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> Report cranial irritation.

You have no idea why these failures of logic make your head itch. Must be a biology thing.

Note to future questioners! Please place new Headscratchers at the bottom of their appropriate section, under the "Open" heading. If uncertain what category a question falls into or if it's broader than one category, please place it in the "Misc" section.


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  • In this update, Calliope explains to Roxy that a single-player session of SBURB "coUld have conseqUences more horrifying than we coUld begin to imagine." What exactly did she meant? Besides two sprites prototyping each other creating a black hole (which doesn't exactly count as "single-player" because it involves two player's sprites), I can't quite think about anything massively huge Caliborn could do in the game with no one else looking at his back.
    • Caliborn's essentially solo session is bizarre enough to imply any sort of oddness to it. We already know Skaia has clouded up, probably to prevent Caliborn from benefitting from it's visions. Anything else, such as him embracing the teachings of Derse, what have you, is beyond our ability to guess at this point. What does seem certain is that he will break Sburb in two.
    • All was, explained by Hussie himself to Caliborn, but I feel the need to point out a single correction: there was a single kernel, not two as was initially believed, because Skaia always knew it would be a 1-player session.
    • A dead session, where a player manages to meet their denizen, is given a special choice. Either they choose to be killed on spot, or they choose to continue, resulting in a being of extreme power, which is essentially impossible to defeat without the assistance of a player who chose the other option. The kids would be screwed without Calliope's help.
  • So... is Roxy dead? She's in the dream bubble with Calliope. But is she dreaming, or did Her Imperious Condescension kill her? If she was dead, she would have white eyes like the other dead characters, right?
    • Roxy has demonstrated the ability to enter dream bubbles in her sleep before. That's all she did. It's some sort of Void power.
    • Her real self died, so she goes to the dream bubbles when asleep.
      • To elaborate on the above, if you sleep when you don't have a dream self (either because it died or it became your real self via corpsesmooch), then you create a sort of temporary dream self in the dream bubbles. That's what Jade is doing here, and Jake does it here.
  • This is kind of a dumb question... but what are the English equivalents of auspiticisms, matespritships, and kismessitudes?
    • Matespritship is basically love in the romantic sense humans typically use, the sort that leads to human marriage; there's an entire greeting card industry of words around it. Auspiticism and kismessitude are not really present in the english language because humans, as a species for whom hate is wholly unrelated to reproduction and in fact tends to inhibit it outside of very unhealthy and likely doomed relationships, don't really have blackrom per se, and when we do it is seen as an emotional problem to be dealt with in therapy. The closest terms we have to blackrom are "sexual frenemies" and "that one friend held in common who is the reason we put up with each other".
      • The entire fact that these romances do not actually exist for humans is kind of the whole point of the bizarreness of Troll romance.
    • Moirailigence is described best as "brotherly love", meaning it's someone you would like to protect, but not really have sexual relations with. This makes sense because only matespritship and kismessitude produce offspring.
      • Not exactly; it's something of a cross between that and a specific use of Morality Chain. A healthy moirailigence stems not from a good friendship, but a friendship between one emotionally imbalanced and destructive troll and one level headed troll. Again, this doesn't exist for humans because such a friendship is not only not healthy, but outright emotionally abusive in some situations. And, once again, nobody would consider this a form of romance.
      • I don't understand the idea of "it would be emotionally abusive therefore it would not exist in human form". Emotionally abusive relationships like these exist all the time, and sometimes it does get glorified as ideal romances - "if I loved you enough I could fix you" or the attraction to "bad boys" or whatever.
      • Moiralleigance is not meant to be between one "unstable" and one "stable" troll. This seems to be a common misconception. Such a one-sided moiralleigance is actually a pretty unhealthy pale relationship. For example, Karkat's moiralleigance with Gamzee broke down because Karkat was the only one invested in it - Gamzee didn't really serve a supportive role to Karkat. It is true that one of the two trolls in a pale relationship tends to be worse than the other, but a true moiralleigance involves both trolls helping with each other's flaws, not just one holding the other in check. Equius is the obvious unstable half of his moiralleigance with Nepeta, but he still also works to stop her harming herself through things like her failure to take some dangers seriously. A fact demonstrated by his keeping her from being wrapped up in the FLARP incidents, for instance. tl;dr, like any actual relationship, it has to go both ways to really work.
  • Exactly what is the reason that Meenah has only been in the afterlife a few days from her perception when she is first introduced while Aranea and all the other Pre-Scratch trolls have been wandering dreambubbles for eons and eons now again?
    • Time seems to work differently in Dream Bubbles.
    • Basically, while they all died at the same time, the other trolls all entered various different dreambubbles. Meenah's first bubble was the meeting bubble. However, Aranea had been through countless other dreambubbles before she reached the meeting bubble.
  • If Equius is so insistent on wielding a bow and arrow despite each one he uses breaking before he even makes a shot, how come he doesn't just make himself a bow from a stronger material than wood? He's a Gadgeteer Genius for a reason, y'know.
    • Tradition? Trolls are pretty fucking weird, and past that even humans tend to go with what's 'cooler' — I don't think it's really a coincidence that longbows are a lot more common in by protagonists in mainstream media than crossbows, unless the author is deliberately setting up the mood. Or something. In any case, the whole point Equius tries to use a bow an arrow is because he's clearly (trying to be) a very orthodox guy, and creating some newfanglednote  steel weapon isn't going to earn him any points in that respect.
      • Just reread his intro page; it's become a bit of a fetish after the first few times apparently.
  • On this page Doc Scratch calls Dave his ectobiological father. Does that mean Dave made/will make Scratch at some point and we just haven't seen it yet, or am I missing something?
    • He's talking about Lil Cal, not Dave.
  • Would someone be kind enough to explain TA's ~ATH code?
    • It's Basically Java, but the beans can Destroy the universe.
    • More like C++ (including the usage of "~", which in C++ is used to design a destructor). And yes. Apparently it can destroy not only one Universe, but an alternate as well.
    • The most distinctive feature is the presence of a ~ATH construct around "!U2," which in C-inspired languages (which ~ATH seems to be one of) would mean "not U2." Given that the program works immediately, this probably turns "until U2 ends" into "until U2 doesn't end" (i.e. immediately, assuming U2 already exists). Beyond that, the code is pretty much nonsense (you can't interlock code blocks like that in any real programming language) unless we get an explanation from AH at some point.
      • Basically, WE HAVE NO IDEA EITHER BRO.
      • Anyway the name of the language is probably pronounced "TILL DEATH", so it's kinda cool.
      • In fact, that's the basis of the language - programs execute upon the death of an object. In other words, programs are not activated TIL DEATH.
    • Okay, essentially, the language is a pun on C++ as mentioned above; Sollux's code calls "bifurcate" (either a primitive or a function he wrote) which splits the universe into two separate entities; it then executes a loop which only runs in full when the universe both ceases to exist and is created at the exact same time. Suffice to say ~ATH is not like our earth human languages.
    • It binds a program to be run to the mutual existence of two items. These items must be recognized by the library and relatively long-lived. Once the loop connecting the two is broken, the program is run.
  • Why, exactly, did Kanaya give Eridan a wand capable of slaughtering most of the trolls on the meteor? He's always been mentally unstable and he's pretty open about his desire to commit genocide against the lowbloods (Even if he never managed to act on it), and there's no real reason to make the wand anything but a placebo.
    • Kanaya made the wand just to shut Eridan up. He wanted her to teach her the secrets of magic, and to make him stop she made the wand. Doc Scratch later implies that the wand wasn't anything special at all, and that it was just Eridan being a Hero of Hope. Eridan believed the wand was awesomely powerful, since it was given to him by someone who promised to teach him magic. Kanaya DID give Eridan a placebo, but one big part of the Hope aspect is believing and boy did he.

Open

  • What timeline was God Tier Calliope from? Roxy seems to indicate she's from a doomed timeline and she theorizes it's because that Calliope never talked to the Alpha kids, but was it a result of John's retcon adventures? Did Caliborn somehow doom that timeline after his death?
    • God Tier Calliope was simply from a timeline where she predominated over Caliborn, probably through similar means to what he did to her in the Alpha timeline. The timeline was doomed because without Caliborn, there would be no Lord English and therefore it wouldn't be the Alpha Timeline. Theres no actual shenanigans going on there, just the 'normal' timeline mechanics.

  • The universe in the post-scratch kids session was created using the pre-scratch Battlefield and the pre-scratch frog. But why have the kids activated scratch in the first place? They had this battlefield and this frog, and the Tumor was moved away, so they could just finish everything in their session.
    • The Beta Kids activated the Scratch in an attempt to kill Bec Noir, while also escaping his murder rampage, and the 'cancer' that was the Red Miles, which was in the process of literally tearing apart the Genesis Frog that composed their universe. The frog was killed during '[S] Cascade'.
    • Several reasons. First, they can't create a universe until the Queen's Rings are destroyed (this is one of the hard requirements), which prevented them from just winning immediately. Second, 48 hours after the Reckoning is started, the battlefield is destroyed; [S] Cascade happened right as that time limit was hit. Since they couldn't kill Bec Noir, they couldn't win before time ran out; and they couldn't stick around, because that would let the battlefield be destroyed. They scratched in an effort to buy more time. In short, they didn't just need a battlefield and a frog, they needed a safe sesson to put these in while they obtained the Queen's Rings - with the deadline imposed by the Reckoning approaching, their own session didn't qualify anymore.
    • Also keep in mind that it's not at all a given that scratching actually was a good idea - S U C K E R S, after all; Doc Scratch played them. It's possible that, if you ignore predestination and stable time loops, rushing Bec Noir would have won them the game... except that it would have failed because of course their timeline was entwined with the post-scratch session anyway, meaning anything that didn't lead to it was always doomed.

  • Do other parents strife their kids? Bro has been established that his "anime training" is actually not as cool as it looks in the homestuck universe, and John's dad Strifes his kid using pretty harmless pranks (harmless pie throwing). IIRC Mom Lalonde only annoys her daughter to no end. Are the Guardians the only people that Strife their kids, then?

  • Does being an ectohuman come with benefits? Are they actually one of the only humans who come with superhuman skills? The trolls themselves do, and they're the only ones we've seen to have "anime skills".

  • An older one, but why does Jane need to use Lil' Sebastian to move the fridge in order to get outside? Couldn't she just captchalogue it?

  • Can people truly feel pain in the Homestuck universe? This question may seem silly, but this seriously got me pondering after watching the Collide flash and seeing Dave and Dirk get blasted by a beam. Sure, in the scene the kick the Condense gave to Rose seemed to hurt her quite a bit, but then again that could have just been for Rule of Drama and Rose just got stunned, and pretty much every weapon save for the ironic exception of swords appear to be Set To "Stun".

  • A sort of jokey headscratcher: If the pieces of the Sburb logo are meant to represent the kids, then who's in the roof/attic?

  • How does Karkat (or Sollux after they swap modi) use the Punch Designix? I doubt the massive card safes would be able to fit in the slot.
    • Like John did.

  • So, an entire universe lies within Snowman's heart. That same universe happens to be the exact same one that Snowman is living in. UHHHHHHHHHHH-

     "What does X do?" / "How does X work?" 

Resolved

  • If you look at the Sburb interface, you see that there is what appears to be a save button, and a load button. These are never used, but I wonder what would happen if they were? [1] (Look in the upper left-hand corner)
    • Presumably used only for buildings, as server players cannot directly interact with clients. However they seem to be cosmetic; they haven't appeared in the comic in years and were probably just a simple Shout-Out to the layout of the Sims' interface.
    • If the computer running said game was lost or destroyed, presumably some data would be lost. The save and load buttons may be there just for that reason. Say for example, to keep Grist or as a genuine backup file in case something goes wrong. If it works like a literal save and load button then it would be heavily ironic if it also reversed time, just like in a certain game.

