGS, THAT'S THE ESSENCE OF BLACK ROMANCE.

Cherub romance, on the other hand, is much more vitriolic. Here's Aranea explaining it (typing quirk removed for legibility):

Like humans, cherubs perceive romance through only one quadrant. Unlike humans, their relationships are exclusively black. But their mating ritual is much more violent than any practice trolls would, or even physically could engage in. And though it is critical to the perpetuation of their race, the confrontations can sometimes be lethal to one or both cherubs. Regardless of the outcome, the stakes are always high. The winner of the duel will assume control of the other's territory, while the loser will slink away to bear the offspring. So as she toured the planetary wreckage, she knew her quest for a mate was not just about the propagation of her species, but the liberation of billions from a monster.

For cherubs, there's no question of wanting your mate to be "better". There's no core of admiration. Your mate is a bitter enemy who needs to be eradicated -- perhaps one only you can eradicate (ah, romance). Cherub mating is a life-or-death battle where the only possible outcomes are defeat or conquest. No one will be waxing red for their mate afterward. That simply isn't a thing, in the cherub understanding of romance.

Furthermore, a cherub's mate is their opposite, in every way possible. They have diametrically opposing goals, temperaments, and philosophies of life. There's no possibility of seeing eye to eye with your mate. They're simply everything you aren't, and you despise them for it.

Caliborn's feelings towards Dirk

So. Does Caliborn have blackrom feelings towards Dirk? And I mean cherub blackrom, in its full, vitriolic glory. Does Caliborn despise Dirk, and think he's a threat among threats who needs to be eliminated at all costs?

Well. He wants to kill him, sure. But of all the people Caliborn wants to kill, he wants to kill Dirk the least.

IT'S THE DIRK HUMAN. HE IS SOMEWHAT TOLERABLE. I MEAN. AS A STRONG AND COMPETENT MALE. What. So you're down with the Dirk? NO. ALL I'M SAYING IS. THE DEATH I WISH ON HIM DOESN'T HAVE TO BE ESPECIALLY PAINFUL. IT COULD BE LIKE. GOING TO SLEEP. WITH MAYBE ONLY A SHORT SCREAM. I think you want to be bros with him. SHUT YOUR MOUTH.

So right off the bat, we can see that Caliborn does not at all have the sort of hatred for Dirk that cherubs have for their mates. He barely even thinks Dirk needs to die. Furthermore, he sees himself and Dirk as philosophically aligned in some ways, both being strong, competent males who like to fuck shit up. Hardly the sort of diametrically opposing role that a cherubic mate would fill.*

Now, what we do see here is some of that admiration that you see sometimes in troll blackrom. And there's a bit more of that in Caliborn's masterpiece, when Caliborn says of the fight between himself and Dirk:

IT WAS A PRETTY GOOD FIGHT BETWEEN US. BECAUSE HE'S STRONG, AND I ADMIRE THAT. WHY SHOULDN'T I LET A BATTLE HAPPEN FOR LONGER, WHEN TWO TOUGH DUDES ARE INVOLVED, STRUTTING THEIR STUFF.

So, okay. Maybe there's something here a bit akin to troll kismesissitude, if not cherub romance. But I still don't think that's the quadrant that matches best. Because, to be honest, there are a lot of people Caliborn wants dead, and several he sees as rivals (e.g. Jake, Dave). But there's only one person he's said anything like this about:

uu: BuT. THE DIRK HuMAN IS A PRETTY COOL GuY. uu: HE GETS THINGS DONE. uu: AND ISN'T AFRAID TO FuCK SOME SHIT uP. uu: LIKE. HE ACTuALLY LISTENS. uu: TO STuFF THAT'S IMPORTANT FOR A DuDE TO GET OFF HIS CHEST. uu: YOu KNOW. HE *GETS* EXACTLY THAT WHICH THE BITCHES CAN NEVER uNDERSTAND. uu: I GuESS WHAT I MEAN IS. HE REALLY KNOWS WHAT IT MEANS. uu: TO TRuLY BE A BRO.

Yeah. Caliborn likes talking about his feelings with Dirk. To be frank, this is an unprecedented admission from him. There are a few people he'll admit to not entirely hating -- mostly his lackeys -- but no one else he sees as a bro.

And why shouldn't he see Dirk as a bro? After all…

Dirk likes Caliborn

Yeah, so, here's the thing: Dirk simply does not hate Caliborn. Like, at all. In fact, he thinks he and Caliborn are friends.

TT: Surely there must be at least one of our virtues you admire. uu: YES. AMBITION. THAT'S THE ONLY GOOD ONE. uu: AND I THINK YOu GOT THAT. WHICH IS MAYBE WHY. YOu'RE THE ONLY ONE I CAN PuT uP WITH FOR ANY DuRATION? uu: LET'S CALL IT A GRuDGING RESPECT. WHICH IS THE ONLY KIND THAT'S EVEN WORTH A FuCK. TT: I'll take that as a rare overture of friendship.

He thinks Caliborn is "fascinating".

TT: You're a pretty fascinating guy, in a way. I can't really figure you out. TT: In case you're wondering why I put up with you more than my friends do.

He's entirely willing to help Caliborn and seems to enjoy talking to him. He made Caliborn's robot leg for him. He very memorably drew a whole bunch of custom "porn" for him, and was entirely willing to do so for no particular reason other than that he thought it was fun.

But more to the palerom point… Dirk tries to pacify Caliborn.

TT: I thought the point was to cooperate with your coplayers to achieve an objective. TT: Not compete with them or try to kill them. I don't think we've had one conversation where you didn't express the desire to kill her. uu: I GuESS WE'LL JuST HAVE TO SEE. WON'T WE? uu: I THINK THIS IS PROBABLY A DIFFERENT KIND OF SESSION. uu: ONE WHERE THE PLAYERS FIGHT FOR SuPREMACY. RATHER THAN WORK TOGETHER. uu: I THINK THAT IT MuST BE THAT WAY. uu: BECAuSE THAT IS HOW I WANT IT TO BE. uu: AND IF I WANT SOMETHING TO BE TRuE HARD ENOuGH. THEN THAT MAKES IT SLIGHTLY MORE ABSOLuTELY IRREFuTABLE. uu: ARE YOu FEELING ME, FuCKER? TT: Maybe you're right. TT: But since that's how you feel now, maybe the truth is that the game is challenging you to overcome those feelings? TT: What if your real quest is to put aside your differences and work together, if you want to both survive, and grow as a person?

He tries to get Caliborn to get along better with Calliope.

