#umbra inverse

[lifeindollcity]

My wife decided she didn't want to do face ups for these dolls. Guess my evening is booked at least!

[dkniade]

🌌💫🌒

Fan art of @kianamaiart’s characters from I Don’t Want To Be A Magical Girl! (with glasses, ft misc glasses characters & two IDWTBAMG universe fan characters)

I’ve been following this project from the start so it’s been great seeing interactions between the characters and how the fandom is so excited for it. ^^

I tried to draw the cast from memory and, while Miss seems a little different from canon, at least I got the dark hair roots and strands sticking out lol. But details aside they’re all recognizable! Which means they’re lovely designs that are unique from one another✨

Eclipse’s shades are a combination of his usual eye mask and the shades from this artwork, and Hoshi’s glasses are inspired by this one!🌒⭐️

Designs… (I don’t have a name for her yet but) the pigtails girl’s shapes are a combination of curves pointing downwards and curves pointing upwards. The idea ended up being that she’s on Eclipse and Lady DeVoid’s side so (after reading this post by Kiana about how most of the characters had Aika’s design as the springboard and are designed to complement eachother) I wanted her design to complement those two’s, with some influence from Zira. I like that the strands of hair on her forehead and the shape around them mirror both Zira’s hair and DeVoid’s horns haha. Plus, I was trying to figure out how to design her glasses and they ended up being kind of the inverse of Eclipse’s eye mask, which is very nice. Eclipse and DeVoid seem to be associated with sharp curves and circle shapes; maybe her outfit could be a lot fancier…

As for what her role might be in the story… I dunno, if she works with Eclipse and DeVoid, and Eclipse is all ~theatric and grand~ then maybe she could be like… his assistant… or something? Who knows. Or, I say “observer from afar” so perhaps she actually gets along with Zira well and they’d watch on the sidelines while Aika and Eclipse duke it out…?

Eclipse… Moon… Umbra… man what if I just name the pigtails girl Yueshi (月食, lunar eclipse)(for both the moon motif that Zira and Eclipse have, and the darkness motif that Eclipse and DeVoid have haha)

Shooting star and telescope don’t feel quite right, but with the circular shapes and the lunar eclipse, I could kind of see her having some star trail motifs with her sweater…

I guess Umbra would be the same type of elf (? darkness/concept personified?) as Lady DeVoid but I’m not sure haha. We don’t have much information on DeVoid other than the fact that she is darkness itself and that she lost most of her powers which she can’t remember how to use. Banished by a Star Guardian, revenge, recruiting Eclipse to help spread the darkness particles to destroy the Star Guardian… If she has a similar backstory to MLP:FIM’s Princess Luna then does that mean she was originally Aika’s teammate or something? haha

About Umbra’s hair… (Feel free to correct me for any inaccuracies.) I think from the reference photos I was trying to draw box braids but got so focused on also making the braids look like moon phases that I’m not sure if it’d still be box braids in the end? They seem more like cornrows now, at least for the side ones?

Here are some earlier versions of the OCs! and more rambling about designs

Well, initially I scribbled down Yueshi so I could experiment with values because I was thinking about how light-coloured pants draw the eye too much if the outfit or the top half of the character is darker. (Half way through she ended up looking like a IDWTBAMG character so I tried to match the proportions with Aika’s turnaround.) But I suppose if there’s enough contrast for the upper half (and IDWTBAMG’s stark black design style gives a lot of contrast) then it works out better. I think the combination of making Yueshi’s hair and the top half of her sweater black and the circle shape white worked out okay. Initially she had large round eyes so I tried giving her round glasses too but since she ended up being a fan character in the universe, it was too similar to Aika and Zira.

Umbra’s design kind of popped into my mind today so I tried to scribble it down and experimented with hairstyles. But green and purple are already associated with Zira, and that shade of lavender is more like Eclipse so I guess I’ll fiddle around with her colour scheme more. Maybe there’s not enough of the signature black there, and both could use some more details to match the level of details in the canon designs… (If Yueshi works under DeVoid then she’d probably get a fancy outfit too.) Then again, Umbra is more like Miss in terms of detail so it seems she’d be a background/supporting character or something…🤔

(I can’t seem to escape the puffy sleeves/cone shape silhouette🤔 Gotta diversify. Also, not sure if it’s ‘cause of the project’s style or if I just really love circles in character design haha)

[thewertsearch]

The Doctor is in.

And they're a bit of a pattern-breaker, aren't they?

We've already used up every permutation of GCAT, to the point where the post-Scratch Players have been forced to share Persterchum initials with their predecessors. UranianUmbra has evidently decided they're not going to bother with all that nonsense, and has chosen a completely original handle.

That's not the only pattern they're breaking, either. Instead of pestering, trolling or bothering Jane, UU claims to be cheering her. To me, it reads as a little too saccharine for comfort - as though Umbra is trying a little too hard to seem non-threatening.

UU: good morning, lovely. ^u^ GG: Why, hellooooooo. UU: so i gUess today is finally the day yoU make everything better.

Also, they're aping Karkat's original Pesterlog, which does nothing to allay my suspicions.

Karkat originally portrayed himself as a huge asshole, but was slowly revealed to be a pretty nice guy - so, when someone uses his words, but places themselves on the opposite side of the coin, I'm obviously going to be primed for another inversion.

UU: it is the day whereafter the legendary octet of mUtUal progenitoriety will come together and heal a great breach in paradox space.

Mutual progenitoriety sounds like a phenomenon where two or more entities are responsible for each other's creation.

It's been explored extensively in art, science and philosophy, and the concept fits very well into a self-generating cosmology such as Homestuck's.

I don't think Umbra is referring to the Reacharound, though - if nothing else, the Reacharound had nothing to do with Jane. After all, her session is supposed to create an entirely new universe, and has nothing whatsoever to do with Alternia.

Unless...

...one of my oldest, most ambitious theories was right all along.

UU: a day delivered throUgh eighty billion years and foUr distinct Universal instances worth of Unfathomable tUrbUlence. UU: and while the emerald eye of this storm is fixed in the abyss forever

I assume the 'emerald eye' is the Green Sun. As one of Sburb's most critical components, it holds a place of extreme importance in the cosmos.

Which, let us remind ourselves, is a bad thing. The Sun was, after all, created on the orders of Doc Scratch, and its existence means that English can exert his influence over every session with a First Guardian - which, I'm pretty sure, is every single session.

The fact that the thing is apparently here forever is probably the worst news we've heard all Act - assuming, of course, that UU is telling the truth.

UU: today yoU are poised to escape its scowl once and for all.

Umbra seems to be implying that there's somewhere completely outside the Sun's domain - some part of reality where the mechanism of Skaia no longer applies.

That's certainly news to me - but hey, if that's an option, count me the fuck in.

UU: by skaias gUiding light, yoU may leave behind its tUrning arms of bright coloUrs and mayhem, and secUre peace for yoUr cosmic progeny for all dUration.