  • Why is the method of waking up dreamselves so inconsistent? The first few acts made kind of a big deal out of John's psychological problems preventing him from waking up, but he's ultimately woken by convenience to the plot and Jade manhandling him. Sollux is woken up first through Aradia's psychic powers, and second through somebody kissing his corpse. Vriska's and Terezi's awakenings both involved some kind of psychological catharsis, in a similar fashion to John (coming to terms with their guilt and blindness respectively). All of these seem to fit in with Sburb's vague rules and mythology- I guess what really bothers me is that Rose managed to wake up Dave by throwing a ball of wool at his head, with no real explanation given as to why it was so easy.
    • John - Being thrown to the ground would wake you up. Sollux - Dead and revived by Feferi. It wasn't a second awakening. Vriska - Dead, used up a life and as a result became her dreamself.
    • The yarn didn't wake Dave up. In this conversation Rose says that Dave was always awake and just didn't realize it.
      • Have we been given a reason for that yet?
      • Presumably Dave's dream self has been in a half-waking half-sleeping daze because of Dream Cal.
      • Anyway, besides Dave, waking up dreamselves seems to be a unique experience tailored to each player.
      • I thought Terezi's dreamself was first woken during Vriskas Double Psychic Reacharound and Blindness Jamboree...
      • There is (or was) a popular theory among some that since one of their apparent main purposes is to act as extra lives, the dreamselves can only be woken by someone's death—be it the owner's waking self (Vriska, Sollux), Jade's dreamself (he didn't wake up until after she died), or someone who died off camera long before the story started (anyone who was already awake). I guess that doesn't explain Terezi though.
      • Dreamselves are awakened by dealing with death, whether your own or the death of someone else, but anyone on Derse or Prospit already awake can wake you up. It can also happen by personal trauma or overcoming some hang up. In a sense, Future Rose was the "sacrifice" for Rose. Terezi's "sacrifice" may have been Aradia or possibly just her coming close to death as a result of her injuries.
      • It's interesting to note that both Dave and Dirk's dreamselves were always awake, but Dirk was aware but Dave was not.
      • The idea of Dave not fully waking up doesn't need a SBURB-mechanics related explanation. People can wake up and not be fully awake either, so all the yarn did was get Dave's full attention to stop him from dozing off.

  • Where do trolls get their names? The most obvious would be the parent-figure Lusus, but those can't speak.
    • Where do the trolls get their Trollslum handle names?
    • That's easy, they were named by their creators from the last session. That or by the readers on the forums.
    • They're probably assigned to them by the troll government. Or they pick their own names.
      • Judging from the troll's ancestors, they're possibly descriptive of what kind of person they are. The language simply shifted from English to a bunch of others.
    • According to AH, the first noise that is uttered by a troll's lusus once the troll is hatched is then translated to the closest combination on two 6-letter words.

  • How is prototyping necessary, anyway? Couldn't they just leave all the Kernelsprites empty and breeze through the game and the royals like it was nothing?
    • They wouldn't be able to understand the kernelsprite at all, and as a result probably die due to not having any idea what to do.
    • It's because otherwise Skaia wouldn't be able to evolve into its final form, which is required for it to make the new universe.
      • Post-entry prototyping is still an option, though I have no idea how this affects the session. Maybe Jade will do so. (Thus thwarting every "Jade's going to prototype her kernelsprite with _____ and RUIN THE WORLD WHEN JACK GETS ITS POWERS" theory under the sun.)
      • ...No it's not?
    • The game requires you to prototype the kernelsprite at least once to enter the medium.
      • You won't be prevented from entering if you don't have a prototyped sprite. It could be that, due to predestination, you won't enter without prototyping, but in no scenario can you break your artifact and have the game say "nope, you didn't prototype, no entry for you."
      • We don't know that. We do, however, have the narrator saying that a pre-entry prototyping is necessary.
      • He says "necessary for ultimate success", which implies your entry won't be prevented by not prototyping.
      • But that does imply, even if you do defeat the royals, since "ultimate success" means creating a new universe that if players don't prototype the Kernelsprite once Pre-Medium they make it Unintentionally Unwinnable. Addendum: And so I have proof of this theory.
      • And this is supported by how Jade was unable to break the Bechead Pinata and enter the medium without Bec prototyping himself first.
    • Prototyping is necessary to evolve Skaia to it's various forms, as well as providing the player with a guide to the Incipisphere, which is a pretty confusing place! Neither of these are strictly required by the game, but not prototyping prior to entry creates a Non-Standard Game Over. Nevertheless, even those scenarios are still winnable in rare circumstances, as Act 6 is going to demonstrate.

  • What the devil is a fraymotif? We know they're important, they apparently make the player more powerful, and they're themed after the individual players. That's about it, really.
    • Most likely, special abilities/attacks that the players can "learn".
    • Considering that Homestuck is so heavily Earthbound influenced, it's probably something like the beat combos in Mother 3. That or imagine people learning them are like them training with their weapons for a while and learning forms much like learning in martial arts.
      • Actually it probally follows Mother 1 and Earthbound's theme with music (8 Melodies,) since a motif (while other meaning things too), is a recurring theme with music. Fray is a brawl, hence a "music brawl". This is also strengthen by the fact, in John's flash to find his quest bed, you see a store with a sign showing, a music note and a blade where you buy the fraymotif. Also in the same flash, it's mention that the Heir would defeat the thing in the well, "With a song only he could sing."
    • You can find out in this flash that they're special moves you can buy on your own planet using boondollars.
      • Remember Terezi and Karkat's odd attack/dance things in Make Her Pay? Those are probably fraymotifs.
      • Wait, if a fraymotif is a "music attack"... then maybe that's why Jaspersprite wants Rose to learn how to play the rain!!!
      • No, Rose's quest isn't to learn fraymotifs. That was a cat trying to explain the idea that she needed to learn everything she could about the game.
    • Fraymotifs are special attacks you have to purchase to be able to use. Think of it as a preorder exclusive bonus, you don't need it but it's really nice to have. You have three personal fraymotifs for yourself, and one shared with each player in your session. John has six, three for him to use and three he shares with each of his teammates. It's mentioned that the Trolls had the strongest fraymotifs boondollars could buy, and was a part of how they were able to defeat their Black King. The actual mechanics of using, equipping, and learning fraymotifs is still a mystery. All we know is that they are very powerful, very helpful, and very expensive.
    • We finally see them in [S] Collide. They're basically just special attacks, some of which are used cooperatively by two players at once.

  • Can't the remaining players just use the laserstation to duplicate some more sprite kernels (or some cruxtruders to get some) and revive the dead guardians and trolls like Aradia?
    • To do that, they would have to captchalogue the cruxtruder, which is huge and bolted to the floor.
      • That, and there's already been four kernelsprites used. There were only four tower receptors for the kernelsprites to activate on Derse/Prospit. (And I'd assume there was twelve towers for the troll's session, one for each troll) If a fifth kernelsprite were to be activated, what would happen? Odds are it wouldn't be something good.

  • ~ATH:the loops can overlap in some way. does this make it so that the second thing cant die until the first one does? if so, it seems that it would be fairly easy to write ~AH that prevents someone from dying until the universe does/makes the universe die when they do...
    • ~ATH codes don't actually change reality. They simply reflect what already was going to occur. The worst they've been shown to do is blow up computers, which probably is just an exagerated error for comedic purposes.

  • If the Rulers and people of Derse are opposed to creation, why did they create a kingdom based around it?
    • I think the answer is that they're not specifically against creation, but rather they think that bringing around a new universe destroys their own. Which is technically true. The denizens that the Dersites made ask to be taken to the new universe, so they don't have anything specifically against it, they seem to just be out for survival. Except for Jack, who wants to destroy everything.
      • Only the rulers of Derse and their upper agents are specifically against creation as well. And Derse wasn't so much created by them so much as just spontaneously existing fully formed and having always been that way. Time shit etc.

  • What possible biological reason is there to having variation on blood color within a species? You don't really see blood the way you see skin or hair, so it can't be for camouflage or to reflect/absorb light. The only thing I can think of is whatever makes a troll psionic/not psionic or landweller/seadweller also happens to effect the color of their blood. (Vriska is an exception, obviously.)
    • Troll biology as a whole can't really be explained in a way a human mind can wrap around. You may as well be asking why they need to breed through grubs.
      • At the very least, blood color definitely effects lifespan, stated here. It's also been stated to directly effect BOTH a wiggler's chance of manifesting psychic powers, AND how susceptible they are to having such powers used on them, in both cases inversely related to how high/low on the hemospectrum they are (I.e, for a Troll of Vriska's relatively high caste, it's probably very rare to manifest powers, and also very difficult to effect her with them, whereas for Sollux's color, psychics are probably a dime a dozen, and it was pretty easy for Vriska to mind-control him.)
      • Some also theorize that color effects body temperature in a sliding scale from lowest/warmest to highest/coldest (Making the Condesce a literal Cold Blooded Bitch?), but there's no biological basis for that in our universe, at least. The red color of most Earth vertebrates' blood comes from the iron used to transport oxygen through the body; many invertebrates use a copper compound that causes their blood to be blue-green, but this has nothing to do with the temperature.
      • There are clear globins as well, but they're less efficient than hemoglobin. OTOH, there's nothing to say that oxygen transport in trolls relies on similar metallo-proteins.
      • Can confirm the difference in blood temperatures; in Mindfang's Journal (page 5407 in the search bar specifically), it mentions that she could easily tell 'the likely range of the color of her blood' in reference to a slave due to the heat from her (the slave's) hands.
    • It's probably vestigial; the genes for blood color varies (sort of like how our skin color varies on what genes we have for it), but everything else is the same.
      • Hussie stated on Formspring that their blood and tears (and later eyes) are both colored by a pigment, the equivalent of melanin for humans. Presumably, the genetic cause of this coloration is also what causes their various psychic powers and tolerances, as well as their lifespans.
    • Trolls are adopted by lusii with the same blood color. Variations in pigment could serve as a signaling mechanism for social bonding since blood color is visible though the bodies of wrigglers.

  • How did Jade go God Tier? Yes, she has a live dreamself in the form of Jadesprite, but Jade herself had already died before she was placed on her Quest Bed. CD killed her with the shaving cream bomb, then Jack... er, Bec Noir carried her dead body to the quest bed. I thought it required you to die on the quest bed to work?
    • When a player with a living dreamself dies not on their Quest Bed, there is a short delay before their dreamself dies. Maybe if you can get someone to their Quest Bed within that time period they still ascend. (Of course, Jadesprite wasn't acting as Jade's dreamself anymore, so we don't know whether or not she would have died too.) Or maybe Jade just wasn't quite dead yet when Jack picked her up.
      • Delay? You must've forgotten Aradia. Pretty sure the dreamself's lifespan doesn't actually need a proper correlation to that of their waking counterparts.
      • Though Aradia didn't even have a dreamself when the game started. When did she get one? When she got into the robot body?
      • Aradia's dreamself always existed, she was just always asleep in the core of Derse. When Noir destroyed it, she died in her Quest Crypt, prompting her to go God Tier, which of course left no soul in the soulbot, causing it to explode. As to Jade, the trigger doesn't seem to be dying on the quest bed as such, more being dead on it while you still have a living dreamself. Normally the dreamself would succumb to the wounds fast enough that it would be hard to get the corpse to the bed in time, but of course dream Jade wasn't taking on those wounds.
      • Furthermore, the circumstances surrounding Jade's ascension are close enough to Vriska's that it wouldn't be much of a leap just to say she was only mostly dead until she got to the bed.
      • This page says otherwise. Every main character who had a "Dead" or "DEAD" tagged page was most definitely dead. The only exception is Kanaya, who was bitten by a rainbow drinker and subsequently revived due to that.
      • It's because her dreamself was revived at Jadesprite. Since Jadesprite was alive, Jade could ascend. Had she died before protyping her dead dream self with the sprite, she'd be unable to.

  • What do trolls have horns for, anyway?
    • Well why do human males have Adam's apples or some people have freckles? Neither of these serve a beneficial biological purpose - one results in a deeper voice and the other is just due to melanin or something - but it doesn't mean we can't have them. In fact, trolls' horns are similar to human eyebrows to me in a way (though eyebrows do have the small purpose or keeping sweat from your eyes). The eyebrow's/horns' main reason for existence is to distinguish appearance. Humans recognize famous faces without eyes better than famous faces without eyebrows, so trolls could probably recognize famous faces without eyes better than famous faces without horns. Or something.
    • Such non-biological purposes are called vestigial. Chances are, before The Condesce came along they bred naturally.

  • Okay, I've had some gripes with this one, but I think they said that in a scratched session, the same players can't play. Logically, that would mean that if the alpha session was reset, it wouldn't mean that the alpha guardians would scratch again and become generally the beta kids again, right? Or does that mean that it switches between ectokids? If the same people can't play a session twice, that means technically that different people besides all eight ectokids would play at one point in a reset session. But then predestination comes up...
    • Apparently, a Beta session is always destined to be Scratch'd. The Alpha version is the proper version, usually guaranteed to win. Of course, not in the case of the Trolls....
      • No, no, what I meant was that if the game were to be scratched multiple times, and the game can not have a person play twice, that would mean that other people besides the ectochildren would have a clear shot at creating a universe, right?
      • Weird Predestination Shit probably means that any universe has exactly the number of ectobiological paradox clones necessary to play the game for however many itinerations of the game that universe produces. So both the Troll and Human universes were always meant to scratch exactly once before coming to an endstate that's either a win or an unsalvagable loss. A universe that produces players that get it right on the first try might not have a guardians/ancestors generation of paradox clones, and a universe that is to be scratched multiple times might produce additional sets of clones to stock the game sessions of the added resets.
    • The Beat Mesa can only be found on a hero of time's planet. There is no hero of time in the alpha session, making a scratch impossible.