TT: Does your sister even know you're into this sappy shipping stuff? TT: You berate her constantly for everything, and I know she likes to write and illustrate romfics and the like. […] TT: I'm just saying, it's an interest you have in common. If you told her you liked her romantic artwork, maybe you could bond over that?

Frankly, these are some textbook pale overtures on Dirk's part.** If they were trolls, there would be no question that his feelings are the palest of pale.

And, look, Dirk is not at all successful in pacifying Caliborn, and to be honest I don't think he ever fully took Caliborn seriously as a threat. But still, if you're looking for a quadrant to describe these two, I'd say moirallegiance is it.

But then again, they aren't trolls. They're a human and a cherub. So in the end, maybe it would be more suitable to just call them exactly what Caliborn is so tsundere about admitting that they are: bros.

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Footnotes:

* If you're looking for someone Caliborn does feel cherub-style romantic hatred for: Calliope. It's Calliope. It's always been Calliope.

** Actually, now that I think about it, they're arguably ashen overtures where Dirk is attempting to mediate between Calliope and Caliborn. Which itself would be a fascinating ship. But let's not get too into that here.

[the-meat-machine]

An examination of Jane's Crockercorp brainwashing

You put on your highly fashionable UNREAL HEIRESS THOUGHTWAVE TIARATOP and flip it on. It immediately hums to life as its blazing fast processes mingle with your thoughts. It is the most efficient computing technology in the world by far, as long as you don't wear it for too long. But aside from a few migraines, you can't possibly imagine any OBEY drawbacks that CEASE REPRODUCTION could come with SUBMIT merging CONSUME your thoughts with EMBRACE YOUR CULLING experimental technology CONFORM TO SOCIAL ORDER from an STAY ASLEEP extremely powerful DIE corporation, wait what?

So, here's a fact: Jane has been brainwashed with Crockercorp propaganda from childhood.

Here's another fact: Jane is the heiress to Crockercorp and is being groomed to take over the company once she comes of age.

With that in mind, I'd like to take a look at the subliminal messages Jane gets brainwashed with. I want to consider what these messages mean both on a literal level and a broader societal level, as well as what they mean to Jane, specifically, as the heiress to Crockercorp. Because when Jane takes in these messages coming from Crockercorp, they don't just apply to her. They also represent the ideology she'll one day be expected to enforce once she takes over the company.

I'll organize this into sections based on the commands, grouping a few similar commands together.

SUBMIT / OBEY

The literal meaning of these commands is straightforward: submission and obedience to a higher authority; specifically, Crockercorp.

More generally, these commands are about the importance of hierarchy. They tell the listener that there are those in this world who must be obeyed without question.

These commands teach Jane to submit her will both to the Condesce and to the advancement of the company as a whole. Being bombarded with endless messages of SUBMIT and OBEY is presumably part of what made her susceptible to having her brain hijacked by the tiaratop entirely.

However, since Jane is the heiress to Crockercorp, these messages are also subconsciously teaching her that one day, she'll be the one people submit to and obey. She's being primed to be a leader, and an autocratic one at that. After all, a corporation isn't a democracy, least of all Crockercorp. The CEO gives the orders, and everyone else has no choice but to OBEY. The only thing the leader serves is the brand itself.

CONFORM TO SOCIAL ORDER

Self-explanatory. Jane is very, very good at this one. She will bury all of her desires deep within the darkest recesses of her brain in the pursuit of conforming to social order. In fact, she's so good at conforming to social order that she has managed to convince herself, her friends, and the entire fandom that she's "the normal one." Incredible.

She also tends to urge her friends to conform to social order, for example by pedantically correcting their grammar. As the future leader of Crockercorp, she'll one day be the one enforcing social norms, and I think she's a natural at it.

One other thing to consider with this command is whether the "social order" that the Condesce wants humans to conform to is actually the social order that humans will be picturing when brainwashed with this command. The Condesce wants humans to be more like trolls. But I highly doubt many humans would hear "conform to social order" and interpret it to mean that they should organize society by blood color and leave their children to be raised by wild animals!

CONSUME

The literal meaning of this one is to buy and consume Crockercorp products. And we see throughout the story that Jane is all-in on the Betty Crocker brand, even in cases where she knows that Betty Crocker products are inferior. She even directly acknowledges it at one point, admitting that BettyBother is significantly worse than Pesterchum, but that "brand loyalty is a powerful thing". I bet it is, Jane!

But beyond that… what this command teaches more generally is that unchecked capitalism is the highest virtue. And, look, I think there's a lot of evidence that Jane buys into that philosophy wholeheartedly.

Now, I wouldn't presume to know where exactly Jane stands politically. But it's hard to deny that she is, at the very least, fiscally conservative. She has no problem with the idea of society being under the control of a powerful corporation, as long as said corporation is her company. Crockercorp has wormed its way into all aspects of life in her world, and that's just peachy as far as Jane is concerned.

In fact, Jane wants Crockercorp to seize more power! Within a few days of her introduction, we see both that she wants to privatize the post office and that she's a believer in millionaire philanthropy. Obviously these pages are both presented as jokes, but I think they speak to her mindset. Jane is a wealthy girl who has never had any reason to question the privileges her wealth gives her or the power she's set to inherit.

And this mindset is reaffirmed in the credits, where Jane decides to reestablish her beloved Betty Crocker brand in the post-scarcity paradise she and the other kids created. It seems that she believes the only problem with Crockercorp was that there was a bad person running it, and now with her in charge instead everything will be hunky-dory! She doesn't appear to consider that there could be any systemic issues in having a god-run monopolistic corporation set up shop in utopia.

STAY ASLEEP

Metaphorically: stay ignorant. Don't pay attention to what's going on around you. Don't notice what Crockercorp is doing to you and to the world.

Jane does tend to reject facts that seem outlandish or improbable to her, and specifically spends a long time rejecting the notion that there could be anything sinister going on behind the scenes at Crockercorp.

Literally, this command could be a message directed at Jane specifically: stay asleep on Prospit. Don't wake up and see the portents in the clouds of Skaia, portents that may reveal things the Condesce doesn't want her to know.

EMBRACE YOUR CULLING / DIE

Literally, these two are directed more at the human populace of Earth: humanity is done for. Don't resist when the drones come to kill you.

Applied to Jane specifically, there are two possible literal interpretations. One is that she's being encouraged not to resist the Condesce, in case one day they end up fighting and the Condesce has to kill her. The other is that she's being encouraged to embrace death so that she can go god tier, which helps Jane herself level up while also being instrumental to the Condesce's plans.

Being constantly bombarded with messages telling her that she should die probably didn't do great for Jane's self-esteem! The Maid of Life's drive to survive can't be eliminated that easily, though.