That said; even if you can escape into a Sburbless reality, Sburb will still exist. Skaia's mechanism will still be there, right behind you, and English will still be pulling it apart at the seams.

Like, sure. Escape the game, find a home, restore your species - but don't just abandon the multiverse to its fate. English is killing trillions, and it almost sounds like UranianUmbra is trying to convince you to let him.

[lunanightriderofthecove]

As promised my s7 predictions and assumptions based on the leaked soundtrack titles.

Spoilers under the cut 🥰

1. Ruin and Rebirth

I'm not sure what rebirth is referring to but ruins must be about Katolis, right?

2: Time to Grieve

Again, definitely about Katolis.

3: Arrest Him

Ezran quote. And this is him having Runaan arrested 🙈

4: The Puzzle House

We know that Claudia mentions the Puzzle House in 7x01. And from the placement of this title in the overall list I'd say we actually go there in 7x02?

5. Forgive Me

Could this be Callum or Rayla apologising before breaking Runaan out of prison? 😳

6. Escaping the Lodge, Again

This definitely is the immediate follow-up of "Forgive me"

7. The Great Amnesty

I had to look up the meaning of amnesty because I didn't know what it was and now I'm like "Wow. Is Ezran gonna pardon Runaan?" 👀 While I was sure he would eventually (if only for Rayla's sake) I didn't think it would happen so soon in the season 🤔

8. The Mage Wars

Another flashback I assume 😍

9. Reunion

Please be referring to Ruthari Reunion 😍

10. No More Half Truths

I guess someone is gonna be brutally honest? No idea who though ...

11. Ritual of the New Moon

The beginning of Rayla getting unghosted I assume

12. Rayla Reborn / Unfinished Business

Definitely her getting unghosted!

13. Moon Cubs

Did a Moonshadow mount have babies? Please tell me it was the shadow paw 🥺

14. Driven by Love

This definitely sounds ominous. My first guess about who this is referring to is Callum, my second Claudia and my third would be the moonfam, I guess

15. Why Are You Doing This?

This is giving me Soren and Claudia conversation ... or going from the next track's title Lissa and Claudia? 🥺

16. Lissa

Please tell me we're gonna see Lissa outside of flashbacks and illustrations! 🥰

17. Umbra Dolor

This title translates to shadow pain and I assume it's a spell connected to the inversion mentioned in the next track

18. Inversion

So this is where they open the portal, huh?

19. Rise Again

Why is this titled exactly the same as that one story from Reflections? 😳 This is scaring me.

20. Fall of a Titan

This title is scaring me. Who is the titan that's gonna fall and how and why does it happen?

21. Callum’s Plan

First off: we really had to wait 7 seasons to finally have Callum in a track title, huh? 🙈 Second: this is nonetheless super scary and makes me worry about what he's gonna do ...

22. Compromise

Considering the titles above and below ... yeah 👀

23. Written In His Eyes

Two words: dark magic. At least that's what I'm assuming here ...

24. Boiled Grotto

This has to be that scene from the trailer where Claudia kind of sprouts dragon scales and that mage fight, right?

25. Hungry Shadows

The spirits of the dead perhaps? 🤔

26. Extinguished

This could basically refer to anything. A light, a life 😳

27. Let There Be Dark

Why is this basically the opposite of the biblical "Let there be light"?

28. The Orphan Queen / An Old Friend

Orphan Queen flashback? 🤞🏻

29. Eternal Night

Definitely not scary at all 😳

30. For Xadia

Please let this be a battle cry and not a painful callback to Rayla's "My Heart for Xadia" from 1x01 🤞🏻

31. Battle of the Sunforge

I really hope this does include cleansing it 🥰

32. The Novablade

Is Ezran gonna find and use it as that poster suggests? I hope so 🥰

33. Best Laid Plans

34. When a Star Dies

Either Aaravos is gonna succeed in killing a member of the Cosmic Order or he himself is gonna die here ...

35. Dragonsong

36. Brothers, Brothers, Brothers

Please be Callum and Ezran reconciling after their fallout earlier in the season 🥰

37. Breaking New Ground

38. I Miss Her / Forgiveness

Several possibilities as to who "her" is referring to. But it's most likely either Claudia missing Lissa, Soren missing Lissa or Soren missing Claudia. Depending on where the scene is headed this could be a parallel to the "Lissa" track.

Another thought was also Sarai, but with what I think where the season is headed this isn't really probable.

39. This Changes Everything

1x02 callback anyone? Or was it actually 1x03 when Rayla says "this changes everything" after they find the egg? For real though, this is someone learning about an important historical detail, right?

40. Starlit Serenade

I'm joining all the other clowns who're convinced that this is a Rayllum proposal 🥰

41. Leola’s Last Wish

What a beautiful last title. I'd love for this to be a father/daughter reunion 🥰

[posts-from-reality-immanent]

Report from CascadeNews.com on February 13, 2014.

Notes on the geopolitical situation in Reality Immanent are provided after the report. For context, "Umbra" is solidified paranormal material, used in many medical and technological contexts.

---

Hopes are raised for full trade normalization with South Oregon; protests criticize talks

At yesterday’s Portland/Vancouver Summit, officials with both the North and South Oregon governments expressed confidence that trade relations would soon be fully normalized, opening up a lucrative market for North Oregon’s refined Umbra market.

Business leaders also voiced support, including Bedford Vinke, the embattled but outspoken CEO of JeriCo, which is responsible for roughly 30% of North Oregonian refined Umbra exports. Vinke has repeatedly warned that South Oregon is drifting into the Doradan sphere of influence.

“The politicians, they’ve got to get this deal done,” Vinke said in an interview with Mountain 5 News. “If the South isn’t buying from us, they’re buying from Dorado. And you can bet [Doradan President] Gutierrez is rubbing his hands together. Won’t take long for the South to be a Doradan protectorate.”

South Oregon’s Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Erin Seo, vociferously denied that her country was reliant on Dorado for resources or security. But she did stress that rapprochement with the North was one of the Craswell administration’s highest priorities, adding that “South and North, we’re all Oregonians, and it’s time for us to act like we’re brothers and sisters again.”

Negotiations Wednesday were marked by protests in many North Oregon cities. The self-described “true right” group “Northwest Destiny” drew over 50 people to downtown Tacoma, demanding a return to hostilities and annexation of South Oregon. Counter-protests drew approximately 300 people. Two counter-protesters were injured in confrontations with police.

---

For editor's notes on Reality Immanent's geopolitics, click to keep reading.

The geopolitics of the North American continent are substantially different in Reality Immanent than our own. The United States exists, but controls only the eastern part of their territory as we know it. Canada does not exist as a state entity. Mexico controls much of Texas. Indigenous nations such as the Salish Peoples and Haudenosaunee control large swathes of territory, as do settler-colonial nations such as Dorado and Louisiana.