  • Wait, do people who aren't important to the game disintegrate during transportation to the Medium or are they weak enough to be killed by whatever monster happens to be there?
    • The Guardians all seem to make it through into the Medium although they do little to directly influence the outcome once inside. As for everyone else, they're on their own for getting inside by playing the game before a meteor crashes. We don't really know what would happen to a house guest though, but one would assume they'd be transported too. All of the above, along with the players, would have to fend for themselves against enemies.
      • And it doesn't help much that Bro's and Bec's antics killed basically the rest of the human race trying to save Dave and Jade.
      • What gave you that idea? Non-players are not disintegrated, players are simply transported away. NPCs are simply left to die of the Reckoning.
    • No, we see multiple unimportant people who make it to the medium, including Fedorafreak and everyone else who was writing FAQs on GameFaqs.

  • So I understand that Jane's and Jake's 'hands-free' devices are psychic. But what about all the computer glasses (and Rose's headband)? How are they supposed to type with THOSE?
    • Perhaps it goes by some sort of microphone function, ala Dragon: Naturally Speaking. Wherever the microphone is, however, would probably be hidden from view.
    • I think you're overthinking this. Homestuck is ridiculously abstract. Characters are seen directly interacting with the reader's inventory interface. They have the items equipped, therefore they can use them for their intended purpose. The "speech recognition" thing works too, though, if you want a more "realistic" (HAH) explanation.
      • We are given no information on their interface. We do not know they are psychic.
      • Only Jane and Jake's items are explicitly psychic. We later see Jane with a microphone and a headset, which allows Roxy to listen into half of her typed conversation with Jake. Presumably, the rest are microphones that display text as a sort of HUD. John explicitly mentions in Act 5 Act 2 this is kind of obnoxious, which is why he's later seen using a holographic keyboard instead. Rose's headband presumably works the same way, since John's computer is partially based on it.
    • It's definitely Speech-based. Sollux has one (well, it's a headset and mic, and Terezi is using Karkat's crab computer) after he wakes up from being knocked out by Eridan. He gets his teeth knocked out and loses his lisp, which Terezi can (somehow) hear through trollian. In fact, Sollux has a ball with his newly acquired ability to pronounce "s" sounds. His typing quirk changes as well, implying that it may have been programmed (probably by Sollux himself) to incorporate his lisp within his typing quirk.

  • Er...the Gift of Gab and the Dialoglogs. John, Jade, Rose, and Dave were specifically gifted with these things but the trolls were not. While I understand that the Gift of Gab enables the user to talk to anyone they want, and therefore if Rose was talking to Kanaya it might grant Kanaya the temporary ability to speak back, but how do characters like Kanaya and Karkat interact when neither of them have a Gift of Gab? Maybe I'm taking a gag too seriously, but if there's a real explanation, I would like to know it.
    • Better yet, how did god!John and Grimdark!Rose talk to each other just before the fight with bec-noir if they couldn't talk untill post-scratch? I guess it could be said that the trolls got it off-screen, but we know for a fact Rose and John didn't have it yet.
      • Gift of Gab specifically refers to characters talking OUTSIDE of interactive sequences. John and Rose first met in an interactive sequence.
      • Also, the Gift of Gab badge only refers to talking to each other while we watch. Of course they talked to each other; it would be quite ridiculous for the Trolls to be sat on the asteroid and not be talking at all, or for Dave and Jade to be frog-hunting in total silence. We can just watch as they talk now.
      • It was a meta-gag, don't read too much into it.

  • What's the point of the Daedric alphabet? When we see troll chat client on their own screens, they're done in the Roman alphabet, just like the humans use. Karkat's posters are also in the Roman alphabet. This might just be a translation convention, but when Karkat gets John's bucket-delivered note, he seems to have no problem reading human script. So then, why does Daedric even exist?
    • Translation Convention seems to be in full effect; everything that is irrelevant to the actual story and is merely world building fluff or a Call-Back is always in Daedric, whereas important things of plot relevance are always in the Roman alphabet. In universe, it seems that Trolls and Humans both speak English but write differently. Also Karkat could easily have learned the Roman alphabet from observing John; after all, it's really just a simple alteration of Daedric from his point of view.

  • Where and when is it said that trolls are bisexual? When John explains homosexuality and Karkat responds "HOW IS THAT EVEN A THING", why is this taken to mean that it's not taboo for trolls? Maybe it just doesn't exist for them.
    • It's never outright stated in-comic, but it can be inferred that homosexual couples do exist for trolls by the fact that Karkat even has a caliginous crush on John. Therefore, the fandom just sort of assumed the other option of trolls being bisexual by default. It's also confirmed by Word of God here
    • Canonical same-gender attraction in the comic: Kanaya towards Vriska, Vriska temporarily towards Kanaya after getting decked, Gamzee towards Tavros, Karkat temporarily towards John, Mindfang attempting with the Dolorosa, and Equius getting off somehow on authority issues with Karkat and Gamzee, depending on how your read on how sexual it is.
    • Also Nepeta has no problem shipping several same-sex couples on her shipping walls, including Kanaya Rose and Vriska Terezi in [S] Equius: Seek the highb100d. And when Karkat declares how much he hates Eridan in a memo after Eridan kills Kanaya & Feferi, past Eridan thinks he's hitting on him.
    • In summary, there is loads of evidence of same-sex attraction between trolls as a default bisexual race both in canon and straight from the author's mouth, in spite of the most prominent couples being opposite gender.
    • Gender is thought of as almost completely besides the point in Troll Culture. Homosexuality and such confuses Karkat because the only version of that they have on Alternia is a preference at best, not a full out restriction like with humans.

  • If scratching the game essentially messes with the universe, what does breaking the game look like? Or pausing the game? What does saving feel like?
    • Scratching is a metaphor for a hard reset, i.e. wiping the save file and starting from scratch. Those other features don't necessarily have to exist you know!
      • What about the other "scratching the game" that happens (with Homestuck Disc 2)?
      • That was a literal scratch on the "game". Think of it this way. Within the context of the story, a Scratch causes a hard reset. However the story itself is presented as a game. So in the real world, a scratch on the disc just rendered the game (Homestuck that is), unreadable and glitchy. Thus we had to get it fixed. The scratch on the disc out of universe however was most likely a plot contrivance that allowed Hussie to foreshadow Cascade as well as get the story to Doc Scratch, who sped up Act 5 significantly.

  • If you were to play the game when you originally not supposed to, would the timeline preserve itself by killing you upon entry or would you doom the game to failure by going through?
    • Not sure what that means but nobody except players destined to play in a certain session can play in it and survive. If you mean a hypothetical session, where for instance instead of Roxy playing, another random child were to attempt it, what seems likely is that that person would die and circumstances would arrange themselves so that Roxy would play. The question isn't very clear, but I hope that answers it.

  • As someone mentioned higher up, there is a Save function in Sburb. If you saved and scratched, would you be able to gain advantages from where you last saved?
    • There's a save feature for buildings. That's completely different. Remember that server players cannot directly interact with clients, so it seems that save feature couldn't apply to the players. Likewise, it hasn't been seen for years in comic, and likely was simply a reference to the layout of the Sims, with no plot import whatsoever.

  • Okay, this has been confusing me. If the Prince class is the one who actively destroys things through his aspect, then why is Gamzee the Bard if he's the one who actually did so? According to UU, he's only supposed to allow things to be destroyed, but when he sobers up, he goes out and actively destroys things, while Eridan just let his aspect to be destroyed by destroying the matriorb and killing Feferi.
    • UU offered several definitions. Eridan is clearly intended to be seen as "One who destroys Hope" and Gamzee as "One who invites destruction through Rage". UU also notes that Bards tend to be rather hard to classify period, but his actions clearly show the partial ruination of the Troll session through his submission to his Rage.
    • He also manipulated Terezi into confronting Vriska by stoking her inflamed sense of justice, provoked Nepeta into a suicidal charge against him, and he caused the cancer to "go terminal" by influencing John's dreams in a way that led to Jack Noir being made to dress up as a clown — which pushed him over the line. It's also worth noting that all the tensions among the trolls boiled over into violent anger and death within an hour (before and after) of him losing his mind, as he was beginning to sober up.
    • Plus, it is never stated that Gamzee was a good example as a Bard. For example, Latula mostly failed in her role of Knight of Mind, as she seems to hide her real thoughs to adopt the ones that make her look "cool" instead of using them as a potential weapon, therefore failing to fulfill the goal of her class and aspect, proving that one doesn't necessarly acts as he is supposed to. Thus, Gamzee would simply have failed in his functions of Bard of Rage.
    • You've got it backwards — Prince destroys their aspect, while Bard destroys WITH their aspect.

  • Where do normal people go when they die? Players have dreambubbles, I know that, but that was only because Feferi asked. So on an added note, where did players use to go when they die? did they go to the same place as the normals? Did they have their own afterlife or did they just blip out of existence?
    • Dreambubbles are a transitory afterlife designed so that recently deceased players can help their alive companions, sort of like a limbo of memories and events. Afterwards, they move on to a genuine afterlife, the specifics of which are unknown, though Jadesprite was there and Jade might have some knowledge of it. Presumably normal people go there as well.
      • Was that ever stated? Considering the timebending nature of the Furthest Ring and the fact that other dreamselves have been shown to go to the dreambubbles when they die, isn't it more likely that Jadesprite was merely in the dreambubbles for several years, and that the dreambubbles are the only afterlife?
      • It was implied because Jadesprite's description of the afterlife didn't line up with dreambubbles. All the players in dreambubbles shown are well aware of their mortality and some of them still long to live again. Also it may have been stated as well during Feferi's explanation of dreambubbles, and Vriska does directly state non-players don't go to dreambubbles (though part of Roxy's sleepwalk showed Earth as a wasteland as only WV saw it, but he could simply be an exception because he can physically interact with the bubbles). Dreambubbles are in essence, the Horrorterrors "remembering" the players, and there's actually not much clarification whether a player's actual soul is in dreambubbles or dreambubble selves are simply a preservation of their mind.
      • How so? I only recall Jadesprite talking about it here: http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=005141, and nothing she says would contradict the idea that she went to the dreambubbles. Additionally, you are wrong about people in the dreambubbles remembering their mortality. Beta timeline offshoots of Dave, Aradia, John, and Alpha Sollux have all been shown to not recall how or if they died until someone told them or something in the dreambubbles made them remember.
      • ...Whereupon they immediately start thinking about how they're dead, and at least a few express the desire to live again. Jadesprite's "contradiction" is that dreambubble selves have been shown to be fairly relaxed and well aware of what's going on, in contrast to Jadesprite's near hysterical babbling when she was revived; even the most clueless dead self we've seen, John, only took a little bit of prompting to realize his death. Also as a sprite, Jadesprite would know that dreambubbles can totally be visited by alive players, which doesn't seem to be the case with whatever afterlife she went to. A few other suggestions, like Feferi and Aradia's comments, further reinforce the transitory nature of dreambubbles.
      • Except Jadesprite wasn't sad about being dead. She was sad about being brought back to life and being ripped from the afterlife she was clearly enjoying, back into a situation that seemed hopeless to her. Jadesprite might also not qualify as an 'alive player' considering that she's a sprite, and she would therefore be unable to join them.
      • Jadesprite's inconsolable sobbing (she sobbed for something like 6-12 hours straight, right up until just before Cascade) is seemingly irreconcilable with how very relaxed Dreambubble selves are; Sollux exiting his dreambubble barely even noticed the change. We'll probably get a more conclusive Word of God down the line, but both ideas here are mutually exclusive and so much of it boils down to pure theory that there's no concrete answer to be said.
    • Jadesprite was in dreambubbles. However, non-players can never appear in a dreambubble and it's implied there's either Cessation of Existence or another afterlife.
      • Maybe the Dreambubbles are for everyone. We do not have any proof that narratively irrelevant people don't get dreambubble. I would like to point out that a lot of the above posters use uncited conjecture.
      • We do actually though; Vriska outright tells John that his Dad can't appear in Dreambubbles, and Word of God is that only players are in them. Well, and Andrew Hussie, but that's a joke more than serious. Addressing the original Headscratcher, there are two things. There is known Cessation of Existence for players killed in a Scratch, and it is implied that is the normal death for people. Players have access to Dreambubbles, but it's more of an eternal Limbo than a true afterlife, and they are ultimately at the whims of the Gods as to whether they continue to exist or interact with others. The discussion above was a disagreement on whether Jadesprite's actions were reconcilable with the behavior of people in Dreambubbles, not actually too much conjecture either way. The point does still remain that Jadesprite's reaction was incredibly incongrous with how dreambubble selves have been seen to act, but there's a strong chance we'll see more information about dreambubbles going into the future, meaning that may be explained.