On a broader level, these commands teach Jane that Crockercorp decides who is permitted to live and who deserves to die. Corporate control over life and death as the natural endgame of the corporate state. And of course, this means that as the head of Crockercorp, Jane will one day be in a position to decide whose lives are worth living.

CEASE REPRODUCTION

This is an interesting one when you look at the literal meaning. Because no matter how you think this command affected Jane, one thing it decidedly did not do is rid her of the desire to reproduce. Deep down—as revealed both in Trickster Mode and Crockertier—Jane really, really wants to have Jake's babies.

Personally, my headcanon is that this command left Jane with a massive breeding kink. For nebulous reasons she can't explain, she feels that reproductive sex is horribly taboo, more so even than sex in general. Meanwhile, she's desperately in love with Jake, and wants both to have sex with him, and also to have a nice heterosexual nuclear family with him (conform to social order!). And she's too repressed to express any of this to anybody, so it all builds up into this big impossible taboo fantasy of BABIES BABIES BABIES.

I also happen to think that the Condesce explicitly considers Jane an exception to this command. I've argued before that the Condesce is sincere in wanting Jane to be her heiress. She even goes so far as to allow Crockertier Jane to kidnap Jake with the intention of using him to sire children. And why not? Her heiress has gotta be able to have heiresses of her own. The royal line must go on. As is implicit in a lot of these messages, those who are in charge have the privilege of being exempt from restrictions that apply to everyone else.

There's also a broader implication to the CEASE REPRODUCTION command, and it's this: there are people out there whose uncontrolled breeding is a threat to social order. In this sense, it's a blatantly fascist message.

And… look, I've been avoiding referencing anything from the post-canon in this post so far, but if you'll allow me to dip into the Epilogues for just a moment: this, perhaps more than anything, is where the Condesce's attempted brainwashing of Jane really backfired for her. Because I would assume that one of the Condesce's goals is to perpetuate the troll race. And yet she allowed her human heiress to internalize the message that there are other people whose unnatural and disgusting methods of reproduction should be banned. Filtered through Jane's human mindset… well, from her perspective, it's probably trolls who have a bizarre and repellent way of reproducing. Seems like that might not work out so well for the trolls if Jane ends up in charge! Certainly it doesn't in Candy.

Conclusion

So there's the overview of what I believe are all the commands we see Jane get brainwashed with in Homestuck. If I forgot any, feel free to let me know.

Now, a lot of these messages are things Jane would have been internalizing regardless in her upbringing as a corporate scion. Hell, some of them are things that everybody in 21st century American capitalist society is going to be marinating in to some degree or other. And for some of the commands, like CONFORM TO SOCIAL ORDER, it's hard to tell how much is the brainwashing and how much is just Jane's natural personality.

But I do think all of these subliminal messages are very revealing in what they say about Jane's mindset, ideology, and unexamined biases. Because frankly, Jane never really reckons with any of this in canon. She never questions whether there was anything wrong with her upbringing. She continues to embrace the role she was raised to fill. Even after coming out of Crockertier, she's ashamed of how she behaved but never seems to examine why she acted that way. Instead she just goes right back to repressing everything.

After all, CONFORMING TO SOCIAL ORDER is what Jane is best at.

[the-meat-machine]

Mr Machine, have you caught the upd8? Not to obsess over even the shadows made by the absence of DirkRose or whatever but. Look at her

yes, rose was great in this update. like father like daughter <3

tbh i was paying more attention to jane though. specifically, these lines where she's contemplating killing jake:

You will claim the spoils of this war and oversee a thriving planet. Cultivating an ever bettering stock of humanity. Your future. On and on. Forever. Alone.

...

As if!!!!!

this just stuck with me so much. no matter how much she despises jake -- and it's clear that at this point she has no respect for him whatsoever -- she fears the idea of spending eternity alone even more. she cannot, will not, tear herself free of this relationship that's making everyone miserable, this relationship that's literally threatening to kill them both, because then she would be alone, with nothing to face but her own miserable, eternal existence.

candy jane continues to be a tragedy. to me.

(and i haven't even gotten into the fact that she thinks jake's death would be JUST. she thinks she's in the right! she thinks she's still a hero!!! god. i can't.)

[the-meat-machine]

It's interesting to compare what each kid's "easy solution" to their problems is in Trickster Mode.

For Jane it's "marry Jake and have his babies".

For Jake it's "give everyone else what they want (my body) so that they like me".

For Roxy it's "go get drunk and then make Dirk love me".

For Dirk it's "torch my relationship to the ground and then lay down to die".

[the-meat-machine]

The thing about postcanon Dirk/Rose is that Ult Dirk needs Rose way, way more than Rose needs him. Dirk is trying desperately to convince himself, and us, and Rose, that Rose is in the same position he is. But she isn't, and I think on some level Dirk knows it.

This line really struck me in my Epilogues reread:

Kanaya loves Rose, but sometimes love just isn’t enough. Sometimes what you need is understanding.

Because, the thing is, this line isn't really about Kanaya and Rose. It's about Jake and Dirk. And it becomes obvious when compared with another line from later on where Dirk talks about his relationship with Rose:

We’re family. We belong together. And after years of micromanaging the inconsistent and confused desires of total imbeciles, wouldn’t it be a relief to have someone by my side who understood me?

So here's what I think is going on. Dirk feels desperately, desperately alone. His ascension to Ultimate Self-hood is making him aware of all sorts of dire shit. He's becoming aware of his status as a fictional character and the tenuous position of the "canon" he's from. He's "drowning in his own dismal persona", as he once put it in canon. And no one fucking gets it, least of all the man he loves.

Because it's clear that Jake could never, ever understand what Dirk is going through. He does not understand Dirk. Will not understand Dirk. Willfully chooses to avoid understanding Dirk at every turn. And Dirk is so, so tired of it.

And then Dirk starts to get to know Rose better, and… they just click. They truly are kindred spirits in many ways. They have similar senses of humor, similar interests, similar ways of viewing the world. And most importantly, Rose is ascending too. She will soon be in a position to understand what's going on at the same level Dirk does. She'll be able to understand him. And Dirk needs understanding so desperately.

But there's a problem, and that problem is that, while Dirk feels that he doesn't have anyone else who can understand him, the same isn't true for Rose. Because Kanaya does understand her. Maybe not completely. Maybe she'll never fully be able to grasp the metaphysical implications of Rose's ascension. But, importantly, she tries to understand, in a way Jake would never do for Dirk.

And so Dirk knows that, in order for his plan to work, in order to convince Rose to come with him, he has to prevent Kanaya from getting to her at all costs. Because no matter how much he tries to tell himself that Rose would feel the same way he does even without his influence, he knows that if Rose had to choose between him and Kanaya, she would choose Kanaya in a heartbeat.