An unusually high percentage of data from Reality Immanent comes from the Puget Sound region in North Oregon, a nation corresponding roughly to our Washington State and Idaho. Researchers believe this is due to a major paranormal event—called the Seattle Inversion—that occurred in 1995, destroying much of the city and leaving lingering paranormal effects across the region (including lucrative Umbra reserves).

[eiseryn]

OC-tober Day 2 - Newest OC (Artemis)

Don't have that much time this month to do the inktober / drawing prompts / challenges but I'll still do my best T_T

Oct 2 / Day 2 is newest OC and I decided to draw Artemis as she and Umbra and Nabi (so many cyberpunk PCs LOL) are my newest characters XD of course I decided to draw one I haven't drawn in a hot minute~ and also one of my favourite designs~

Artemis is a hacker / decker who lives in a cyberpunk world. She has an older sister named Athena (codename: Coyote) and also has a robotic pet wolf named Orion. She also uses a laser bow in combat. TLDR she's cyberpunk Nova we have at home 🤣 but I actually am very fond of her now 🥺 Her hair / eye are the inverse of Nova's (white, gold vs Artemis' black, silver). I think she's a bit louder than Nova though and she's supposed to be a bit flirtatious.

This is her other outfit but I'm hoping I'll get to digitize the pencil sketches I made of her outfits... sometime... soon...

[teamfortresstwo]

I think the key difference between oulixes and letalis is oulixes genuinely wanted to do his job. Letalis doesn’t. She just wants the power. So that she can fuck around and not do anything at her job and no one can really stop her. She just wants enough money and control to Not Actually Need To Do Anything unless she’s really curious about it or finds it personally interesting to invest her time in.

Hm . I appreciate this differentiation because it feels like the inverse of what most authors would choose to do, as hard work often is valued above all else. In this scenario, however, it rightfully illustrates how much of a fucked up freak you have to be to willingly work at the Usotsuki OR Umbra institutes

[umbrasdoodles]

More of the Umbra dream queue: I dreamed I was at the entrance of a big amusement park and they had both replicas of historical monuments and GIANT ROBOTS there. Also a mural of Lina Inverse from Slayers? For a theme park there was no real theme

[calystathebear]

Do you ever get nightmares of Umbra's memory?

Honestly? Not really. Yes, it was all absolutely horrific, and Ballas is a monster for everything he did to him. However, that still doesn't even come close to the horrors on the Zariman. Now, the Zariman, I do have nightmares of. It's- Strange, having nightmares of the same event from two different perspectives. And, that- doesn't even consider everything in Duviri. When you die so many times, you sort of get numb to certain things, you know? And, inversely, when you see so much death? You get a similar numbness.

[death-rebirth-senshi]

I kinda agree, I wish we saw more creative variants, (maybe a male Bayonetta, or a Bayonetta that was raised as a Sage), but at the same time, I don’t necessarily hate the Variants we got, Tokyonetta is a newer witch that seems to want to prove herself to her version of Rosa (an Echoes of Memory in Tokyo implies she’s still alive), Chinanetta is a freaking general which raises interesting questions about how Umbra in that world interact with the rest of their society, Egyptnetta is basically an inverse of our own, who is far more timid and pacifistic, and Frenchnetta is a phantom thief duo with her mom. Like, those aren’t inherently bad concepts, sure I wish they were more than just Bayonetta but from X but with a different personality, but I do wish we got to see more of them since they do have some interesting things going for them. But that’s just me.

Yeah I don't think the concepts are awful, it's just that all they do is show up and die and then we're on to the next thing.

[lifeindollcity]

Continuing work on my unicorn boy. I need to get some jute wire for the tail.

[daily-nis]

You are here to encourage Even?

AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Encourage me instead, I know far more of torture than the Voidroot, lifetime after lifetime-

We can practice on each other Friend, together learn what hurts the most.~

[lunanightriderofthecove]

I just took the time (at work no less 😆) to write down every single leaked track title of the season 6 and 7 soundtrack and what I think which episode it's part of. Some of them were so much easier than others 🙈

Those with two episode numbers I wasn't sure so I put both.

List (including spoilers) below the cut

Season 6:

Bittersweet Morning (6x01)

The Path of Freedom (6x01)

Forest Chase (6x02)

The Sunfire Soul (6x02)

Shrink Magic (6x02)

One Spell / The Frozen Sea (6x03)

The Frozen Ship (6x03)

Esmerelda Skall (6x03)

We're Close (6x03)

Fiery Escape (6x03)

The Starscraper / Apex Predator (6x04)

Viren’s Confession (6x05)

Storm of Grief (6x05)

Corona of the Heavens (6x05)

Time-Blind (6x05)

Father and Son (6x05)

Sacred Promise / Tainted by Darkness (6x05)

The Truth Is (6x06)

To the Stars / Your Mother’s Tears (6x06)

Deep Truths (6x06)

Second Chances (6x06)

The Queens’ Wedding (6x07)

Call the Sun (6x07)

Archdragon’s Descent (6x07/6x08)

His Good Heart (6x08)

One Last Time (6x08/6x09)

Lotus Petals (6x09)

Leola’s Fall (6x09)

Season 7:

(99% of this is speculation, obviously 😆)

Ruin and Rebirth (7x01)

Time to Grieve (7x01)

Arrest Him  (7x01)

The Puzzle House (7x01/7x02)

Forgive Me (7x02)

Escaping the Lodge, Again (7x02)

The Great Amnesty (7x03)

The Mage Wars (7x03)

Reunion (7x04)

No More Half Truths (7x04)

Ritual of the New Moon (7x04/7x05)

Rayla Reborn / Unfinished Business (7x04/7x05)

Moon Cubs (7x05)

Driven by Love (7x05/7x06)

Why Are You Doing This? (7x06)

Lissa (7x06)

Umbra Dolor [trl: shadow pain] (7x06)

Inversion (7x06)

Rise Again (7x06)

Fall of a Titan (7x07)

Callum’s Plan (7x07)

Compromise (7x07)

Written In His Eyes (7x07)

Boiled Grotto (7x07)

Hungry Shadows (7x07)

Extinguished (7x08)

Let There Be Dark (7x08)

The Orphan Queen / An Old Friend (7x08)

Eternal Night (7x08)

For Xadia (7x08)

Battle of the Sunforge (7x08)

The Novablade (7x08)

Best Laid Plans (7x08)

When a Star Dies (7x08/7x09)

Dragonsong (7x09)

Brothers, Brothers, Brothers (7x09)

Breaking New Ground (7x09)

I Miss Her / Forgiveness (7x09)

This Changes Everything (7x09)

Starlit Serenade (7x09)

Leola’s Last Wish (7x09)

I have thoughts about some of the s7 track titles. If I manage to put them into somewhat coherent words those thoughts will follow later 👍🏻

[autoacafiles]

WELL: Where did the inspiration for Umbra Convoy being Dion come from? It's honestly a really interesting concept to have a 'Nemesis Prime'-esque character originally be one of Star Convoy/Optimus's closest friends who was left for dead.