  • So, if this session is incapable of being won as well, what is the point? Just to gather allies for a third Scratch?
    • As Rose points out, not many infertile sessions ended up creating the Green Sun. Just because the session is infertile doesn't mean they can't win! Let Rose finish explaining. Besides, a Scratch isn't an option anymore, there are no new Time players and the Beat Mesa has already been used.
      • And Rose now has confirmed it's not completely null.
    • The plan is to have Jade bring the Battlefield and Planets from the original session to the new session, which will make it viable. Their Battlefield is already fully evolved and can grow a new universe. It's also implied that Skaia foresaw all of this happening (predestination shenanigans) and set the new session up so that the old Planets and Battlefield could be integrated in this way.

  • Rose says "exceedingly few null sessions result in the birth of a massive green star fueled by two dead universes." But didn't Doc Scratch say he has NEVER failed to have the Green Sun created so Lord English can enter the session? Or is the key word here "null" and that just the null sessions don't usually produce a Green Sun?
    • Rose was probably just joking a bit. The implication is that the Beta Session is unique, as given other sources, like Jade, there is only the one Green Sun, and we already know that the chain of Troll and Human sessions and Alpha Session themselves are pretty much unique. English's entry to a Universe and the Green Sun's creation presumably are unrelated; though it was the case with Doc Scratch, we don't know that it's always the case.
      • Doc Scratch explicitly said he never failed to summon Lord English. He never said anything about failing to summon the Green Sun.

  • If most player sessions are null, what is the point of others even playing? They're not going to win. Wouldn't it just be better then for someone to go back in time and kill off the muggle-sessions, leaving only the useful session around?
    • You Can't Fight Fate. Moreover even a successful session will leave lots of doomed universes around. Think of it like this maybe; in a million universes, life might only arise on Earth on 100. In those other universes it didn't occur, for whatever reason, but that's simply how things happened, but life won't stop trying to find a way, because that's what it does.
      • Moreover, people couldn't know it was a null session (or what that even means) until they enter.
      • I interpreted as a living creature sort of thing (which hey the universe is). Basically, each session is reproduction, fertilization of egg by sperm. Each void or null session is an egg left unfertilized, not every egg will go to reproduction and it would be impractical to do so.

  • In Hivebent, when Vriska is trying to get Tavros to climb the stairs she built, she uses her cursor to move his wheelchair back and forth. This doesn't seem like a problem, until you remember: The game prohibits the server player from moving any object that the client player is sitting/standing/laying on, so that the server player can't just carry the client up to the gates. So why could Vriska move Tavros' wheelchair?
    • Servers can jiggle items the client is interacting with, like Rose did with John's bed in Act 2 briefly; Tavros's wheelchair just showed a more noticeable effect. They still can't directly lift people to their gates, and like Nannasprite said, even if there was some loophole that could be found, it wouldn't be in the client's best interest to do so anyways.

  • Why is only Aradia a ghost? Shouldn't the rest of the trolls who die throughout the course of the story be ghosts too?
    • Aradia was a ghost because she still had an alive self, as her dreamself was in a coma. Everyone else who died had no other alternate selfs. Moreover, Aradia had the psychic ability to commune with the dead, and that could have played into it. The important thing really is that Aradia needed to be a ghost to play in the session, whereas the dead trolls have no further purpose to Paradox Space and are dead for real.

  • How does Pesterchum work? Doesn't it need an Internet connection? For that matter, why can't Dave/Rose/rest of trolls communicate with John/Jade through Pesterchum?
    • Early in Act 2, John mentions that the Medium conveys everything a player needs resource wise, like electricity and internet. However, because of time dilation, the two groups can't communicate with each other. John and Jade are in another dimension for 3 nanoseconds or 3 years depending on how you look at it, and while they have a functioning intranet, they don't seem to have a connection to the outside.

  • As a corollary to the earlier question on how trolls get named, how do trolls learn their common language? It seems that most, if not all, varieties of Lusi are incapable of speech, and the adults have all been sent off to conquer other planets. Older troll children are unlikely to want to teach the younger ones anything, especially considering how brutal troll society is.
    • There seems to be some sort of automated education system that nonetheless leaves a lot of flexibility for personal interests. Karkat has ocassionally mentioned getting "schoolfed" in the same context as "schooled" and Fanon has extrapolated that to there being a "Schoolfeed" that is somewhere between online classes and Youtube lessons. In canon however, it's never clarified specifically.

  • fIt's highly likely I've missed something here since I'm not up to date, but the Scratch is essentially an all universe Reset Button allowing the players to start the game over again with different players, and the Beta kids surviving the scratch is apparantly a fluke that has never occured before, right? So... is there now a completely different John, Dave, Rose and Jade whom raised the new players (who are the clones of their former parents), or are the Alpha John, Dave, Rose and Jade actually the Beta kids aged up? I mean, it's going to take them three years to get where they're going, right? And I heard it said somewhere that Dirk's Bro was quite young when he found him... I just kind of assumed...
    • Completely separate versions. There's a Grandpa John, a Grandma Jade, a Mom Rose, and a Big Bro Dave, all of whom are dead already.

  • If Fedora Freak is playing a different session of Sburb, did it get wiped out/reset? AH has mentioned that he has a post-Scratch version in Fedora Friend, but since the original's probably no longer on Earth, does he get to keep playing?
    • No. The Scratch resets that entire universe, and the Inciphisphere(s) are part of the universe that their players come from, and share a timeline. That means that Fedora Freak's existence has been negated and undone.
      • Mistaken assumption. The Incipisphere for each session is a separate universe from the universe that contains a Session's homeworld; destroying one does not destroy the other, except in the case of the Scratch, which is a different for another reason. The Troll Incipisphere continues to exist and briefly holds the Trolls after the destruction of the Troll Universe, proving this.
      • Furthermore, each Incipisphere is a separate micro-universe from one another. A Scratch is termed as a "reset" in story, but circumstances show it actually is nothing of the sort. What a Scratch does in mechanics is simply destroy the original session and create a parallel universe (which, due to the non-linear nature of P-Space, always existed and may have influenced the previous session anyways). Therefore, any changes on a planet are due to the changes of players between Ancestors and Heroes, and the physical conditions are the same. Multiple sessions stemming from the same planet under ordinary conditions would not experience any change if one session scratched, as the Scratch itself does not destroy a universe; the rest of the sessions would simply stem from the first universe (a), and any subsequent scratches would create a different parallel universe (a1, a2, etc). This assumes multiple sessions from one planet are possible however, which canonically is nebulous; every session aside from the fated or "main" session may well just kill all the players to begin with.
      • Regardless, the original question and answer is, No, Fedorafreak is still (probably) dead in some unknown session, and his alternate is simply someone who experienced a different life due to slightly different histories and probably died in the fall of Humanity. Fedorafreak's adventures are probably going to be cut short though, since every Human session is flawed because of Karkat.

  • There's a really big one right in the beginning of the story: The kids start their shennanigans on 4/13, 2009 in the morning. However, that day was a Monday. Shouldn't John be in school?
    • It starts in the afternoon. The first reference to time we see is the timestamp on the first Pesterchum conversation between John and Dave, which takes place at 16:13 (4:13 PM).
    • The kids are probably homest- I mean schooled. Homeschooled.

Open

  • So is Dirk aware of the splintered fragments of his being that manifest before Jake in his times of need, like he was aware of what was going on on Earth and Derse simultaneously? Also, if someone is manifested onto the scene by a hope player's aspect powers, what happens to that person in the spot they were originally? Is there still a Dirk out in the furthest ring hauling ass back to the session, or was he teleported back through his "brain ghost" as it's been called?
    • There was still a Dirk flying in from the furthest ring: after Brain Ghost Dirk vanishes John sees the original Dirk in the ruins of the session. Its possible that Dirk remembers what he did as Brain Ghost Dirk (His comment "I failed" makes more sense if he realised his attempt to kill Aranea depowered Jake and led to the destruction of the session, than if he merely didn't get there in time from the furthest ring) but since he's unwilling to talk much at this point we can't be sure.

  • So we know that when the corpse of/dying player's waking self is placed on their Quest Bed, the consciousnesses of their waking and dream selves merge and the dream self ascends to God Tier, disappearing from wherever they were and rematerialising on their Skaian Quest Bed to begin the process, while the waking self remains dead. What happens if the dream self was the one to die on the Quest Bed - who would ascend and what would happen to the waking self if the dream self again ascended? Would they drop dead on the spot? What would happen if a sufficiently powerful Hero of Life were to attempt to resurrect the other body of a player who ascended?
    • It seems dream selves can only go God Tier using the Quest Beds on Derse and Prospit. The Hero of Life would probably just resurrect the mind of the person's dream self in their original body.

  • In regards to the previous question and Sollux's dual dream selves, Hussie stated on his Formspring that the death of his waking self on his Quest Bed would cause both dream selves to ascend, and they would be forced into a dual to the death, a potentially eternal one if they were left to their own devices due to the Heroic/Just clauses. Would they act as a Hive Mind - two bodies controlled by one Sollux? What would happen if one of the two dream selves were to die on the Quest Bed instead?
    • They would likely be controlled by two separate Solluxs. If one of the Solluxs died on their moon Quest Beds, the other one could probably still ascend independently.

  • When Aranea comes back to life with the ring, she is killed by The Condesce removing it from her hand, and then given a God-Tier clock judgement (Just). What would happen if a God Tier came back to life and then lost the ring for a stupid reason: e.g. they slip in the shower and it falls down the drain? Presumable they'd get a Neither judgement and come back to life. Would this teleport the ring back to their hand, or could this be a way to re-use the ring?
    • It's entirely possible that removing the ring by itself would not have killed her, and that the neck snap was what killed her.
    • She was turning back into a ghost anyway with the ring removed. The neck snap was not required for her to re-die. What the neck snap did do, however, was cause a discrete death event which, unlike the fading to ghost, could receive a judgment. At the very least, this was informative and, let's be honest, very satisfying. Whether it has any further impact is unclear; for instance, it may be that judged god tiers can't revive using the ring. We can only wait and see whether Hussie does anything with this.

  • Remember those lanterns on LOCAH that we saw during the Myststuck flashes? What exactly did they symbolize? It seemed like they were connected to the post-Scratch kid's dream selves, since we know that the light of Hope went out a long time ago, and the light of Life went out for a little while, but then spontaneously came back on again, just like how Jake and Jane's dream selves died before Jane entered the Medium, but Jane's was revived because of life powers. The sign next to the lanterns said that "Our lights of Heart and Void will each follow in time, long after our extinction. One will be extinguished, and then another, leaving only Life as the guiding light." In other words, Roxy and Dirk's lights are supposed to go out before Jane's does. But this isn't what ends up happening. In the panels leading up to [S] Dirk: Unite, we see Jane and Roxy's lights go out at about the same time as they're killed by the Red Miles, and Dirk's light gets very dim when he's knocked out. Then his light turns back on when he wakes up, only to go out again when he sendificates his head to Jake. Then when Jake kisses his head and revives his dream self, Dirk's light shines so brightly that the lantern itself actually breaks, and Dirk proceeds to revive Jane and Roxy. So what exactly are the lanterns supposed to be symbolizing? If a lantern goes out when its associated kid's dream self dies, then why did Jane and Roxy's lanterns go out when it was their waking selves that died? Their dream selves were still alive on Prospit and the Furthest Ring respectively, at this point. And if Dirk's light turned back on after Jake revived him, why didn't the same thing happen to Jane and Roxy's lights? How come reviving Dirk not only turned the light back on, but broke the whole lantern? And most annoyingly of all, why didn't the lights follow the order the sign said they would? Dirk's light was the last one to go out, not Jane's.

  • How do fenestrated walls work exactly? Do they hook up a portal to another world that's already been created, or does it actually serve as a function to traverse fictional/infinite universes? (If Problem Sleuth is to be believed then this would be the case).

     Possible plot holes 

Resolved


  • So the majority of the female trolls have black lips, and the general consensus seems to be that it's makeup of some sort. The main problem I have with this is that Little-Blind-Terezi also appears to have that, which kind of raises the question of how, as I sort of doubt that Karkat puts lipstick on her every morning.
    • The answer, of course is that all trolls have naturally black lips.
      • ..I have no idea how I missed that.
      • But then, how can The Handmaid have red lips and eyelashes when she was still just a grub ?
      • Maybe it's like the 'blonde hair' thing. Maybe sometimes trolls have eyelashes or lips that are naturally the same color as their blood.
      • Or maybe she was born with makeup on. John, Jade, Jake, and Jane were all born with glasses on, and Rose was born with her headband on.