So he prevents Kanaya from reaching Rose, manipulates Kanaya into telling Rose that she should leave her and go with Dirk. And he suborns Rose's will into his own. He does everything he can to make her part of him. Because in the end, the only way Dirk Strider can understand to not be alone is to gaze at himself in the mirror.

I'll leave you with a quote from Candy:

ROSE: There’s no one who understands me like you, Kanaya. No one who looks at me the way you do. No one who brings me back down to earth with ceaseless, brutal honestly like you. ROSE: I have no idea what’d I’d do without you. KANAYA: You Would Probably Do Just Fine ROSE: Yes, but I’d be very unhappy.

[the-meat-machine]

thinking about cycles of abuse in homestuck and how almost all the guardians get caught up in it, even ones who seem decent at first glance. and specifically i'm thinking about jane's dad

jane's childhood appears superficially similar to john's. she had an idyllic suburban childhood raised by a loving dad who's almost identical to john's dad

but it's a mistake to think that jane's childhood was normal, because in actuality she spent the entirety of it being groomed to be the heiress to an evil alien empress. and i really, really wonder what part dad played in that

because for all that dad crocker appears to be a perfectly kind and loving father, he's unable to prevent his daughter from being brainwashed right under his nose. quite possibly he's also been brainwashed himself? certainly he doesn't seem to have any objection to raising his daughter as the heiress to crockercorp

i don't know if it's more tragic if he genuinely doesn't realize what's happening… or if he does suspect something is wrong and is forced to walk the impossible tightrope of protecting jane as much as he can without bringing the condesce's wrath down on both of their heads

it's possible the real truth is somewhere in the middle. dad is involved enough to suspect that crockercorp is, perhaps, not as normal a corporation as it appears. he's heard rumors of their shadier dealings, seen enough to believe that some of those rumors may even be true. but his grandmother seems sincere in her desire to pass the company down to jane. so surely if he can shield jane from the worst excesses and raise a levelheaded heir to steer crockercorp in a better direction, that can only benefit everyone. and if all he has to do to keep his notoriously volatile grandmother off his back is to allow her to gift his daughter the occasional brainwashing machine superadvanced technology, isn't that a small price to pay?

[the-meat-machine]

Here's something I think about a lot.

Calliope is left-handed.

Caliborn is right-handed.

Now, bear in mind that the left hand is controlled by the right hemisphere of the brain and the right hand is controlled by the left hemisphere. In popular culture, the right hemisphere of the brain is associated with femininity and creativity, while the left is associated with masculinity and rigid applications of rules. Let's ignore the fact that this isn't actually how the brain works, because it's irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion -- the point is that it's pretty clear that Calliope is intended to be "right-brained" and Caliborn is intended to be "left-brained". In fact, Caliborn is SO left-brained as to have impairments in areas that are stereotypically associated with the right brain, such as art.*

If we wanted to, we could even take this literally and speculate that Calliope's consciousness is localized mostly in the right side of their brain and Caliborn's in the left. This would fit in well with the cherubs' themes of duality.

I have two headcanons about this that are not particularly compatible with each other:

Headcanon 1:

All juvenile cherubs have one right-handed consciousness localized to the left brain and one left-handed consciousness localized to the right brain. Fully integrated adult cherubs gain access to the full functionality of the brain and are ambidextrous, with perhaps a slight preference for the side of the body that won out.

Headcanon 2:

Calliope and Caliborn's body as a whole is left-handed. This works out well for Calliope, who has access to the right side of the brain and thus full control over the left hand. Caliborn, however, doesn't have access to the areas of the brain that would allow him fine-grained control over the left hand, so he's forced to use the non-dominant right hand as if it were his dominant hand. This partially explains why he has so much trouble drawing -- he's no more adept with his right hand than a left-hander would be! This theory admittedly doesn't make the most sense, but it does have the benefit of being very funny to me.

* He also has language impairments while Calliope does not, which is curious because the language centers are typically located in the left hemisphere. Except… in left-handers, these language areas are actually sometimes localized to the right side of the brain instead. I doubt this was deliberate, but still, it's even more support for the crackpot theory of Caliborn being in the unfortunate position of being a left-brained cherub in a left-handed body.

[the-meat-machine]

is stridercest canon-compliant

Hi. I'm not sure how to answer this question, but like hell am I going to let that stop me from rambling on about it for far longer than anyone would consider reasonable.

What does it mean for a ship to be canon-compliant?

My first difficulty is this: what does it mean for a ship to be "canon-compliant"?

I tend to be of the opinion that you can come up with a justification for nearly any ship that, at the very least, doesn't contradict canon. Whether that ship is probable or not is a different story.

To give an example of a ship that's technically possible but canonically unlikely… let's say I were to posit that Nepeta had red feelings for Aradia. Well, we get fairly direct evidence of Nepeta's romantic interests throughout the comic, and Aradia never features in her self-pairing fantasies. Not to mention that if she had such feelings, you'd think it would cause conflict in her relationship with Equius, who does canonically have feelings for Aradia. But Nepeta never says she doesn't like Aradia that way, so for all we know they could have had a torrid romance offscreen that is never once hinted at in the comic. Highly improbable within canon, but not strictly impossible.

A level above that, there are ships where there's basically nothing to go on. Nothing to contradict it, but nothing to really support it either. For example, how would Dirk and John get along? Well, they only ever meet once in the comic and it's when Game Over!Dirk is giving himself over to the glitchy void, so who fuckin' knows. You'll have to base their interactions on a general knowledge of their characters. And hey, you can probably come up with a pretty convincing argument that they'd be great for each other! You can equally come up with an argument that they couldn't stand one another. There's really no canon basis to say either way.

That said, I think Stridercest is on a rung above that. These characters have had significant canonical interactions that revolve around one another, giving a richer basis to draw from. Or at least… Dave and Dirk have. Which leads me to my second difficulty.

What is Stridercest?

"Stridercest" can refer to quite a few possible ships.

For example, Guardiancest. Do I think Guardiancest has a basis in canon? No. Alpha Dave and Beta Dirk lived in different versions of the universe and both died well before the end of the game. They almost certainly never even knew that each other existed.

That said, Homestuck is a pretty wild canon as far as possible character interactions go, what with all the various ways characters can hop between universes, time travel, get resurrected, meet up in dream bubbles, etc. Trans-universal communication is canonically possible (see for example Jade and Jake's letters to each other), so who knows -- maybe Alpha Dave and Beta Dirk could have met each other somehow. Does it seem likely? Absolutely not. But it's not impossible.