Design wise, it was partly inspired by the Arrow villain Prometheus combined with aspects of Rodimus/Black Rodimus. As for the character itself, it was partly an inversion of the idea proposed by Wings Universe that Dion could've become Ultra Magnus, which, with Dion's absence in the present of AA, lent itself well into the idea.

Then taking stuff from the classic Nemesis Prime, like the Vorpal Saber. - Devaron9

[azdoine]

So let’s talk about them cherubs.

I think it’s no secret that Calliope and Caliborn have always been deeply gendered characters in Homestuck, but (beyond fanart and enthusiastic headcanons) I personally haven’t seen a lot of engagement with their characters on that level. The most comprehensive readings of Calliope and Caliborn that I’ve seen have always been through the lens of metatext (Calliope and Caliborn as fandom avatars) or religion (Calliope and Caliborn as Gnostic figures).

With that in mind, I want to talk about the ways in which Calliope and Caliborn are gendered in Homestuck, and offer my own amateur reading of Calliope as a trans allegory.

Full disclosure, I love the epilogues, but I won’t be engaging with them here -- I view them as extracanonical, which is to say, I’d like to talk about them and their own presentation of Calliope’s story in another post.

Also, it’s Homestuck, so, you know. Sex, death, violence, and bigotry under the cut:

If we’re to read Calliope as a trans allegory, then we don’t need to look very far for evidence, because the text is very straightforward in suggesting it.

Almost as soon as we meet Calliope in the flesh for the first time, we’re confronted with the bleak reality of her desire for a more feminine embodiment:

'Callie Ohpeee’ serves as an aspirational figure for Calliope on multiple levels. Most obviously, she’s a vehicle for Calliope’s self-insertion into the wider world of paradox space and the alpha timeline (i.e. her self-insertion into the story of Homestuck); Callie Ohpeee is able to freely and directly interact with the elements and characters of the story that Calliope adores, while Calliope cannot. Somewhat less obviously, Calliope’s trollsona also serves as a way for her to imagine herself in non-caliginous relationships (which she desires on some level, but she feels she has been denied by her biology).

However, Calliope’s trollsona isn’t just a vehicle for her relationships and engagement with other people. Calliope’s trollsona is also key to the way in which Calliope desires to relate to herself.

Calliope desires to be attractive and feminine for her own sake: she desires to be beautiful and pretty, and her trollsona serves as the vehicle by which she satisfies this desire.

Calliope’s trollsona is quite literally her idealized feminine self, and so her relaxing “solo cosplay” sessions bring nothing more to mind than a trans woman privately enjoying a feminine presentation in the closet, as many trans women have. Her costumery and face paint imply clothes and makeup, and Caliborn takes on the role of a patriarch or patriarchy that tries to control her.

Ultimately, though, Calliope’s embodiment desires are cosmically validated by the unfolding drama of paradox space. Calliope is tormented by the apparent fact that she isn’t and can’t be Callie Ohpeee, but nevertheless, she successfully inserts herself into the lives of the alpha kids and the unfolding of the alpha timeline, forms the kinds of relationships that she wants, and receives the regard that she wants. She dies and takes on the form of her trollsona in the dream bubbles, and even when she’s physically reborn as her cherub self, she’s still “Callie” to Roxy, a meaningful nickname that goes basically unspoken.

Pretty straightforward, right? A trans girl learns that she and her body aren’t unlovable, makes friends and forms bonds as her true self, and escapes the reach of the forces that once abused her.

FEARFUL SYMMETRY

Before we can close the door on a trans reading of Calliope, we also have to consider Calliope and Caliborn as a pair, and not least because the two of them literally share the same body. Fair warning, we’re only going to get more speculative (and more indulgent) going forward.

Calliope and Caliborn are presented, at least superficially, as absolute and dichotomous opposites. They are two spirits that cannot coexist at once within the same body; their respective attitudes and temperaments couldn’t be any more different, and they are, of course, Muse and Lord: quintessentially passive and quintessentially active.

However, Calliope and Caliborn aren’t so different as one might think. Despite Caliborn’s violent protestations to the contrary, they share key characterizing interests in the likes of shipping...

...and art:

Caliborn is infamous for his disgust and anger with the absurdity of paradox space (i.e. his anger with the text of Homestuck itself), but Calliope is easily provoked into displaying the exact same petulant frustration with the direction of the story and the unfolding of events around her.

Calliope and Caliborn are consistently unified within the text -- not as incompatible opposites, but as two sides of the same coin. In Complacency of the Learned, Calliope and Caliborn are personified in the singular, androgynous Calmasis. In his chess match with Calliope, Caliborn disguises his king as his queen, and vice versa, signifying a mutual transgression and inversion of gender; Caliborn steals Calliope’s hemotyping and typing quirk, just as alternate!Calliope does the same to him, in a mutual appropriation not just of quirk (i.e. voice and presentation), but of blood, or life. On the level of the body, Caliborn’s skin is inextricably marked by the green that signifies Calliope, and Calliope is inextricably marked by Caliborn’s skull: the deaths-head he would inflict upon all life (and a hyperrealization of the masculine or unfeminine bone structure that troubles many trans women).

Most significantly, Aranea indicates to us that Calliope and Caliborn actually began as one being, which then went on to fracture into a male and female aspect, striving with and against each other -- a creation myth for gender and sexuality itself, in the vein of Plato’s Symposium, Rabbinic lore on Adam and Eve, and (rather topically) Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

With their fundamental unity in mind, we can read Calliope and Caliborn not just as ‘brother and sister’, but rather as two identities, personas, or aspects of one person. This is why, for example, calling a cherub by one of their two names brings that personality to the surface -- because, on a literal or symbolic level, it constitutes the active validation of that personality and identity, and the abject denial of the other.

Does all of this suggest a bigender, genderfluid, or otherwise non-binary reading of Calliope and Caliborn? Maybe, but let’s keep going, first.

Aranea’s exposition tells us that even adult, mature, ‘binary’ cherubs are still figures of gender duality, inversion, and transgression. Mating cherubs take on the forms of dueling cosmic serpents -- the sex act occurs between two hyperreal phallic symbols, suggesting male homosexuality in specific and queerness more broadly. It was Calliope’s biological father who ultimately submitted to their biological mother, and thus it was Calliope’s biological father who laid their egg, while their biological mother was the one to fertilize it, revealing the separation of sexual anatomy and power relations from gender among cherubs.

The gender dualities, inversions, and transgressions at play can still exist within cherubs who are, by all accounts, decisively male or female in gender identity -- despite the lack of of any way to assign them a sex or gender from the outside. 

The dueling personalities within each young cherub are siblings to each other, but they are also different possible selves that the cosmically-transgender cherub might become as they grow to adulthood -- just as the dueling alternate selves of so many other characters can illuminate their own internal conflicts. In Homestuck, the inner life is always prone to manifest in the outer life, again and again.