  • How can Rose possibly afford all the stuff she just created? If the bandwidth for receiving from the Grist Gutter is the same as for leeching, she would only have to have napped for a little over 2 hours, but the real problem is her cache limit. It would have to be at least 7100 — almost as high as John's — and she had only fought one enemy, which she didn't kill!
    1. Can she spend directly from John's cache, since he's in her world? His affluence is making a nonsense of the regulations!
    2. Did her future-self Fusion Dance give her her future echeladder progress? ...Actually, her riding the Lime Ogre like a mechanical bull would suddenly make a lot more sense...
    • The grist collected by Maplehoof predominantly went into Rose's grist cache, although much more was redistributed to the other players. Also, Rose fought plenty of imps before fighting the ogre.
    • Plus, in theory, she could have been fighting monsters between alchemizations. They swarm all over, so she wouldn't even have to walk.
      • It seems fairly obvious that the cache limits in place almost certainly increase as the game goes on and players level up. John himself wouldn't have even remotely been able to make half the crap he's made if his levels were still the same as when he started. It seems more or less obvious that Rose has leveled up enough from fighting (we haven't seen her doing much fighting, but it's absolutely implied to be taking place off-camera) to have much larger cache limit.
      • Think of expanding grist cache as a "balance" feature for low level starting players, and it makes sense that grist torrent "bandwidth" could also be subject to rising caps as the players level up.
    • You're all missing the part where Rose STARTS higher on her echeladder than John. A lot higher. Hence the ogre getting stomped hardcore. Dave is probably quite a bit higher too; John is just terrible at everything.
      • Maybe because the "Heir" class means he starts at the absolute bottom and works his way to the top. God Tiers.
    • Seemingly every player starts with a slightly higher cache, and some players innately have higher caches.

  • If Tavros' horns can't fit through his bed, why doesn't he get a new one or make a hole to fit through?
    • His horns are implied to be something of a disability, so I think the inference we're supposed to make is, "He cant grow a new sleep cocoon."
    • Also, it may have been that they've only recently gotten too big, and he never bothered getting a new one before he became injured.
      • Probably the most likely option given that we see Troll horns do grow with them; compare Grub!Tavros to the Summoner for one.
    • Trolls have help when they first build their hive, but from then on it's just the troll and his/her lusus. Vriska mentions in her most recent conversation with John that she didn't really like her hive, but she was stuck with what she thought was cool when she was a grub. Essentially, Tavros can't get a new cocoon for cultural reasons. Exactly like all of his other problems.

  • WHY can't Dave just go back in time before the game started with several betas? Not only would they get more time to save Skaia, but they could make sure they don't make any of their horrible mistakes, what with their future knowledge.
    • It's already been established that you can't make copies of the Beta. Rose tried to send John the code for the server disk, but it had no capcha code.
      • He could still take the copies they have back in time. That's what happened to Dave's copy to get it to Jade.
      • But how would he get it to her? There's no way to do that without traveling back further than is strictly practical— at which point this ceases to be the simplest solution.
      • He could probably conjure up some future gear to help travel the world in a timely manner then take that to the past with him. And anything is better than their current "no-win" scenario.
      • It probably isn't even possible to travel back to "before" you enter the Medium— because there is no "before" when dealing with The Medium <-> Earth. You would just wind up on your Land at a point in time before you entered. But even if you could magically teleport yourself out of the Medium using only time travel, there could be a million reasons why it would be a bad idea— time travel tends to be a lot more complicated than people give it credit for. Oh, and most importantly... Future Dave didn't even know about this no-win scenario because it did not happen in his timeline.
      • ...Oh, and that's not to mention "use time travel to fix everything so that nothing bad happens ever" is not how you write a good story.
      • There's also the little fact that he really doesn't want to use non-stable-loop time travel at all if he can avoid it, because every time he uses it a copy of him dies. Worse, the person who dies is the one who decides he wants to go back in time, so it's not even like you have a 50/50 chance of not being that copy.
      • They have that lasery captcha-reading machine and an item-duplicating camera now, so they could. But yeah, it's likely due to how lame it would be if all the awesome things that have happened so far were undone just like that.
      • He'd likely die before he'd have a chance to get to them, because paradox space removes time duplicates and that would have broken the game in two.
      • Doing so would have simply created a doomed timeline. If you like, you can assume Dave DID try to do something and we just don't see it because it's not relevant to the alpha timeline; that would require Dave to be monumentally stupid for a second though.

  • Why is the Troll Romance represented by a red heart called the "Flushed" Quadrant? Based on this page, (and this one), Trolls flush their blood color, which is usually not red.
    • Troll terminology sure is weird!
    • "Flush" doesn't refer solely to blushing. It also means a strong, sudden flow, and a rush of emotion in particular (such as when someone is flushed with anger or flushed with elation). It works especially well in the context of romance. "Flushed" is a good word to suggest the heady feelings of true (pity) love.
      • Probably unintentional, but the word also goes well with all the other card-related imagery going on in there.
    • Still doesn't explain why it's red though. That might be partially out of association with Karkat's ancestor.
      • None of the four colors of romance are normal blood colors — red, black, white, and brown. Karkat's blood is a mutant color that doesn't fit in the normal spectrum of society. It's possible that the colors were picked specifically to avoid picking a normal blood color.
    • It's probably not all that complicated. It's just another card motif. In cards, diamonds and hearts are red, and clubs and spades are black. Because moirallegiance is a more platonic form of matespritship, it's a lighter shade of red, and because auspisticism has to do with nullifying potential kismesitudes, it's a lighter shade of black.

  • According to this page, Dream Tavros' legs still work, and Dream Vriska still has her eye(s?) (and presumably also her arm). So why is Dream Terezi blind?
    • We haven't seen her Dreamself yet so we don't even know if she is blind, for all we know she is just wearing sunglasses. Alternatively the Dreamself is what you see yourself as. Terezi used her disability so far to her advantage she may not be able to think of herself any other way.
    • Pretty much confirmed now: she is blind there because while Vriska's and Tavros's injuries are a constant source of pain for them, Terezi has adapted to hers so much that she identifies with it and prefers her alternate senses to vision (mostly because of how it helped her bond with her Lusus and woke her dream self—though that does raise questions since she surely hadn't adapted to it yet).
      • But it's possible that Vriska somehow shut down the vision centers of Terezi's brain, which might affect her ability to see in the dream world; or the shock of losing her sight could have made it difficult to accept the possibility that she could see in the dream world if she tried.
      • In the latest flash update, the reason is Vriska, through a PSYCHIC DOUBLE REACHAROUND, manipulates Terezi into opening her eyes while she's asleep, staring at the sun (Skaia for Dream!Terezi), simultaneously blinding her in both real life and in her dreams.
      • Skaia didn't blind her. She already explained that her dream self was blind for psychological reasons— and if looking into Skaia could blind you, then nobody on the planet in its center would be able to see.
      • Maybe...If (and possibly a large if) a player's dreamself works more or less like their physical body, anything that would affect one adversely would also affect the other, in theory. If most trolls can't physically withstand staring into the sun, perhaps the same is reflected in their dreams, since Skaia is more or less the "sun" of that realm?
      • Yes, I know that this is the rationale behind that assumption. I just don't think it's very likely. Word Of God is ambivalent on the issue, but based on his wording ("and like she explained to Karkat,") he seems to be placing favor on the psychological explanation. So, she was blinded by the sun and either at that moment or as she identifies as blind, her dreamself becomes blind as well. Debateable which it was, not enough evidence.
      • Word of God is indeed that she identifies so much as blind that her dreamself is incapable of seeing. She's not handicapped in her opinion and she prefers not seeing. However, her dreamself's eyes do technically still work.

  • In the same vein, why didn't anyone just kill Tavros and kiss him awake to give him back the use of his legs before they were all forced to start hiding out on the meteor?
    • Trolls have a pitiful sense of mortality, as canon suggests. Tavros probably feared death like most of them, so he wouldn't go through with such a plan (or ask someone to do it). He was probably content with walking as his dreamself, considering he spent most of the game sleeping instead of leveling up and obtaining God Tier, so he didn't take any steps towards that until Jack blew up Prospit.

  • How does Karkat chat, or do basically anything else plot-relevant, after his computer explodes? (I'm sure this is explained somewhere.)

  • In the Midnight Crew intermission, the Die that was killed was from an alternate timeline, come when Itchy decided to cheat—yet, Spades Slick treated him (and crossed him off) like he was the original Die. Along the same lines, the Snowman (Snowmen?) that appeared in the Intermission was in order, 1: From a timeline where Crowbar was still alive, 2: The original timeline (who apparently just hung around on the window, chillin'), 3: From the highly-unfavorable timeline where everything (except her, apparently) died. So, essentially...what happened to the original versions of those two? Are they still around? Did they decide to pursue a highly successful sitcom series now that their rivals/comrades were out of the way?
    • It's pretty strongly hinted that Snowman is somehow unaffected by time shenanigans. Note that in the least favourable timeline, she's still missing the cigarette holder that she lost in the timeline from which Slick kidnapped Crowbar.
      • I don't think that's so much a hint as it is a coincidence. It's likely that unfavorable!Snowman just dropped hers. Since everything's destroyed and all, that could include personal comfort items.
    • Snowman warps wherever she wants, she is probably not affected by time shenanigans at all.

  • If both heterosexual and homosexual troll couplings can produce the genetic material needed to fill the filial buckets, why do trolls have two genders in the first place?
    • Troll sexes are most likely vestigial.
      • Most likely, but that doesn't explain why they don't have word for those things. Wouldn't they presumably still have an instinctive preference?
      • It looks like they don't!
      • It was technically said that the pairings don't necessarily produce a child, just that they make the genetic material stronger. It's possible that the incestous slurry only gives strong-pairing-supported male and female gametes a chance to mingle. Alternately, if the genders are redundant, A Wizard Did It, where "a wizard" is "the Mother Grub involved in the process".
      • I think the buckets hold lots and lots of fluids. Don't worry about pairs.
    • Hussie says it's so readers can identify a little better. In-universe, they're probably just vestigial.
    • I've had a theory that the trolls do have sex preference when it comes to matespritship, they just assume they don't because none of the other quadrants have sex preference. But Kanaya's not the only one to have same-sex matespritships, so that's probably Jossed.
    • There's a theory about this in the Fridge Logic section. Doc scratch has indicated that the first guardians are responsible for the changes to a scratched session, in this case making Troll-kind violent and ruthless enough to produce more aggressive players. The theory is that he did this by somehow setting up the mother grub system (also in keeping with his creepy, pedo image) so that trolls would have to rely on culling and violence to rid the species of it's weaker mutations from their continual inbreeding. The troll's gender is a remnant of the pre-scratched session.
    • I just figured that troll genders were like hair colours. Wouldn't make a bit of difference to reproduction, it just creates some variety.
      • Except having genders to create "genetic variation" makes no sense at all. Sometimes the genders are assigned certain roles and there are only two of them rather than an an assortment that can change over time.

  • Isn't Sollux supposed to be dead?
    • No.
      • That's his dream self. I'm talking about real world Sollux
    • And apparently, Sollux did get into the Medium before the Glub. So how did he die? The glub didn't as he got into the medium before it went off. What the hell?
      • ...No... he didn't? Sollux was the last one in. And why are you linking that? It happened WAY after Sollux entered. I'm not understanding your thought process at all.
    • Sollux and Feferi were the only ones left on Alternia, and Feferi was immune (which is part of the reason why her lusus chose her in the first place). Glub goes off>Gl'bgolyb dies>Sollux is hit by the Glub and starts dying>Sollux gets Feferi in>Karkat gets Sollux in>Sollux succumbs to glub and dies. Feferi woke up his Dersite dream self, which then replaced his real self.
    • He changed his clothes! You can see his dreamself wearing his living duds during Make Her Pay, as well.

  • Did I miss something? How does Dave know what Terezi looks like?
    • We all missed a large number of conversations between the two. It's quite likely that she sent Dave a picture of herself in the (subjective) three days we missed.
    • Doesn't the comics she do feature her? At least the one we saw last does.
      • It seems that in the comics she does, she makes her horns more yellow, but Dave makes her horns closer to what they actually look like. Then again, Dave's drawing isn't quite that accurate either, and I guess it could be a coincidence.
    • Well, John knew that the trolls looked like, so presumably it's something to do with the viewport feature.
      • John knew what Terezi looked like because she included a picture of herself in the tags on her Google LOWAS map.
      • The jump back to before that comic's creation is showing, if nothing else, that Terezi gave him the glasses and the shirt icon as image-gags like the ones she's been doing of Dave himself.

  • Why can't John spell his own Pesterchum handle?
    • He can spell it. But he's not typing in that convo. Conversations with sprites are spoken, not typed. He's having trouble pronouncing it.
    • It's not his handle, it's his current echeladder rung, Ectobiolobabysitter. Difficulty spelling that is entirely understandable.
      • Difficulty saying it without mishap is also entirely understandable.