Now, if you were asking about the original Stridercest, Bro/Dave, that's a ship that clearly is logistically possible, at least. They spent 13 years in the same apartment. Something could have happened. Did it? I don't know. I don't consider myself a Bro/Dave scholar, so I'll leave that as a question for the reader.

But one pairing I have significantly more to say about is Dave/Dirk.

Here are some things that are canon:

Dave has had, at the very least, passing attractions to a minimum of two of his ectobiological relatives -- namely, Rose and Roxy

Dave has evinced attraction to both men and women

Dave used to idolize his bro, but later came to have more complicated feelings about him

Dirk has had a lifelong obsession with his own long-dead bro. He studied all the minutiae of Alpha Dave's life and patterned his own life after what he's gleaned from that

Dirk is definitely attracted to men

Dave and Dirk had a long heart-to-heart during which they hugged each other

Here are some questions that cannot be directly answered by canon:

Do Dave's incestuous inclinations extend to Dirk and/or Bro?

Is there a homoerotic dimension to Dirk's obsession with Dave?

Now, you could plausibly answer these questions with "no". Maybe Dave's upbringing with Bro made it impossible for him to see Dirk in a romantic light. Or hell, maybe he only likes blond hair on chicks, not on dudes. And for all we know, maybe Dirk's interest in Alpha Dave is strictly platonic. (…ha, that one's hard to type with a straight face. But it's possible.)

Of course, I'm asking these questions because I think you can easily answer them with "yes". There's significant canonical basis to suggest that these suppositions at least could be true. At the very least, conditions are ripe for these two to have some very weird, complicated feelings about each other that are laced with incestuous and homoerotic undertones.

So is Stridercest canon-compliant? For Dave/Dirk, at the very least, I'd argue that it is.

[the-meat-machine]

On page 5714 of Homestuck, when Jane is bopping a bunch of enemies with the lollipop juju, the cherub-looking dudes turn into Lil Cal looking guys, with the red blood ones looking just like him and the green blood ones having green lipstick and cheeks + white bowtie, instead of red and black respectively. And, Jake's Caliborn-esque symbol turns into a Lil Cal-esque symbol.

I feel like this means SOMETHING about Lil Cal, but I have no idea what. Sending this to you because I consider you the Lil Cal Expert. This is absolutely haunting me.

For those who don't remember, anon is referring to this:

Okay, so, before you sent this ask, I hadn't thought too much about this. I figured this was just reinforcing the conceptual link between cherubs and Lil Cal by implying that Trickster Mode cherubs look like Lil Cal.

But I think we can go deeper. Specifically, I'd like to think about what it would mean for Lil Cal to be a juju that's patterned after a trickster-mode cherub.

Bear with me - I'm not sure how much of this is obvious and how much isn't, so I'm just going to go through everything.

Cherubs are connected with Lil Cal

This one is fairly obvious. From a Doylist perspective, Lord English's design deliberately draws elements from Lil Cal's design, and therefore cherubs in general resemble Lil Cal. And of course, Caliborn's soul becomes entangled with Lil Cal's. Even the name Lil Cal is a clear connection.

Cherubs are connected with Trickster Mode

Again, fairly obvious. It's Calliope and Caliborn's combined jujus that cause Trickster mode. All of the Zillyweapons the tricksters create are tied with ridiculous cherub lore. Et cetera.

In addition… I'm going to quote from Hussie explaining Trickster Mode to Caliborn:

Furthermore, [Trickster Mode] could only be seen as a boon from an asocial species. You never have to deal with other people. So if you lick a magic lollipop that flips a switch in your brain that says "all my problems are solved," I guess maybe that's fine for cherubs, but if you're a human you haven't actually solved anything. By the same logic it's not much of a boon to a human's physical journey either. Using an item that lets them start maniacally powering from point A to point B isn't doing them any favors.

This seems to imply that Trickster Mode would be a better power-up for cherubs, who generally don't have to worry about petty things like "fucking up all your interpersonal relationships in a drug-induced mania". It also implies that cherubs may be physically more able to handle Trickster Mode than humans, who seem to be exhausted once it wears off. Like maybe this is a cherub power-up that isn't really meant to be used on humans.

There's also the matter of the energy that tricksters draw on to fuel their antics… but I'll get to that in a bit.

Lil Cal, specifically, is connected with Trickster Mode

As noted in the ask, Lil Cal motifs show up in several places during the Trickster Mode arc. The cherubs in that one flash turn into Lil Cal lookalikes, Jake's skull symbol turns into Lil Cal's head - plus Dirk's Trickster Mode outfit is based on Lil Cal's outfit.

The implication here is that Trickster Mode cherubs look like Lil Cal. Or to put it another way: Lil Cal looks like a Trickster Mode cherub.

And maybe we could stop there. Cherubs, Trickster Mode, and Lil Cal are all connected, so making the trickster cherubs look like Lil Cal could just be a fun visual way to reinforce those ties in the reader's head.

But on the other hand… Lil Cal could, in a way, be an embodiment of cherub Trickster Mode.

Here's where we get more speculative.

Lil Cal has trickster-like traits

What little we know about Lil Cal's "personality" reinforces the impression of him as somehow trickstery. As Calsprite, he literally does nothing but laugh, all the time, always. As a puppet, he shows up throughout the comic, appearing and disappearing in a way that's almost playful and yet also deeply unsettling. And "unsettling playfulness" is pretty much the essence of Trickster Mode.

So far, so good. This all feels like even more reason why Lil Cal makes sense as a representation of a trickster cherub.

Let's go deeper.

the enigmatic forces presiding over all that is eternal (or, what if ALL the rainbow glowy shit is connected)

Here we're going to take a bit of a detour. Ok, maybe it's more of a full-on dialectical road trip. It starts, as all the best things do, with cherub sex.

Here's a quote from Aranea's explanation of cherub reproduction (typing quirk removed for readability):

While dueling in such a monstrous form, their energy is inexhaustible. The transformation taps into the cherubs' latent connection with the enigmatic forces presiding over all that is eternal, and permeating all those endowed with immortality. Normally this power is only accessible to them during mating. In this form, they are only able to be injured by one another, and are otherwise indestructible.

The important part here is that cherubs have an innate connection to a power that imbues immortality, and this power is visually represented as a flashing rainbow energy.

This force is also almost certainly the power underlying both Caliborn/Lord English's immortality and god tier resurrections.

I'll start with the god tier resurrections, because it ties directly in with where Caliborn gets his immortality.

Here's a comparison between the god tier clock and the stock image that it was based on:

Of note here are two changes that Hussie made: 1) The angels (or should I say cherubs) on top have much larger wings. 2) The animals flanking the clock face have been changed to have crocodile heads that resemble the heads of cherubs when they're in their mating form.