I TRAGICALLY LOST A SISTER TO MURDER

Having established a reading of Calliope and Caliborn as two identities within one person -- as ‘Calmasis’ at odds with themself, containing multitudes and torn between them -- we can move on to look at the way Calliope and Caliborn relate to each other, and to gender, in order to get the bigger picture.

Caliborn introduces himself to us as undyingUmbrage, a username of largely straightforward meaning. His umbrage -- his anger, irritation, annoyance, or offense in the face of the world -- is neverending, everlasting, and eternal, and so too is his own life. Caliborn is immortal, allowing him to carry his rage forward forever.

If Caliborn’s username is simple, then Calliope’s is more sophisticated, which fits their characters. As uranianUmbra, her title invokes most obviously Uranus the planet and Urania the heavenly muse, but also the ‘uranian’, Karl Ulrichs’ antiquated title for gay men and trans women: those with an anima muliebris virili corpore inclusa, “a woman’s soul enclosed in a man’s body.” As the umbra, or darkest shadow, she invokes the Jungian shadow archetype, the suppressed, unconscious, or rejected aspect of the self.

As such, Calliope identifies and codes herself both as transfeminine and as Caliborn’s allegorical shadow archetype -- a part of himself that he can neither accept, acknowledge, or escape, perpetually haunting him. In-universe, Calliope names herself after Uranus’ topspin, and the ‘English’ of a cue-ball that it echoes -- thus, she implicitly identifies herself and the trans feminine uranian with the cue-ball that threatens Caliborn and Lord English. She symbolically establishes herself and the trans feminine as Caliborn’s only intrinsic vulnerabilities!

And on some level, Calliope tells us all of this! Because while Caliborn wants to destroy Calliope, she hopes to make him like her:

Calliope manifests a sincere investment in so many of the things that Caliborn orbits at a distance. Thus, to Caliborn, she represents a threat from within to his ability to maintain distance, because on some level, she serves as a manifestation of his own desire to draw closer. She confronts him with the reality of his own desire, or at least, with the latent possibility of his own sincere investment -- she serves to remind him that anyone who can waste as much time on creating Homosuck as he does is both an invested creative and sincerely invested in Homestuck on some level.

And it’s much the same on the level of gender, too. Calliope serves as a sincere reflection of the gender identity that Caliborn can only orbit at a distance. It was, after all, Caliborn’s idea to swap the king and queen chess pieces, and to disguise them as each other. Calliope lashes out at him because he cannot do so earnestly: because Caliborn makes a shitty twist out of his insincere production, because he can’t commit to swapping the places of the king and queen, and because he abuses Calliope’s willingness to swap the pieces (because he abuses and misdirects her inclination to gender transgression, and by extension, betrays the premises of his own idea).

This is why Caliborn kills Calliope’s dreamself instead of predominating over her in the conventional way -- not just because it’s easier and more convenient for him, but because his predomination would mean “consuming” her personality and “integrating” with it. It would constitute an integration with his shadow archetype, and thus, on some level, a partial destruction of the persona and ego he has established for himself. To Caliborn, as pathological as he has become, any level of integration with Calliope represents an existential threat, and so he has to cut her out of himself like a cancer.

But even having cut Calliope out of himself, Caliborn cannot escape her. By cutting her out of himself, he has defined himself around the hole she has left in him -- he has permanently divorced himself of the opportunity to integrate with her or accept what she represents. While both Caliborn and alt!Calliope take up each other’s typing quirks as a sign of victory, Caliborn takes Calliope’s quirk as a way by which he can signal his ‘wholeness’:

And this is, of course, complete bullshit and posturing of the highest order. Andrew Hussie not only directly characterizes the conflict between Caliborn and Calliope as an inner conflict within him, but he also tells him that his only path to maturity and personal growth was through integration with Calliope.

Not to be denied, Caliborn continues to constantly assert the self-justifying completion and authority of his masculinity, for himself and for others...

...but even so, he still can’t help but betray himself and his own idealized masculinity:

Masc4masc, Caliborn certainly isn’t! In his creative endeavors, he telegraphs his ultimate disgust for masculinity. He needs to draw out the femininity he wants to see in men -- he acts out gruesome, hateful misogyny against women, but even as he murders so many of the women of his manga or otherwise ejects them from his story, he’s still compelled to recreate femininity and symbolically recreate womanhood within the male cast he has left behind.

And he’s not just motivated by homophobia and a disgust for men who are intimate with other men! Nor is he just motivated by a desire to place these feminized characters below him. Just as Calliope does sincerely with her Callie Ohpeee trollsona, Caliborn is compelled to feminize his own self-insert, the crude rendition of Lord English he creates for his own satisfaction. Given free reign to depict himself and insert himself into his story however he likes, Caliborn opts to turn away from the full thrust of hypermasculinity, and he makes himself beautiful and gorgeous.

And as soon as he does so, Caliborn’s repressed attraction to Calliope erupts again:

This isn’t just the matter of blackrom incest that the text superficially suggests; even on a purely textual level, due to the alien nature of their relationship, Caliborn only barely regards Calliope as a sister, and he certainly has no problem with objectifying and sexualizing all of the other women he hates.

No, Caliborn has to repress his attraction to Calliope because, given their shared form, his attraction to her as a woman necessarily constitutes an implicit recognition that he could be attractive as a woman, and his body could be attractive as a woman’s body.

Caliborn can never accept that, and he’ll never directly address it or engage with it. He’ll never think about what all of this means for him, or act on his idle fantasies. The time for turning back is well behind him.

He is, now and forever, exactly the kind of angry and disaffected chud who will never unplug from 4chan or stop masturbating to awful trap hentai. He has deliberately imprisoned himself within the teleology of his own self-confirming hegemonic masculinity, and he thinks it is glorious.

THE DEMON IS ALREADY HERE

To fully understand Caliborn, of course, we need to understand Lord English.

If Caliborn has imprisoned himself within his own assertions, then Lord English is the embodiment of those assertions, and Caliborn’s transformation into Lord English is his ultimate apotheosis: having murdered his shadow and excised her spirit from within himself, his transformation enables him to excise her from without. His ascension allows him not only to purge Calliope’s visage from his body, closing off the possibilities once implied and allowed by his youthful and androgynous form, but also to recreate, reconfirm, and relive his victory over Calliope at every turn.

To understand what I mean by that, let’s look at the characters and components who go into Lord English, starting with Equius.

Equius, is, of course, a long-form joke character about the pathetic contradictions of hegemonic masculinity. In his pesterlogs, he opens every line with blatantly phallic imagery...

But when he actually tries to handle said phallus in real life, his titanic strength prevents him from doing anything but destroying it:

And the same goes for one of his horns, which he has apparently broken off. The autocastration symbolism is not subtle, and about the mildest thing we can conclude is that he’s a chronic, addicted masturbator who has compromised his own sexual performance.