  • I'd like to know how Dave found the "Miracles" music video. The comic is supposedly still on April 13, 2009, but the album the song is from didn't come out until nearly five months later, and the video didn't come out until nearly a year after the comic takes place. And don't pin it on Dave's time travel, since the comic's still going on.
    • It was a miracle.
    • Shenanigans.
      • He alchemized together a harlequin figurine and boxbot to create the world's most terrible harlequins. Obviously.
      • Above all: Rule of Funny
    • The album and video came out earlier in the Homestuck universe.
    • As Karkat once said to John, with respect to the Medium our universe's timeline is meaningless. (Which... doesn't necessarily appear to be universally the case, but it should be true.)
      • Although in a future wasteland it'd be pretty hard to record a song about miracles.
    • Youtube flashes copied the current format instead of the 2009 format, so we can chalk it up to Andrew playing loose with what happened prior to 4/13/2009 instead of being a stickler for details.
    • The answer has finally been revealed to us: It was Betty Crocker.

  • How can Vriska be contacted by Snowman to exile the Crew if she was killed fairly early in her session, and dead players can't be seen by exiles?
    • Snowman first talked to Vriska when Tavros went through his second gate into her house, and Snowman was also talking to Terezi.
      • Troll exiles can contact dreamselves, much like CD did. Either that or since her real self was dying, the terminal defaulted to Vriska's prospit self. Another common explanation is that there's some console command to show the God Tiered players; WV's just not smart enough to figure it out.

  • If trolls don't have families and all come from a giant incestuous slurry, why do they have last names?
    • Historically speaking, a lot of surnames have come from places other than "Dad's last name". Names like Smith and Schumacher are a leftover from when surnames denoted professions. There are plenty of possible sources for Troll surnames.
    • The Troll Ancestors shed light on this. For adult trolls, apparently their first name is their title and their second name is their actual given name. Marquise Mindfang, Orphaner Dualscar, Neophyte Redglare... It's possible young trolls are simply given temporary names by their lusii and then get to choose their own name once they become adults and have an established position in society.
      • I thought her full name/title was Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, so she has both a first name and a title. Though it may be possible that Vriska made "Spinneret" up for herself. It's also possible that Redglare has a first name that we haven't learned yet, though "the Orphaner" does seem to be Dualscar's title or at least nickname. Regardless, it's a good point that surnames don't have to be family names.
      • Trolls make up their names as whatever they want to be. They just culturally prefer 2. The first is more informal but the second is more formal. There are some instances of trolls calling each other things like Vantas and Pyrope and they come off as more taunting, as if making a mockery of formal procedures.
      • The pre-Scratch trolls, and Aranea's description of their post-Scratch counterparts in particular, suggest that the troll ancestors with actual names may have given themselves those names.

  • If trolls are naturally bisexual and gender is a vestigial remnant, why the hell do they have gendered clothing? Kanaya, Aradia and Feferi wear skirts, but none of the male trolls. Aradia and Feferi don't even have the excuse that they're interested in fashion, like Kanaya is specifically stated to be, because she's highlighted as the exception that proves the rule. Surely they should be wearing more functional clothes, particularly if they're engaged in activities like spelunking and swimming.
    • Chalk it up to Andrew designing the characters before the canon. Alternatively, Feferi and Aradia simply choose to dress like that out of preference. Aradia's clothes are also the simplest shown in canon, and Feferi's are a semi-complex layered skirt, showing one is a peasant and the other royalty at a glance. In essence there's only so much you can do with pants. Besides Nepeta, Terezi, and Vriska all wear pants.
    • Don't forget that before relatively recent times, men and women both wore skirts. Maybe on Alternia, clothes never really became gendered. Also you have to consider that even though it's a Fantasy Counterpart Culture, Hussie is only human and our society slips in naturally.

  • This memo does awful things to the timeline. Point by point:
    • At 6:12, Prospit is destroyed. Terezi witnesses this. She then opens a memo to inform people.
    • At 4:13, Derse is destroyed. Aradiabot explodes. Nepeta wakes up, while Feferi remains asleep.
    • Around an hour later - I'd put it pretty close to 3:00, but that's just a guess - Eridan KOs Sollux, kills Feferi, destroys the Matriorb, and kills Kanaya.
      • Whoops, a reread has revealed to me that the flash starts at 3:14. Not that it makes a huge difference to the JMB.
    • About 2:58, the problems begin. Tavros, Vriska, Equius, and Nepeta respond to that memo. Nepeta mentions that Derse "was just destroyed too". She also claims that Feferi was sleeping, and now will not wake up.
      • An hour isn't extremely long, and Nepeta could have left after she saw Feferi wasn't waking up.
    • Sometime after 2:42, Equius mentions to Nepeta that he believes they were just discussing his feelings in the roboti% pile for at least an hour.
    • So, did Equius and Nepeta reply while they were in the middle of discussing feelings? Does Nepeta have weird lapses of memory? Is Vriska, despite the impossibility, manipulating an invisible Aradia to mess with the others' perceptions/timestamps?
      • Remember that Nepeta and Equius weren't in the room when they were all killed. Nepeta may have left before Feferi woke up and, since no word had reached her otherwise, assumed that she was still asleep. They didn't know anyone was killed until Karkat contacted them. As for the feelings jam thing, I wouldn't be surprised if they left a little after 4:13, went going for an hour, and then just hung out or something. "Just" doesn't have to refer to things that happened a few minutes ago. It can also mean something that simply happened recently.
  • In this terrifying update, how is Gamzee making the honking noises? Both of his hands are occupied.
    • I think it's more like a drama-enhancing thematic/visual thing than an actual literal sound he's making. Honking noises have been popping up in all sorts of impossible places ever since the Gamzee reveal.
      • Okay, that makes sense. Good thing too — I didn't want to think about how else he could be making those noises.
    • Or he could be saying it. He has kinda snapped...
    • Or maybe he has squeaky clown shoes.
    • In real life, people are able to make accuate honking noises with their voice. Gamzee may just be verbally saying "honk" though, as usually in Homestuck, when an action is being said out-loud or written it's emphazied with asterisks on both ends of the verb (or non-verb for comedic reasons).

  • If every class had a plethora of insignias and each insignia was unique to that class, then couldn't the others have find out what Karkat's blood color was just by looking at his sign and figuring out which blood class it belonged to?
    • I always figured that nobody other than people like Equius or Eridan, who really buy into the caste system, actually bother memorizing many of the supposedly huge library of symbols, but even they wouldn't be able to find anything about his because mentions of it are forbidden. Though that would mean they probably also think that isn't his real sign, just something he made up to keep his anonymity.
    • It's also possible that the symbols had their meaning lost or changed throughout the years.
    • Karkat's mutant blood isn't on the hemospectrum, so it has no symbols the other trolls would recognize. Karkat's lusus and the Heretical Sym69ls as a sign were given to him by the remnants of the Sufferer's uprising.

  • Wasn't it stated that Sollux hated the kids too much to troll them or something, or just outright refused to speak to them? So... how did he end up in Jade's trollslum and bring her troll-count up to 12?
    • It was either a Retcon, as the Trollslum was all about hinting at the 12 trolls, or someone else used his computer.
    • Sollux is pretty dang unstable, so he could have just had a change of heart after it was stated that he didn't want to troll them.

  • When Kanaya read Rose's walkthrough, why did she imagine Rose as a troll? I mean, Rose provided pictures of John fooling around...
    • The links were probably dead; the content of Rose's walkthrough was ripped as a text file and placed on the server alone. The human internet however was more or less gone by the time Rose ripped it, which is in fact why she did that.
      • As someone else originally pointed out here (before it was deleted), they had access to YouTube by making use of Trollian's ability to view things in the past. Terezi also used it to browse the web for pictures of coolkids.
      • Now, the counter to that is that Kanaya accessed Rose's walkthrough long before Trollian could be used to do that. Rose's FAQ was served from a timeless server in the Furthest Ring, not from the human internet, and that didn't necessarily include the pics. Until Terezi was forwarded 413 boonbonds and until Sollux traced back the connection, they didn't have the ability to see the human universe.
      • Karkat refers to Trollian as being a new client by the time of the session, so it seems the first explanation is correct. In light of there being no way for Kanaya to follow the links, she assumed Rose was a troll. Also it's probably good to keep in mind that she first read the walkthrough when she was quite young, and probably didn't have entirely rational thoughts about the writer not being a troll.

  • When Bec gets prototyped, how come the kernelsprite immediately hatches even though Jade hasn't entered the Medium yet? Is it just part of his powers as a First Guardian?
    • Yes. Bec isn't the only one; remember the Frogsprite and Jaspersprite? Hussie said a while ago on Formspring that First Guardians and frogs have special properties in that regard, and that they may not be the only things; it looks like doubly-Prototyped Sprites do too.
      • Out of verse though, it's a clear mistake, and Andrew's changing of it was basically a Retcon.
      • I get the sense that the "hatching" of John's sprite ended up being problematic for later sprites.

  • How can DD be clocked into next week when the universe ends before then?
    • Because we don't know exactly when the intermission takes places, it could take place maybe a month or more before the universe ends.
    • The Intermission takes place in a split timeline. Compared to the actual events of the end of the Troll Universe, it seemingly takes place in the past or a couple weeks in the future. Hard to say one way or the other.

  • Back at the Hussie Hunt event, in-verse Andrew's presence turned Doc Scratch into a doll, "like a reverse Calvin and Hobbes" as was noted. Now, in the End of March - Beginning of April updates, in-verse Hussie's fighting Lord English. Since Lord English is part of Doc Scratch, shouldn't he turn into a doll as well?
    • Doc Scratch is a puppet. Lord English isn't. Doc Scratch didn't bleed for one! Doc and Hussie are also both rival narrators, while LE shows no inclination to narrate. In-universe, Doc might simply have been playing dead because of predestination shit.

  • Why does Dirk call Post-Scratch Dave 'Bro'? If both Post-Scratch Dave and Post-Scratch Rose are actually the ancestors of Dirk and Roxy, wouldn't it make more sense for Dirk to call Dave 'father' like Roxy calls Rose 'mother'?
    • In Dirk's own words:
      "GT: Right. So then he was never actually your bro?
      TT: No, that's just kind of how I view him.
      TT: Lalonde took a more maternal view of her ancestor."
      *** As for the reason behind it, Dirk may have for whatever reasons seen Strider to be more of his older equal instead of someone above him. He is pretty open to critique Strider's work for example.

  • HIC's plan has been shown to be that she wants to ressurrect the troll race. To do so, she had to breed an whole heap of Lusus. For a lusus to raise a troll, they need to have the same blood colour. Crabdads have been shown to have candy-red blood; a colour not on the hemospectrum. Why did she breed these?
    • The Condesce has not been tied to the Lusi on Jake's Island at all, especially since it's known they were there before Grandma English died. Besides, she determined early on that ressurrecting the Trolls was impossible, and the lusi were needed for humans instead (which turned out terribly). As for the Lusi, they could be naturally native to the island, and Grandpa Harley simply hunted them to extinction on Jade's Island. Alternatively, they could be a product of Grandma English's Skaianet, in a fashion that has yet to be seen.
    • It seems pretty implausible that the Lusi just so happened to evolve independently on Earth. More likely, the Condesce just didn't know that Crabdads are outside the hemospectrum. If she did, she would've had them exterminated already. Instead, she probably just assumes they're a rare Lusus for some other, legitimate blood type.

  • Vriska needs to feed her lusus young trolls, or else it will eat her. The fact that it needs to be fed suggests that it is unable to hunt itself, and even if it was, it has most likely been atrophied by years of inactivity. Therefore, couldn't Vriska just have run away from home and avoided the whole serial killer business?
    • Wild monsters roam much of Alternia. Lusii are there to protect their charges from them more than anything else. There are a variety of known monsters, including building sized centipedes, zombies that arise during the day, etc. Vriska may be badass but even she couldn't have handled that on her own.
      • I'd say it's about the protection of the hive rather than the protection of the lusus. Terezi raised herself, and Tavros's fairy bull didn't seem extremely fit for protection either. Vriska's lusus might well have been capable of destroying Vriska's hive if not outright hunting her down (the size difference gives Vriska a huge advantage). Of course, being psychic, Vriska could have easily entered someone else's hive... I'd say that if Vriska really wanted, she could have broken away from her predicament. However, she seemed to be the equivalent of 6-8 year old when her lusus started demanding food, so she was too young and scared of the outside world (and presumably attached to her lusus) to run away, and then it kinda became a habit. Vriska isn't all that smart, she probably never thought of it as an actual possibility. And why would she? It's been shown to as an important part of her character that she rationalizes all the terrible things she does as natural for trolls; no wonder, given that it was her mother figure who taught her that. The significance of "she'd kill me if I didn't feed her" is probably not the death threat, but the implication that Vriska would have failed her parent, not being good enough for her. She was on a receiving end of an abusive relationship; even adult people land in this without thinking of escape, and Vriska is still 13 at the start of Sgrub session.
      • Vriska was clearly trying to kill her Lusus (it was why she wanted doomsday devices from Eridan, and why there was one hanging above her web before Equius's hive collapsed) and Eridan has demonstrated with the Ahab's Crosshairs the ability to kill or at least seriously maim a Whale-like Lusus with one shot. Why didn't she just have him come over and kill it, or borrow the Crosshairs and use them herself?
      • It is very difficult to go against something like a parent, especially one who has always made themselves superior. Vriska was highly traumatized, and for the longest time probably thought going through with it was the best option for her. And once she did start to try and kill it, she not only is going against sweeps and sweeps of psychological trauma, but she also had the looming fear of what Spidermom would do if the plan failed. On a side note, would you want someone like Eridan at your house? Or owe him a favor for that matter?