All of this is to say that the god tier clock has very deliberate connections to cherubs. This, combined with its apparent function (resurrecting god tiers who have died, conditional on their death being neither heroic nor just) suggests that god tier resurrections are fueled by the same "enigmatic forces presiding over all that is eternal" as mating cherubs. We also get to see that flashing rainbow energy again when it activates:

Caliborn's reward for defeating Yaldabaoth appears to be the god tier clock itself. When Caliborn destroys it, he absorbs the (rainbow, flashing) energy it emits, rendering him unconditionally immortal. As a cherub, Caliborn is the perfect recipient for this boon - he already has an inherent affinity for this sort of power thanks to his species.

Ok, so what does this all have to do with Trickster Mode?

You know what else is associated with flashing rainbow energy? That's right: Trickster Mode.

I know, this may seem like a stretch, but also bear in mind that the exact pastel rainbow flashing colors that the tricksters talk in (and that show up when Jake, Roxy, and Dirk transform) are also seen both when one of the cherubs transforms into its mating form and when a cherub hatches from its egg (compare the text colors to the colors around the red cherub below). So, we've got more connections to cherub energy here.

My theory is that Trickster Mode taps into the same well of energy that powers cherubs' transformations during mating. In this case, the point is less the immortality and more the "inexhaustible energy" that mating cherubs have.

This would track with Trickster Mode being a power-up that's much better suited to cherubs than humans - cherubs are inherently connected to this energy and are built to withstand it. It also would give an added dimension to the tricksters' obsession with sex and babies - they're imbued with mating energy!

Under this view, Trickster Mode would be "intended" as a power-up that would grant a cherub all the power and energy they normally can only tap into while mating, presumably without needing to transform into a giant snake or waste all that energy on a years-long sex battle.

If this theory was correct, it might imply that someone in Trickster Mode would be unkillable for the duration of the transformation. There's no proof of this, which is the main reason I consider this theory to just be speculation rather than something I think was definitely intended in canon. Still, there's also no proof that tricksters aren't immortal, and would anyone really be surprised if you tried to kill a trickster and they just grinned at you and kept on going? It seems like it would be in keeping with the trickster power set, is all I'm saying.

Lord English as a perma-Trickster?

Now, as I mentioned above, as of the end of Homestuck Caliborn already has forged a permanent connection to "the enigmatic forces presiding over all that is eternal", making him unconditionally immortal and also giving him some really annoying-to-look-at eyeballs. But that in itself still doesn't grant him all the power Lord English has. He doesn't seem to, for example, have limitless energy or the ability to shoot rainbow laser beams out of his mouth.

So here's where my theorizing becomes even more improbable. I don't really think this next part is an "intended" reading, but I still think it's an interesting possibility to consider.

Lord English inherits traits from most of the souls inhabiting Lil Cal - Caliborn most obviously, but also Equius's muscles, Gamzee's honking, etc. But here's the thing: Lil Cal - as in, the juju itself - is also an ectobiological component of Lord English. It's not unthinkable that Lord English could inherit traits from Lil-Cal-the-juju - which, remember, is patterned off of a Trickster Mode cherub.

So my theory here is that Lord English is basically in a permanent Trickster Mode-like state, thanks to inheriting traits from Lil Cal. This state could be what grants him his absurdly massive amounts of power and the aforementioned rainbow-mouth-laser abilities.

After all, what does Trickster Mode do? It flips a switch in your brain that tells you that all your problems are solved and grants you huge amounts of energy to go do whatever your id desires most. And what would Caliborn do if he had unlimited energy and no obstacles left to stand in his way? I think the answer is obvious: Fuck. Shit. Up.

Lord English is basically Caliborn's id writ large and given limitless power to spend fucking shit up for all eternity. And really, what more could a cherub dream of?

[the-meat-machine]

Any thoughts on how the Alpha and Beta kids would handle parenthood compared to their adult counterparts?

Predictably, the character I have thought about most in this regard is Dirk. So, let's start with him.

Dirk

Dirk does not want children. He does not think he is capable of being a good parent. But if forced into a position where he had to take in a child, I think he would do a much better job than he thinks he would. He'd still be a pretty intense parent, but he'd be way better than Bro.

I think Dirk's instinct would be to micromanage every aspect of the child's life to ensure they have the Optimal Childhood. Like, after taking this kid in, he becomes an expert in childhood nutrition overnight, throws out all his own crappy food, and from there on out makes nothing for either of them except mediocre-but-nutritious Optimal Childhood Meals. Until the kid gets old enough to express that actually they don't like the Optimal Childhood Meals, at which point Dirk overcorrects and abruptly decides to let the kid eat anything they want. Except now he keeps trying to sneak vitamin powder into their ice cream and shit. Look, he's trying. He's trying so hard.

Because the thing is, Dirk knows that his controlling tendencies are his worst trait, so at the same time that he's trying to micromanage the kid's upbringing, he's also trying to micromanage himself into being the Chill Parent who can Roll With Anything. He is going to get a good grade in Chill, something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve. Please do not let him know how not chill he actually is; I'm not sure his heart can take it.

The overall result is that of a parent who is trying to anticipate his child's every need while also desperately trying not to pressure the kid into anything. In the end, I think it'll balance out into him being a weird-but-okay parent who maybe accidentally gives the kid a complex about expressing themself... because every time the kid takes so much as a passing interest in anything, Dirk takes it upon himself to secretly learn everything there is to know about the thing so that he can Support His Child. And once the kid catches on that this is happening, that reaction in itself feels like kind of a lot of pressure! So Dirk's efforts not to pressure the kid ironically backfire. Whoops.

(Woe betide Dirk if the kid ever decides they want to learn swordfighting. The part of him that would be thrilled to have a protege to teach would be overshadowed by the part of him that would now be convinced that he's two seconds away from becoming an abuser every time he helps the kid train.)

Everyone Else

My thoughts on the rest of the kids are all halfbaked in comparison to my thoughts on Dirk, but I do think they pretty much all have the capacity to be decent, if flawed, parents. Though I'm going to start with the two I think might be the most flawed, haha.

Jane

I'm about to be kinda harsh on Jane here. We see in canon that she wants to have children, but I don't think she's really considered what the reality of that would be like. I think she would find parenting harder than she expects, and frankly I'm not sure she'd even like kids that much? Like, she could grin and bear it and go through all the motions and provide the kid with all the right things. But somewhere under there, I think there'd be this simmering resentment that this isn't how she wants to spend her life, and I think the kid would eventually pick up on it.