He’s also textually obsessed with upholding the racial hegemony of the Alternian civilization...

...but his obsession with hierarchy and dominance quickly collapses into a thin pretext for his barely-suppressed desire to submit to those who are higher than him on the hemospectrum...

...and to those who are lower than him!

Equius is a character intrinsically lined to the collapse and self-destruction of masculinity and male sexuality, which is topical enough that we might end there. However -- and there’s no nice way for me to say this -- we also need to establish that Equius is a necrophile and a sexual predator, too.

@mmmmalo and others have written intriguingly and at length about reading “blue beauties” as a cipher for “sexualized corpses” in Homestuck, but for Equius, it’s about as textual as it gets. Equius is explicitly sexually and romantically interested in Aradia even after her death, and his necrophillic attraction is only reinforced by the symbolism: he constructs an unliving replacement body for her, which parses most obviously as a symbolic embalming and restoration of her corpse, and he treats it like a love doll even as it’s uninhabited and lifeless. He seeks to literally transform her body into a “blue beauty” by the transfusion of his own blood, which (given the color-coding of troll body fluids) parses as a clear insemination joke about his genetic material.

We might excuse his attraction for various fantastic mitigating factors -- Aradia is, after all, still ‘alive’ in a kind of undead state -- but Equius’ more general sexual predation cannot be so easily ignored. Aradia is chronically depressed and in absolute need of the service that Equius can provide, which he uses to take advantage of her and to compromise her bodily autonomy and judgement with the device he covertly implants inside of her.

Equius is undeniably a sexual predator who constructs women’s bodies in order to further his own domination, and his own motif of sexual self-destruction and inversion puts the final dark twist on his story. He is brutally dominated by Gamzee, suffocated to death until his corpse is blue in the face, and ultimately prototyped together with AR. He finds a unique fulfillment as he becomes the object of his own desire, when he is transformed into his own cybernetic “blue beauty”.

It’s not hard for me as a trans woman to see certain tropes at play, but for those of us who aren’t up to date on foundational transmisogynistic screeds...

Today the Frankenstein phenomenon is omnipresent not only in religious myth, but in its offspring, phallocratic technology. The insane desire for power, the madness of boundary violation, is the mark of necrophiliacs who sense the lack of soul/spirit/life-loving principle with themselves and therefore try to invade and kill off all spirit, substituting conglomerates of corpses. This necrophilic invasion/elimination takes a variety of forms. Transsexualism is an example of male surgical siring which invades the female world with substitutes... The projected manufacture by men of artificial wombs, of cyborgs which will be part flesh, part robot, of clones – all are manifestations of phallocratic boundary violation. So also the behaviorism of B.F. Skinner and “physical control of the mind” through the use of implanted electrodes by such scientists as Delgado, are variations of monstrous male “motherhood”.

-Gyn/Ecology

Blanchard believes that autogynephilia is best conceived as misdirected heterosexuality. These men are heterosexual, but due to an error in the development of normal heterosexual preference, the erotic target (a woman) gets located on the inside (the self) rather than the outside...

Autogynephiles are men who have created their image of attractive women in their own bodies, an image that coexists with their original, male selves. The female self is a man-made creation. They visit the female image when they want to have sex, and some became so attached to the female image that they want it to become their one, true self...

-The Man Who Would Be Queen

But hey, does anyone else remember that time when ARquius got upset and envious because he couldn’t lactate like a mother would?

EXTREMELY SUBTLE.

As for Equius’ fusion with the AR, or Auto-Responder, we come to Dirk Strider.

Dirk Strider is, if anything, the furthest thing imaginable from the autoerotic subject that Equius presents: he is not so much attracted to another self as he is utterly repulsed by himself in his own totality.

Dirk Strider is a self-loathing, self-destructive, self-mutilating gay man, caught in the grips of a kind of hateful narcissism. He is not overtly trans-coded, or related to the trans feminine, but his male homosexuality ties into another, subtler form of trans feminine horror, one which Jake suggests in aside:

Dirk Strider presents the horror of the destruction of the self and the destruction of manhood more generally, both in the service of the satisfaction of others and in the fulfillment of self-hatred. He creates and destroys himself with abandon. In Unite/Synchronize, it’s Dirk who willingly decapitates himself to cross the gulf of space and time between him and Jake, and he allows Dave to decapitate him and destroy his ‘unbreakable’ katana with Caledfwlch -- the uranian cue-ball sword that destroys masculinity -- in Collide.

And keep in mind that when Dirk decapitates himself, it’s Lil’ Hal who looks out from his severed head:

Holy castration symbolism, batman! Remember that Hal’s shades are a part of ARquius’ own phallic imagery:

Lil’ Hal is a phallic specter that terrorizes both Dirk and Jake on the individual level, as well as in their relationship with each other. He drives Dirk’s Brobot-self to greater aggression, he’s aggressive, condescending, and cruel with Jake in general, and he apparently manipulates events to force Jake to kiss Dirk’s severed head -- which, if we’re taking the castration metaphor seriously, basically means he forced Jake to give Dirk head. Classy.

Is it any wonder that Dirk is so compelled to lop Lil’ Hal off of himself and out of his life, no matter the ethics or implications for himself? Hal is the perfect storm and culmination of all of the worst things Dirk sees in himself, and the omniscient apotheosis of his own detatched, ultramasculine, hypercompetent, ironic persona -- all despite being treated as a 13-year-old by the text, an immature and incomplete version of Dirk.

Remind you of anyone else?

Dirk and Lil Hal are in this respect a brighter mirror of Calliope and Caliborn: they are a self divided for whom the better half has softly predominated.

Dirk probably hasn’t literally castrated himself to destroy his masculinity in the way that Caliborn has literally destroyed his own femininity; Dirk and Hal certainly aren’t so explicitly gendered or trans-coded as Calliope and Caliborn are, so it’s more difficult to read them and their relationship as trans-coded. (Unless you want to read Dirk and Hal that way, in which case, hell yeah, go forth and be valid, and link me your fanfiction, please.)

Nevertheless, Dirk’s symbolic castration and literal rejection of lil Hal represents, if nothing else, a rejection of and predomination over his most toxic aspect (and his most toxically masculine aspect), and the gruesome excision of such from his life.

But while Dirk has left his worst half behind, his worst half has gone on to supercede him: entering into union with Equius, and by extension, Caliborn.

And what of Gamzee, the most important character in the entire comic?

Well, Gamzee is, of course, another mirror to Calliope and Caliborn. Like Calliope and Caliborn -- our allegorical Calmasis -- Gamzee is caught in an erratic duality between two possibilties.

Just like our Calmasis, Gamzee vacillates almost all through life between two fundamentally different personas. At the time of his introduction, he was someone basically passive, agreeable, and kindly -- even lovable, to the point that he still has his fans and stans to this day.