  • It has been clearly established that when a player is dying, if they have a living dreamself, the dreamself gets the same wounds as their real self. Why does Roxy's dreamself remain pristine even while she is dying?
    • We don't know what the delay is. Roxy's injury and Jane's for that matter might well have been more minor than it seemed. Enough to be incapacitating but not immediately lethal. Vriska herself seemed to have about an hour after being beaten to death before her dreamself got too beat up. The time shown in comic is only about 10 minutes at the most.

  • During the 2x Corpsesmooch Combo, Karkat and Terezi were unable to revive Tavros and Terezi because their dreamselves were dead (and Kanaya turned out to be Not Quite Dead anyway). Why is Dirk somehow able to be revived despite the death of his dreamself minutes before?
    • Because his dreamself wasn't dead, just knocked out. uu's narration draws specific attention to that fact.
      • Okay, now I'm wondering why I thought his dreamself died. I guess I wasn't paying enough attention?
      • Pretty obviously so! That or you missed Dirk's entire section of that interactable segment.

  • Roxy's dreamself "sleepwalked" into a dream bubble to find the trolls and Beta kids. When Dream Dirk took over the Dirk formed by Jake's subconscious, he escorted her to the edge of the dream bubble and let her drift towards Derse. So if Roxy was so close to her session, why didn't the kids just follow her? Even without being able to turn the meteor around, Dave and Rose can fly, Terezi has alchemized a rocket pack and could probably make more for the other three trolls given their collective fortunes, and it's not like they'd be weighed down dragging an alchemiter or anything large with them on their way to another session- so it's not a problem of lacking the means to follow a flying dream player.
    • Roxy as a Hero of Void might be innately immune to the non-linear nature of the Furthest Ring. Besides that, even directly following her might not work, as she would be slightly ahead of them in time and space. The Furthest Ring would likely confuse their path if they tried to follow. Remember Rose is nigh-omniscient. If it had been a valid shortcut, they'd have taken it.
    • They were not really there. Their real self were sleeping in the meteor. Their appearance there is like a holographic projection. They probably can't just step out a dream bubble like that.
      • Incorrect; in that instance, the meteor had physically entered the dream bubble.
    • Time and space don't work normally in the Furthest Ring. While the B2 session was close to the dream bubble for Roxy, it could very well be much farther for everyone on the meteor. Alternatively, it could be that it's easier to return to your own universe from the Furthest Ring than it is to enter a different one.

  • In [S] Dirk: Unite, how do Dirk and the others take the Lotus Seed Pod back to Earth if there won't be a Reckoning?
    • Skaia's defense portals activate regardless of a Reckoning. Presumably at some point they'll need to figuratively push or propel the temple into Skaia.
    • Or maybe the frog temple meteor just got duplicated like the baby meteors.
    • Can't be the case; Dirk only entered the Alpha Frog Temple, so a duplication of the temples would not duplicate him.

  • Likewise in [S] Dirk: Synchronize/Unite, why did Roxy have such issues kissing Jane, in spite of being born and raised in the same time Dirk is, where bisexuality appears to be the norm?
    • It's not the bisexuality that was the problem. Roxy's never even seen another human being before; she was all kinds of nervous. Likewise, as soon as she's swooped up by Dirk, she is having the time of her life touching him, and then Jane. The contact is something she's never had before.
    • I interpreted the scene differently. Just because bisexuality is the norm does not mean it is the standard. After all, Carapacians seem to be traditionally heterosexual and just because Dirk is a Straight Gay does not mean she needs to be bi too; Roxy would be far more used to being touched than Dirk himself as she was essentially raised by Carapacians and has tons of pet cats. After all, Kanaya herself is gay, and Dirk is pretty much gay as well. The whole idea that it's about being nervous about seeing another person falls apart with her completely normal reactions to Dirk shortly thereafter. Also more superficially, it served as a Call-Back to Terezi's own being weirded out by Tavros's corpse, which full well could be the explanation Hussie intended, given Roxy's :C face immediately afterwards, as if she missed her opportunity to kiss Jane.
      • Touching another one of her kind is different from touching Carapacian aliens and cats. Being hesitant at kissing a person is different from reacting after being pulled into someone's grip before you can get cold feet.
      • While that's certainly an interpretation there's basically no evidence for it. Dirk doesn't display anything like that, Roxy never mentions it, Jake and Jade never have similar reactions, nor anyone in the comic who'd grown up in isolation. Being grossed out at kissing a dead body at least makes sense.
      • Or there's the much simpler solution. How willing would you be to kiss the still warm corpse of one of your best friends...?
      • Above rendered irrelevant because Roxy's outright stated since that she was just grossed out at kissing a corpse.

  • Why didn't Gl'bgolybsprite ever release The Vast Glub? How did Feferi calm her down?
    • It DID release the Vast Glub after Feferi entered the session, killing all the trolls in their universe. Feferi calmed her down by feeding her dead lusii that Eridan caught for her.
      • The question was why didn't the Gl'bgolybSPRITE release the vast glub, not why didn't regular Gl'bgolyb release it.
      • It was mentioned here that during the final fight Aradia and her doomed selves had to collectively use their psionic powers to suppress the power of BK's Glub.
    • I see two possible answers to this; either sprites do not have a need to eat, or the Vast Glub is activated only by a dead or dying Gl'bgolyb, not a 'living' sprite version.

  • Why was it so important to get to the Green Sun so quickly that Sollux had to die? They stood there for like ten minutes talking afterwards!
    • The furthest ring is always shifting around. They would have never gotten there if they hadn't gotten there as quickly as they did.
    • Think of their trip as a sort of Dungeon Bypass. They followed the light from the Green Sun as rapidly as possible in what was essentially a straight line. There is still a pretty big Plot Hole though in that Jack and PM were able to follow them despite not flying faster than the speed of light, and still threaten them, but P-Space's ordained fate sometimes looks like Contrived Coincidence anyways.
      • Although both Jack and PM have the excuse of teleportation.
    • Perhaps they were worried about Jack catching up and killing the non-God Tier trolls?

  • Assuming that the narration was actually serious about the immortality of clowns, how exactly did Dave manage to kill the ICP when they are both clowns?
    • Personal theory: The terms "Just" and "Heroic" don't apply to clowns because they're obsessed with comedy. Therefore, a clown God Tier will never die. As for ICP, they weren't God Tier.
      • You have to be funny in order to be a clown, therefor ICP don't get the immortality.
    • There's also the fact that it didn't exactly say they were immortal directly, just really, really, really hard to kill. The fact that Dave actually managed to kill the ICP is just showing how badass Dave was.
    • Clown Immortality works like (and is probably a reference to) Joker Immunity. ICP are very minor characters in this story who never appear "on screen," so their Plot Armor is weak and Dave can kill them. And Gamzee does die in [S] GAME OVER, since the plot is over (or would be, if John and Terezi didn't cheat) and Plot Armor is now a moot point.

  • Are there two Gamzees running around in the Homestuck multiverse right now? I ask because the Gamzee that the alpha kids and Caliborn met seems way too different from the Gamzee hiding on the asteroid Dave, Rose, and the remaining trolls are currently residing on. Specifically, the former Gamzee seems to still be his Cloud Cuckoolander self (albeit sporting god tier attire, though it's still up to debate as to whether he's actually at god tier) and offering his services to be a guide to the alpha kids and Caliborn whereas the latter still seems for the most part psychopathic. Gamzee receiving the codpiece to his god tier outfit from his dancestor Kurloz only makes things more confusing.
    • Remember that Gamzee is shown to have a time machine, and time flows differently between universes anyway. Gamzee has potentially INFINITE time to change personalities and behavior.

  • It is said that John is named on his 13th birthday (which is when the story start). and YET, in the birthday letters sended/received by John, he's shown that he arleady have name. i'm just got onto the 5th act yet, but still.
    • The idea of defining things and having them be retroactively defined is a theme in Homestuck. For example, the dream worlds are a construct of Sburb - they're created as part of playing that game. However, they're created not only at the beginning of play, but in the past as well, so the players have already visited the dream worlds in most cases. It's the same thing with the character names. After John was named, his name had thus always been John.

  • Why is there already Sburb devices in Dirk: Synchronise and Dirk: Unite there in each of their houses when we didn't see them deployed?
    • Roxy deployed the devices for Jake; otherwise we can assume that the Auto-Responder, like he did for Jane, took over server duty and added the other devices.

  • In the comic, it's explained that trolls with blood colors higher up on the Hemospectrum are more physically durable than trolls with lower blood colors. This is seen in canon with Vriska and Mindfang, who both survive having limbs removed for a lengthy period of time without the wounds being healed until their respective Zahhak, (Equius, Darkleer), built them a robotic arm. Also, Gamzee is shown to survive being pumped full of lead with Caliborn hundreds of times. However, the plot hole here is that Eridan is the second to highest blood caste (violet), and he dies immediately after Kanaya cuts him in half at the waist horizontally. However, Tavros, who is the second to lowest caste (bronze), is horizontally cut in half by Kanaya as well and he lives long enough for Equius to build him robotic legs, when he should have died quicker than Eridan for being a VERY low caste.
    • There' still a difference between being cut through the pelvis (where there are very few vital organs) and beeing cut through the abdomen. Plus, Equius replaced Tavros' legs as soon as possible, preventing from hemorrhage, while Eridan has lost quite a lot of blood.

  • How did Karkat as a grub make it out of the brooding caverns without being culled on sight? A grub's exoskeleton is the same color as their blood! The comic states Karkat is a pariah who is not even on the hemospectrum and yet somehow they've managed to breed a lusus for him and even if you could justify that he somehow snuck out unseen and his lusus hid him, I imagine there would be culling drones patrolling the area constantly for that exact reason in case a grub looks slightly off and they could well, off it.
    • It's worth pointing out that our trolls were not 'born' the same way all other trolls are, as they were brought to Alternia via meteors. Karkat's is likely to have landed where he'd be in the least immediate danger, especially since any time line in which he didn't and was unlucky enough to be culled before playing Sgrub would've been culled from the Alpha time line. So the explanation for that would be a combination of luck and predestination rigging the dice.
    • If Doc Scratch is to be trusted, Karkat was sought out by the Cult of the Signless, who predicted his birth, and they gave him his lusus.

  • I've only read as far as the Vriskagram flash, so apologies if any of these three headscratchers have been addressed in the comic since then (they're arranged in increasing order of importance and therefore likelihood to be addressed), but: it was bad enough when Gamzee showed up in the session ahead of the rest of the meteor crew to prototype the Alpha kids' sprites, but now we're expected to believe Vriska was the one who did the exact same thing in the revised timeline???????? Gamzee had weird clown shit going on; what's Vriska's excuse? If it's a god tier thing (which suggests Gamzee actually was God Tier after all), what's preventing Dave or Rose from doing the same thing?
    • Vriska and Gamzee both used Aradia's Time Boxes to travel backwards in time.

  • We're expected to believe the timeline played out pretty much as it originally did up until the point John showed up and punched out Vriska, with maybe a few minor differences... except John tipped off Terezi that Gamzee, not Vriska, killed Nepeta, and tipped her off to Gamzee's presence in the room with the records and stuff. She apparently did something with Gamzee at that point, since we see she apparently dragged him to the roof with a horn in his mouth... but since she wasn't trying to avenge the deaths of her friends anymore, why did she still go to the roof to take on Vriska? Gamzee, after all, was the one who wrote the note inviting Terezi up there. Does she care that much for Tavros? Did Gamzee lie upon being interrogated by Terezi (which you know she did given her whole legislacerator thing), not admitting to writing the note, or perhaps blaming all the other deaths (or even just the ones killed by Eridan) on Vriska? On a more minor note, since it was explicitly shown that the only reason Terezi was able to bring herself to kill Vriska was because she saw that jetting off to take on Noir would lead to Karkat and Terezi's deaths, why exactly was she so upset at John for introducing a third option even once he started to explain himself?
    • It wouldn't be the first time for Terezi to want to punish Vriska for hurting Tavros. Even if she knew Vriska didn't kill the others, killing Tavros is still reason enough to confront her. JUST1C3 is Terezi's entire shtick, after all. As for why she was upset at John, my take was that she was just upset in general, because of how everyone was dying and all, and she took it out on John when he thwarted her attempt at justice. She didn't realize that John's solution was the best until she had a chance to calm down and reflect on things.