Jane also has a lot of baggage around reproduction that has been brainwashed into her (CEASE REPRODUCTION), so that's fun. All in all, she's perhaps the only one of the kids who I think has the potential to be a significantly worse guardian than their alt-universe counterpart.

But! Maybe I'm being too harsh on her and she'd be a great parent. Definitely fun to bake with, if nothing else.

Jake

If Jake can grow up enough to accept the responsibility of raising a child, I think he could be an okay, if way overly permissive, parent. That said… there's no evidence as of the end of the comic that he's prepared to do that growing up, so he could equally end up just as flighty and irresponsible as Grandpa Harley was. I know that most of the stuff about Grandpa Harley fathering a bunch of children and then ducking out of their lives to go off adventuring some more is dubiously canon at best, but really, I absolutely believe that was the kind of man he was. And frankly, I'm not sure that Jake will ever be ready for the responsibility of having children. But who knows! Maybe I'm underestimating him.

Roxy

A doting mother if there ever was one. Genuinely would love being a mom; even the hard parts I think she'd take on eagerly because she is just that into being a mom. Hopefully she can avoid relapsing into alcoholism, thus avoiding Beta Mom's biggest flaw. And unlike Mom, Roxy has friends around to help and support her with this, so I think she can manage it. That said, she may have a bit too much of her self-image wrapped up in Being A Mother, and her kid might find her a bit smothering at times. But overall, I think she'd be a pretty good parent.

Rose

I'm trying to evaluate each of the kids as parents on their own merits, without regard for their potential partners. So I'll do the same for Rose and speculate on what kind of parent she'd be without Kanaya in the picture (who, if they were together, I think would probably take on a greater proportion of the parenting duties than Rose would).

Anyway, I think Rose would be a good, thoughtful parent overall. Perhaps a bit too distant and may come off as cold sometimes. But though she's not that demonstrative with her love, she would love her child deeply and I think it would show through her actions if not always her words.

Dave

I think he'd be a pretty good parent, if a bit overly permissive. This kid is gonna get spoiled rotten. ...I should probably have more to say about this, but alas, I don't.

Jade

The Fun Mom! Honestly, I think she'd be a great parent. …Jade really deserves a better analysis than this, but unfortunately I apparently am not equipped to provide it. Sorry, Jade!

John

I almost forgot to put John on this list, whoops. I think John's biggest pitfall as a parent would be emotional distance. Again, I don't have much to say about this other than that Candy!John's relationship with Harry Anderson seems plausible to me.

[the-meat-machine]

Im confused about Cherub anatomy

I thought it was kind of odd that they have gender? Like you could assume that they just choose one because they're trying to project an identity on the same body which sorta gives an indication that the body lacks male or female traits for this reasoning to make sense. BUT, if we look at Caliborns/Calliopes mother and father theres some clear sexual dimorphism. It makes me wonder how their bodies even get that way? I ended up theorizing that they may metamorphosize to achieve these differences. My theory 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘺 hold some weight, ex: in Caliborns Masterpiece we can hear that his voice is deep and snarly. Now, we haven't heard Calliopes voice to make a fair comparison after all, she could also possibly sound just like that. So maybe this isn't the strongest example but when Cherubs sleep and when the other personality takes over, the body does change. From the eyecolor, tongue color, cheek color, and blood color, as for body figure it's unclear if that changes when waking up. If we want to count how Caliborn and Calliope are drawn in Act 7, in the opening you can see Calliope has a curved figure and breasts while Caliborn has a wider shoulders, and a flat chest . But then again, Calliope is drawn differently multiple times throughout the act 7 flash so maybe not much weight either. The strongest basis i have for this is probably just how their mom and dad look. In conclusion: either their body fully transitions into the other gender when one of the personalities wakes up then swaps into the other gender when sleeping for the other personality to take over the body with their traits included OR the body has both male and female traits at all times and are stuck there until the one the personalities wins the body and the loser personality bodily traits disappear from the body so the winners traits take over. But this could also not hold weight since Caliborn apparently didn't know what boobs were when talking with Jane. But yet again Calliopes drawings featured boobs so idk. Feel free too tell me everything i got wrong not even i know what the fuck im talking about I've been listening to karkalicious for like 6 hours today (newer version)

So I came into this ask fully intending for my answer to be "cherub sexes make no sense, just throw them out". But then as I was writing out why they make no sense, I accidentally came up with an explanation that makes them (sort of) make sense. Whoops. I'm going to post that as its own separate thing, 'cause it got long, and I probably should edit it to include a clearer explanation of isogamy, ha ha… ha.

But anyway, that aside, some of the details you brought up still don't really make sense - especially alt!Calliope's appearance in Act 7. Because the thing is, alt!Calliope shouldn't look like an adult cherub at all. Even if she predominated "correctly", she still died young, before she could fully mature. If she was truly fully grown, she would have wings, but she doesn't. And during the conversation where she and alpha Calliope meet, the two of them appear to have the same height and build.

The simplest explanation for her Act 7 appearance is that it's just art weirdness. But if we wanted to come up with an in-universe explanation, two possible ones come to mind:

She's a ghost. Ghosts are shown to be able to change their appearances, either consciously or subconsciously. So she's given herself a more adult body that matches her adult mind.

She lived long enough after predomination for her body to partially, but not completely, mature. Thus, she has a somewhat adult-like body, but doesn't have wings and doesn't look as large as the adult female cherub we see depicted elsewhere (because even the females are pretty darn ripped). In this case, it's during the conversation with alpha Calliope that she's altering her appearance, perhaps choosing to make herself look younger to put Calliope and/or Jade at ease.

As for Caliborn seeming to have broader shoulders in Act 7 than Calliope does, we could say that maybe it's just that Caliborn has more muscle mass there by virtue of being more physically active.

I do like to imagine (when I accept that cherubs have biological "sexes" at all) that young cherubs have undifferentiated bodies, and they only develop into "male" or "female" forms after predomination. This fits in with what Aranea says about how the only way to tell the two young cherubs apart is by the color of their cheeks (though as you note, there are a few other differences too).

But that's still kind of complicated, because what makes one of the personalities definitively "male" and the other definitively "female" when their bodies are identical? My best theory is that there's some sort of hormone or something in their blood that differs between juvenile males and females, since the blood seems to be the main thing that physically changes when they swap bodies.

As for Caliborn not understanding what boobs are while Calliope does... that's probably just because Calliope actually pays attention to humans, whereas Caliborn is willfully ignorant about them.

(p.s. I didn't notice until this ask that alt!Calliope appears to have boobs in Act 7. I always assumed cherubs didn't have them, since during Aranea's explanation, the art is ambiguous enough that you could interpret the female as being flat-chested. But no: act 7 says cherub boobs. Argh. Why. I am rejecting this from my personal headcanon and assuming that it was just some weird folds in alt!Calliope's robes that made her look like she had boobs.)