Of course, as time went on, he became more and more aggressive. Even against the backdrop of his largely passive behavior, his increasing aggression culminated in his many infamously depraved and murderously violent outbursts: a transition not incidentally marked (among other things) by his rejection of the green (and Calliope-coded) sopor slime that once helped to pacify him, and his radicalization at the hands of his future self (in Lil’ Cal).

In his typing quirk, Gamzee likewise alternates between Calliope’s lowercase and Caliborn’s uppercase:

Definitely no themes of duality here, nope!

Most tellingly, even in his ascension to Lord English, Gamzee is also halved, just like Calliope & Caliborn: Gamzee is bisected such that only half of him enters Lil’ Cal, while half of him is left behind, utterly broken and irrelevant.

But if Gamzee is a reflection of Calliope and Caliborn, then what else does this piece of shit clown have to say about them?

Well, like Calliope, Gamzee is quite involved in his own constructed persona -- but unlike Calliope, he’s almost never regarded as anything but disgusting and pathetic.

No amount of face paint can cover the scars across his face, and instead of covering himself up, his costume only accentuates his own body, exposing himself in the most pornographically aggressive and perverse way possible.

Even in making himself into a clown he reaches towards something inherently absurd; something that has no existence in itself save for how comical and disgusting it is to others. His aspirations and imitations render him a walking joke and a figure of corrupt terror.

And most horribly and grotesquely, if Calliope and Caliborn are a trans allegory, and Gamzee is any kind of reflection of them, we know exactly what kind of warped and fictitious trans archetype Gamzee is:

Gamzee suggests himself as a serial killer, and he’s one who hordes corpses and steals trophies from his victims, at that.

But there’s one more person we need to look at in this gruesome sequence: Doc Scratch, another parallel to Calliope in this incestuous slurry of signifiers. In Doc Scratch, the man with the uranian cue-ball head, we see even Calliope’s most harmless, silly traits taken to their most nightmarish and oppressive conclusions.

It’s Doc Scratch who selectively warps troll culture in order to create the world and the culture that Calliope loved so, and who meddles in the alpha timeline as he so desires; it’s he who shows just how perverse and oppressive omniscience can be, transforming all her scrapbooks and her labors of love into his own exhaustive account of the cosmos, turning her love of her favorite characters into his own callous disregard for objects to be manipulated. When he uses her own thoughtful tone, it only telegraphs menace.

And, most darkly for our own analysis, Doc Scratch is a sexual predator and a pedophile.

Almost from the start, he’s undeniably sexualized as a threat in his conversations with Vriska:

Even his omniscience is sexualized by his own words, casting the light of his awareness as a phallic presence invading and penetrating the unknown:

Vriska is an unreliable narrator, of course, and we might not want to read too deeply into Doc Scratch’s words. Scratch is certainly quick to assure Rose that he’s not a predator in his conversations with her...

...but as always, the gulf between what Doc Scratch says and what he means is almost insurmountable. Doc Scratch tells Rose that he has no biological means of reproduction, but he is a conglomerate of and a vessel for multiple sexual beings, and even the castrated may experience sexual pleasure and pursue sexual ends.

Most tellingly, Doc Scratch only tells Rose that he isn’t attracted to her “in the way she means”. From an entity known for wordplay and lies of omission, this constitutes a tacit admission that he IS attracted to her in some way that she isn’t asking about.

Aradia explicitly characterizes his interference in her and Kanaya’s lives as ‘grooming’...

And he does much the same to Damara:

Doc Scratch is an undeniably sexual and sexualized threat.

We might ask how, exactly, he’s supposed to be attracted to Rose and the other young girls he victimizes -- and certainly I think he’s a sexual voyeur in the general case, but I think he’s also an even more abstract and pedophillic threat.

Doc Scratch is a copy of Lil’ Cal, given life and omniscience as a First Guardian; he is the child’s toy which was once fawned over by a puppet pornographer, and he is a child-sized man. He titles himself after the Scratch process which allows children the chance to grow up, but which also transforms adults into children; he presents the absolute perverse sentimentality of all adult transgressions into the realm of childish things.

This alludes to Caliborn, of course, as the boy who cannot escape his childhood, but it’s also sexologically linked to toxic trans feminine archetypes...

Blanchard (1991) started with the idea that some cases of male-to-female gender dysphoria and transsexualism are fundamentally motivated by an ETII, in which natal males who are otherwise sexually attracted to women eroticize the idea of being women to such an extent that they want to become a woman themselves. Freund and Blanchard (1993) later extended this idea to an analogous ETII that might motivate some pedophilic men to impersonate or fantasize about being children.

It is fitting that the most compelling finding of our study—that autopedophilic men sexually attracted to girls tend to find it sexually arousing to imagine themselves as a girl—reflects the likely confluence of the two ETIIs that had been proposed many years ago: one that involves locating an individual of a different gender within one’s own body, and the other that involves locating an individual of a different age within one’s own body.

...and it’s also a searing indictment of Calliope.

To cosmic entities such as her and Scratch, how can other people be anything but objects, tools, and characters to be abused? Before the power and knowledge they might come to command, how can other people be anything but insects?

To Scratch and Calliope, how can other people be anything but children?

Even as Calliope becomes a mere player within the story of paradox space,  Doc Scratch accuses her of a fundamental and unwholesome transgression. She lets go of the condescending oversight she used to hold over the alpha timeline, no matter how kindly and well-meaning she was, and she descends from the omniscient authority of her lonesome ivory tower, but Doc Scratch still names her as an offense to herself and to others. Her desire to be a person is cast as a perversion, a deviance, and a sickness.

SBURB is a game her kind was never meant to play, after all. It’s a coming-of-age narrative not meant for her.

Ultimately, Doc Scratch himself is a fundamental accusation against Calliope: he is a grail of the souls who signify some of the most horrible gendered narratives and trans feminine narratives we can imagine, animated in mockery of Calliope as if to say: “this is you”. Equius, an autoerotic, necrophillic predator, and Hal, an aggressive, intellectualist meddler; even Gamzee, who is both a murderous pervert and her own adoptive father, a normative role model who is anything but.

And when Caliborn rises to prominence and Lord English births himself from the corpse of Doc Scratch, it’s nothing less a recreation of the traditional predomination that Caliborn has denied himself. To Caliborn, Lord English is the sign of his own victory: he may see the souls within Lil’ Cal as like-minded role models to emulate and assimilate, or as hateful and loathesome symbols of Calliope to be crushed under his will, but his predomination allows him to take both options without interrogating himself, just as he’s gone without interrogating everything else he wants. 

And to Calliope, well, if Doc Scratch was an accusation against her, then what could be more horrible to her than Lord English? He has destroyed Doc Scratch and symbolically ended her own perversions, but only through the act of being born.

The only alternative to the horror of being Doc Scratch is the terror of being Lord English; the only alternative to the horror of being Calliope is the terror of being Caliborn.

ISOLATION

I could navel-gaze for hours about the potential symbolism of Lord English, but I think it’s time to return full circle to a somewhat more grounded look at Calliope.

If Calliope, Caliborn, and Lord English cast light upon each other, then what does alternate!Calliope have to say about them?

Having naturally predominated and standing as a singular figure in the furthest ring, Alt!Calliope serves to illuminate the alternatives to Caliborn’s false victory: in all the alternate possibilities illuminated by the dream bubbles, we see that Calliope can naturally predominate over Caliborn, but not vice versa.

Alternate!Calliope strongly suggests to us that Calliope is inherently stronger than Caliborn, and she tells us that Calliope and Caliborn share the same strength: she tells us yet again that Calliope and Caliborn are two sides of the same coin.

She suggests to us that, in a sense, Calliope and Caliborn are just Calliope -- that Calmasis, upon achieving integration, will simply view herself as Calliope, and Caliborn will lose because he was never the true self.

So why, then, does Caliborn win in the alpha timeline? Is it just an arbitrary time loop, a timeline plucked from the frothing sea of paradox space and arbitrarily validated by the happenstance of the immature Caliborn’s power over time?

No, I certainly don’t think so; I’d like to think that the principle of AURYN applies even here. Caliborn wins out over Calliope because they’re Doing As They Will -- because, even on the level of our trans allegory, they both have reason to want Caliborn’s victory. Even on the level of our trans allegory, Calmasis needs to be Caliborn.

Alternate!Calliope tells us that she had to become strong because she had no-one else to comfort her, and I think suggests two important points of interest:

Firstly, that alt!Calliope serves to reflect Calliope’s inner drama, just as Calliope serves to reflect Caliborn’s inner drama. Caliborn fears and loathes the possibility of being like Calliope, the sentimental degenerate and weakling that she is, and Calliope fears and dreads the possibility of becoming alt!Calliope. Calliope fears that even if she rejects the hateful accusations that are Doc Scratch, and rejects the teleological future of Lord English, her only alternative is to be like alt!Calliope: someone who has won, and who has become herself, but at the cost of isolation, distance, and loneliness, without humanity, connection, or kindness.

In other words, Calliope fears her victory would mean her little green skull is always going to be a miserable Federal Fucking Issue, for herself and for others.

Secondly, that Calliope’s relationships with humans are in some sense the vector by which Caliborn came to dominate. Alt!Calliope won because she had no-one to take comfort in, and thus she had to be strong on her own, but I think the flip side of that is that alt!Calliope was able to be strong, because she had no relationships that could weaken her -- she was more insulated from the toxic ideas of the cultures that came before her. No one could so much as accidentally insinuate to her that she wasn’t good enough or pretty enough as she was, save perhaps for Caliborn -- and certainly Caliborn would have been malevolent, but he would have had less in the way of the language and systematic ideas to be the hateful and cultivated misogynist that he became in the alpha timeline.

In other words, alt!Calliope doesn’t have any reason whatsoever to worry about her little green skull in the first place.

But there��s another much more straightforward reason why Caliborn had to win, too:

If we’re supposed to take Calliope and Calliborn as two facets of a whole more generally, let alone as a specific trans allegory, well... they may have been two personas, or even two people, but they are confined to an existence as a single player. The cherub session likely never could been anything but a single player session; the cherub session was always going to be a dead session.

And whether it’s a fundamental fact of SBURB or just an idea in Calliope’s head -- one of the ideas she’s likely constructed with the human cultural biases she’s obtained by osmosis -- Caliborn is someone who can win a dead session, and Calliope isn’t. How could a Space player, a patient creative, succeed in a test of frantic, timed destruction? How could a passive Muse succeed where even an active Lord would struggle -- how could a woman succeed where even a man would struggle?

Only someone like Caliborn could ever possibly win. Perhaps Calliope reflects Caliborn as the person he desperately wishes he wasn’t, and she is the shadow that lies outside of his hateful and constructed self, but as a precarious supergiant hangs overhead and the light of Skaia gutters out, Caliborn reflects Calliope as the person she desperately needs to be, and he is the self she has to construct for herself.

Caliborn kills Calliope’s dreamself not just because he desperately hates her, but also because she has to allow him to supercede her, and he is the kind of person she needs to be: because SBURB is unfair, Skaia is unfair, and he can escape the desolate waste of her life, while she cannot.

And so it happens that Calliope is exiled from the real and cast to the unreality of the dream bubbles, while Caliborn grows monstrously beyond himself, self-mutilated and cancerous.

People have commented on the obvious romantic symbolism at play in Calliope’s return to life in the real...

...but it’s not just the power of a love that saves Calliope. Love is powerful and transformative, but love alone isn’t magical. It isn’t even the power of a magical macguffin ring that saves Calliope, either, because a ring is never just a ring, even when it is magical.

What redeems the possibility of Calliope’s existence is recognition and freedom.

TL;DR: ‘Caliborn’ is Calliope’s deadname.

[kuromiyakun]

In the footsteps of danger

Torin closed his laptop in the hotel room where they stayed in Prague. The trace of Oomi was gone in France, Brittany Province. He leaned back in the armchair, raising both his hands to press them against his eyes with a frustrated groan. He regretted so much he promised to Lucien to retrieve the brothers, intact. But he was also sure he was the most gentle among the Lords and this was a delicate situation.

The others in the room knew without Torin saying a word. Gideon, Lord of Secrets walked closer to the white haired warrior, and crouched in front of him, keeping some distance, wordlessly. His blue eyes searching Torin’s, who finally straightened his back again.

Gideon never spoke, as whenever he opened his lips, he revealed secrets and it caused intolerable pain. But his eyes were questioning, and the Lord of Disease knew well, how to read his fellow-warrior’s look.- We can only guess, Gideon. I do not know why he was in France, without Harahel. He probably goes back to where he left his brother and they will move, that’s for sure.- the gray haired angel sighed.

- They will go to the West.- Amun spoke from the other side of the room. The tall, blonde haired man with several braids didn’t look at their direction, as he talked. Torin considered his words, and shook his head:

- No, Oomi is a jaeger and his pattern is not based on the logic we followed until now. Also, I believe he wouldn’t get closer to Hungary.

- This way, we will find them. Don’t listen to me.- Amun barked, and Lord of Disease sighed again with irritation.

Amun, the Lord of Lies must speak inversely as he could never word the truth. Therefore, the other angel assumed Oomi, Harahel and the vampires would now turn to the East and this way they’d travel closer to Budapest.

Gideon stood and pointed at Amun, communicating he is on the side of the blonde haired angel.

- Alright. I start to monitor The Check Republic, Poland, Ukraine and maybe Belarus.- he murmured, feeling kind of defeated but there was no room to be touchy here. The other two, along with Torin himself started to grew irritated traveling around Europe without being on time to catch Oomi and possibly Harahel for a talk. Maybe this time they will have some luck.

@umbra-est-magus​