[the-meat-machine]

i need people to understand that what makes caliborn dangerous isn't that he's powerful. don't get me wrong - he is strong. from the start, he's uniquely capable of becoming powerful in a way that most other characters couldn't

but he could never have seized that power if it weren't for his actual defining trait: his singular, uncompromising focus on his goal

every single thing caliborn does is in service of himself and his ultimate goal of fucking destroying everything. he will put up with literally anything rather than change his course, no matter how stupid or agonizing or mind-meltingly tedious

this is the trait that allows caliborn to weave his will into the very fabric of paradox space. he can orchestrate the time loop to end all time loops because at every point in time, he is working towards the same thing. he reinforces his own will at every turn and never works at cross-purposes with past or future versions of himself

if caliborn ever doubted himself for even a single moment, it would all come crashing down. so, by definition, he cannot doubt. he can only keep barreling forward, forever, for good or for ill

oh, who am i kidding. it's always for ill

[the-meat-machine]

wait WERE they both horny about it??? i don't remember seeing anything like that in the comic (talking about the ship ask) ((the uucest part))

(referring to the caliborn/calliope part of this post about caliborn ships)

oh yeah, i absolutely stand by that statement. i would say that all evidence suggests that caliborn is definitely horny for calliope, and calliope is probably attracted to him too

i'm gonna start with a quote from aranea's explanation of cherub sexuality here, because it provides some important context:

In the case of our heroine, she was the good half, and the day of her predomin8tion was in a sense the day her 8rother died. And though it was to her 8enefit and personal growth, 8ecause of this loss she would always live with a sense that something was missing. Every sexually mature cheru8 lives with this feeling. It drives them to seek out another cheru8 similar to the half they lost, the part of their 8eing which they grew up in perpetual conflict with. The desire to travel the universe in hopes of reigniting that conflict is very important to their species. It's the force which compels them to procre8.

cherub romance is based in hatred, and specifically in a desire to experience the same sort of conflict they did with their "other half". to me this strongly implies that it's common - maybe even expected - for a cherub to be attracted to their other half

of course, just because this is true for cherubs in general doesn't necessarily mean it's true for these cherubs. but… i think it is

let's start with caliborn, because he's waaaay more obvious about it. he says that calliope will make a breathtaking corpse. he even fucking slips up and says that he's going to "mate with her". i don't think there's any doubt that he's horny for her

the question of whether calliope feels the same way is more ambiguous, but i think there's good evidence that she does

like, at the beginning of her chess game with caliborn she's playfully antagonistic in a way that seems calculated to piss him off (though in this case it doesn't because he knows he's actually the one winning). it honestly comes across as pretty flirtatious to me

and then there's… ok, well, first of all, bear in mind that the knights in their chess set fucking look like this:

that's just. that's a cherub in mating form. this chess set is downright pornographic. who gave this to a child. (gamzee did. thanks gamzee.)

anyway. while calliope still thinks she's winning, she interjects this little aside:

UU: knight to d6. UU: look oUt! i'm coming for her. UU: i think she's langUished behind the front lines long enoUgh, woUldn't yoU say? UU: time to shake things Up. move her, or take my knight. UU: yoU know yoU want to take her. jUst look at her there. what a cheeky intrUsion. slithered right into yoUr palace and made herself comfy. maybe she'll lay an egg once she's finished her feast. ^U^

and, like, hoooooooooooly shit, calliope, that is FILTHY. you have moved your highly erotic chess piece into caliborn's territory, taunted him to "take her", and just to complete the sexual analogy, decided to bring fucking eggs into the conversation too. god damn

and, ok, caliborn doesn't really react to this, so maybe at the time this pesterlog was written this wasn't intended to be quite that filthy. but still

the chess match later ends like this:

uranianUmbra [UU] began cheering undyingUmbrage [uu] UU: FUCK THIS!!!!!!!!!!! UU: i don't know why i bothered hUmoUring yoUr vile Underhanded rUbbish! UU: I HATE YOU. JUST SOD RIGHT OFF TO HELL, PLEASE. uranianUmbra [UU] ceased cheering undyingUmbrage [uu]

undyingUmbrage [uu] began jeering uranianUmbra [UU] uu: HEY THERE. BE CAREFuL. uu: A GuY COuLD GET THE WRONG IDEA. AND MISTAKE YOuR OuTBuRST FOR SOMETHING. uu: CALIGINOuS. uu: THAT WOuLD BE MOST uN"SISTERLY." DON'T YOu THINK. uu: ANYWAY. BY THE LOOKS OF THIS MESSY BOARD. uu: I'M GOING TO ASSuME YOu FORFEITED THE MATCH. undyingUmbrage [uu] ceased jeering uranianUmbra [UU]

uranianUmbra [UU] began cheering undyingUmbrage [uu] UU: yoU are disgUsting. UU: i really loathe yoU, and no, NOT IN "THAT WAY!" UU: i am not going to talk to yoU for a while. probably a LONG while. UU: i only hope i can overcome my contempt for yoU when it comes time to play oUr game. bUt i am not holding my breath!!!!!!!!!!!

yeah, calliope claims here that she doesn't hate him "that way", but honestly, considering everything else she said and did throughout the match, it comes across as denial more than anything. and think about it - even if calliope were attracted to caliborn, would she ever admit it to him and give him the satisfaction of knowing it for sure? hell no.

(also once again caliborn is DEFINITELY flirting here by taunting her for her "unsisterly" feelings. horny horny boy)

so, there's all of that. there's also some indirect evidence in the conversation where calliope tells roxy that she's a cherub. during this chat, calliope says that she doesn't experience red romance, but that she can have caliginous romantic feelings. the way she says it doesn't sound hypothetical, either. she's not just talking about what's typical for cherubs - she seems to be confessing that this is how she, personally, experiences romance. and she acts ashamed enough of it that i think that if she'd never felt caliginous feelings for anyone, she'd want to say so; she'd want to be able to distance herself from it.

but… if she's had caliginous feelings before, who were they for? who does she feel enough contempt for to be attracted to? her friend group is pretty small, and she likes all of them. the only person she hates is, well… caliborn.

i think that this is something that she would never, ever be willing to confess to anyone, not even roxy. she's already ashamed enough of her species. how could she possibly confess to an attraction that she doesn't think humans could ever understand, that breaks human taboos, that means that she's attracted to someone everyone rightfully thinks is scum? no, this is a secret she'll take to her grave and beyond.

so anyway, yeah. tl;dr: caliborn has the hots for calliope, and calliope probably has the hots right back. qed