  • Here's the big one: in the original timeline, Jade dumped everyone on the meteor except Gamzee on LOMAX in front of John. Everyone then spent some time catching up on what happened while they were separated until Jade showed up again and dumped everyone except John on different worlds, and everyone except John forgot this because of the damage to the Act 6 Act 6 cartridge. In the revised timeline, Vriska is shown putting Jade to sleep as she's approaching the meteor, and we're told that her orders were to separate the meteor crew so they couldn't team up and free Roxy and Jake. Why, then, did she keep everyone together and dump them on LOMAX, actually bringing them more together by reuniting them with John, and only later show up back on LOMAX and split them up, in the original timeline? Why did they dick around reminiscing instead of rescuing Roxy and Jake in the original timeline? Conversely, how did they know to free Roxy and Jake in the revised timeline? Okay, I've read ahead enough to know Vriska has gotten some sort of spoilers, but then how would the Condesce expect the meteor crew to know to free Roxy and Jake in either timeline (considering Vriska's not supposed to be there)? Considering that Jade's original action solved the problem Karkat and Dave identified of getting off of or stopping the meteor, how exactly did they do that in the revised timeline? You still have three God Tiers (Dave, Rose, and Vriska) to carry four non-fliers (Karkat, Terezi, Kanaya, and WV) like Dave suggested.

  • Okay, so apparently Vriska was able to use the wallet to captchalogue the entire Earth. It's not even a special wallet either, it's from the Dadly Depot or something. If that's possible, then why couldn't they delay the Reckoning until they were ready to handle it by captchaloguing Skaia? Or neutralize the Black Queen and Jack by captchaloguing Derse? Finally, if you can steal the entire Earth with a common personal accessory, why hasn't some nutjob done it already?
    • In all honesty, the answer to all of these is probably just Rule of Funny. Beyond that, 1) it may not be that the wallet itself could capthalogue whole planets, but only when it was alchemized with the 8-ball and whatever else they put in their. 2) John would never think to use the wallet these ways in a million years. 3) No one really knows about the Wallet Modus besides Dad and John 4) It seems like only Sburb players and Dad have captchalogues.

Open

  • How did Tavros send a message after being impaled and thrown off a cliff? Tavros was killed by Vriska three hours and fourteen minutes before the Critical Moment, yet Tavros responds to this memo from 3:14 hours in the future. That memo was made at the minium around 6:12 before Cascade, meaning Tavros responded t the memo at 2:58, sixteen minutes after death.
  • How did B2-Jack become possessed by Caliborn in the post-retcon timeline? Before retcon, Gamzee sent him CAL. After retcon, however, Gamzee was too busy being locked in a fridge


     "Why did Andrew do X?" 

Resolved


  • Why does Hussie insist on providing exposition through the trolls? While I understand that this world is far deeper and more developed than that of Problem Sleuth, there must be another way to relate this to us without long, rambling, half-incoherent chat logs. Show don't tell, Mr. Hussie!
    • It's partially to add atmosphere, I think. Give him some space.
    • Plenty of atmosphere can be easily given without forcing it into long winded text logs. They were fun when they were a suppliment, but not when they're the main stay. Its basically a still picture where John is handed a heaping silver platter of information, not by his own merit, but because theres some guy who knows everything that expobabbles at his whims.
    • What alternatives are there? It's difficult to explain things with out using words. Just be glad that they're funny.
      • How did we learn that meteors were actually showering the entire planet? Because Rose discovered the hub herself, actually showing us the true scope of a disturbing scenario. How did we discover the information about Prospit, about the alternates of Jade and John? Because Jade frequents there, and could visually present to us her awe-inspiring world. How did John figure out how to alchemize all his sweet loot? By going and alchemizing that sweet loot and presenting his findings to us, leading to some funny text as well as images. Having trolls regurgitate information does not hold near the impact of running into the events themselves, really finding what you're up against. Did finding out about Denizen through text have near the impact of looking up at that first meteor crashing towards John? Does it hold that same kind of danger? What if he stumbled onto the beast itself, wouldnt that have conveyed so much more?
      • We would know very little about the Denizens in the first place without the benefit of the trolls' exposition. It's probably going to be a while before the battles with the Denizens come to the forefront at all, since they're meant to take place during the final leg of the kids' quests. In the meantime, we're learning bits and pieces about them and what the kids are in for via the trolls, Consorts, sprites, Future Dave and Rose's experience, etcetera, which in turn heightens the suspense leading up to the eventual reveal. John just stumbling into his Denizen would be a shock, sure, but it's not going to make as much of an impact as a confrontation with a tense, solid build up leading into it. And we know that John stumbling into his Denizen too soon is hazardous to his health, anyway.
      • At this point, it looks as if one or more of the kids may skip their Denizens entirely. They are fucking up their game to an unprecedented degree - and because the audience isn't any more clear on how the game is supposed to go than the kids are, we need the trolls to tell us what the kids are doing wrong. Sure, finding out about the denizen through a pesterlog was less dramatic than the meteor - because the stakes have been raised to the point that the denizen is less dramatic. John has bigger fish to fry. We needed the context of what he's probably going to end up skipping or going around to make the reveal of other things that much more epic. I mean, John can't beat his Disc-One Final Boss at this point, and he's already having to worry about someone who's taken out the NPCs that were supposed to be the final boss?
    • It should be fairly obvious that the kids aren't going to be following the path prescribed to them by Sburb. It looks like the trolls did, though. The things they tell the kids (and us) amount basically to the way the game should have been played; the things that we aren't going to see.
      • This is the best explanation. If we didn't have the troll explanations of how everything works, we would have had no idea of how badly the green package falling into Jack's hands messed everything up. There's also the point that any conversation with them is hilarious, so I'm having trouble understanding why more troll is a problem.
    • There's a very good reason, story-wise, to leave the trolls' input as just Expo Speak - to leave open the possibility that they are lying. I mean we already know that gC was feeding John bullshit, but we don't know about the rest.
    • The "rambling incoherency" of the chat logs is probably just emulating reality.
      • The explanation above about it being indicative of a flawed session is the most correct answer; ordinarily the player's sprites and consorts would have told the players stuff and they would've figured out the rest. However the Kids are Sequence Breaking the fuck out of their game
    • Actually, the trolls' logs are their own award. They are funny as hell, especially on second reading, especially Karkat (the guy basically trolls himself), it's character development, and most importantly, it's plot development. Terezi didn't tell John about the denizen so we'd know about their existence; she told John about the denizen because she wanted to try fucking up the alpha timeline and see what happens. Trolls are important characters in the story, not just Exposition Fairies.

  • Is it just me or has Act 5 become painfully self-aware? It started innocuously enough here, which wasn't so bad because it was a decent joke. This update, however, seems almost to be mocking the readers. I realize Mr. Hussie wants to get through this act quickly, but isn't it better to simply dispose of the the expected order of the game rather than bring everything up only to subvert it for the sake of being snarkily self-aware? Maybe I'm the only one who finds it annoying, but I do.
    • Well, it's an act about the Trolls, so maybe it's deliberate trolling.
    • Act 5 is reading like a bad crib on Hussie's own writing style for me. Its not just that its self aware, its just kindve a sloppy and unnecessary hash.
      • Indeed, a recent development was oddly spoiled and then lampshaded in the panel with an "onomatopoeia" of "UNSURPRISING DEVELOPMENT". It does sound as if the narrator is just skimming over the past story, and it doesn't help that we now have no less than 12 characters to keep track of.
    • It's not so much a speed thing, as Andrew playing with the formula. To be honest, the Troll's storyline, were it to be told in a normal fashion, would be EXTREMELY similar to Act One, which is fairly dull. Andrew is doing all of this in order to provide the most character development, while keeping the story fun and engaging. The whole [??? S] thing was due to a change in the use of Flash from the beginning of the story. Originally, it was planned to complement the story via minigames and the like, but it has since moved to a largely cinematic role, used to provide climatic scenes with added depth. Andrew is pretty adamant about NOT doing another Strife interactive battle, simply because it eats ridiculous amounts of time that could be spent on a better flash or more static pages.

  • It may just be me, but the entirety of Act 5 bugs the hell out of me. The characters are mildly interesting at best and I find no connection with any of them. I could give a shit that Tavros is a paraplegic or that Aradia is dead. Also, Hussie seems to be trying harder than usual to use the most obscure vocabulary he can think of and its really annoying to have to look up twelve different words every five minutes.
    • I felt the same way about the Midnight Crew intermission. You can comfort yourself with the fact that Andrew updates so quickly that it will be over with soon, and you can read it all in one swoop.
    • Andrew said that this was meant to be a very fast intermission, probably half for that reason. But like Midnight Crew became important, the trolls' backstories are going to become important as they mingle more and more with the kids. Not everyone finds the trolls uninteresting because its filling in the gaps of what little we already got about them from the pesterlogs. Also, the obscure vocabulary is part of the 'atmosphere', I guess, that Andrew has set up for the trolls. They're different from humans, but their society is ridiculously convoluted and difficult. It's meant to be humorous - it's not the author's fault if you personally don't find it that amusing.
      • AH on the subject:
        The deeper I've gone into involving the trolls in the story, the more it seems to me they were never an element I could really just shrug off in favor of focusing on "the real story". The process of going through their story has had an effect in showing the nature of the game that could never have been achieved without going down that road. Without it, I'd have to resort to a more mundane expository means of revealing the game's purpose. The Felt intermission, which certainly seemed tangential (and surely was) still served an important purpose by helping us invest in the villainous nature of Jack Noir. Without that, his future actions would have much less meaning. Similarly, the troll arc has served to more thoroughly "characterize" the entire purpose of the game, and give it much more meaning going forward. Furthermore, the troll story is inextricably entwined with the kids. Actions of the kids had influence over the way the troll adventure unfolded, and therefore the way their own universe was created (Rose's gamefaqs, the scratch they create, just to name what we know of). The kids' adventure is obviously heavily influenced by the trolls through direct communication, and therefore the trolls have a hand in causing the kids to do whatever it was they did to impact the troll's adventure, and so on. Willingly or not, they're all working toward the same outcome, toward creating our universe, and the universe the kids are trying to create, and whatever trouble puts all that in jeopardy. Remember that both the kids' and the trolls' chum handles are needed to make the full set of ACGT combinations. They are not two unrelated groups of players as they first appeared, nor are their universes unrelated. Sollux's shades, the ~ATH code, etc help illustrate this, that they are bifurcated, interwoven realities.
    • Um...what vocabulary issues have ever existed in Homestuck? I can't recall Hussie's choice of diction ever being awkward or even notably outside of the vernacular. Examples please?
      CG: YOUR HATE'S TOO DULL FOR A PROPER KISMESIS, IN MY OPINION.
      CG: AND I DON'T SEE ANYONE CHOMPING AT THE BIT TO BE YOUR MOIRAIL HONESTLY, UNLESS THERE'S SOMEONE OUT THERE WHO WOULD ACTUALLY BOTHER PITYING YOU.
      CG: AND LANDING A MATESPRIT? HAHAHAHA!
      CG: SERIOUSLY, LIKE THAT WOULD EVEN INTEREST YOU.
      CG: BASICALLY ANY FEATURE OF YOUR EMOTIONAL PROFILE THAT USUALLY MAKES SOMEONE VIABLE IN THE REDROM DEPARTMENT MUST BE TOTALLY FRIED.
      CG: YOUR BLACKROM POTENTIAL'S PROBABLY TOAST TOO.
      • "Kismesis" is implied to be the other member of a "black romance," or two people truly hating each other. "Moirallegiance," a term used earlier in the conversation, is implied to be a mysterious step beyond "mating fondness" (i.e. sex.) Thus, "moirail" may be assumed to be the sexual partner, romantically-inclined or not. A "matesprit" may be the other member of a "red romance," which is a confusing term given that trolls lack the capacity for love: only hate and pity (a toned-down version of hate.) This, I believe, is a brilliant example of the obfuscating nature of troll lingo AND culture that cements its status as "bafflingly unhuman."
      • Incorrect. "Matesprit" is the more sexual version; it even has its purpose (reproduction) right in the name. "Moirallegiance" is more platonic, though in some ways, it's a stronger bond.
      • Additionally, considering it's source, I'd take the whole "Troll's being incapable of love, only hate and pity" thing with a grain of salt; in all likelihood, Karkat was just being Karkat.
      • Alternatively, just sit back and wait, Andrew's working on explaining it. They ARE aliens after all.
      • And indeed we do get an explanation.

  • Troll Intermission. I love the trolls, I love Alternia, I love Hivebent. But it's not why I read Homestuck. I read Homestuck, for HOMESTUCK, not three months of increasingly confusing romances, snarky references to how the plot "could've gone", not for oblique and confusing references to the Troll's true intentions and their planning, and (at current progression) three months without a sound update. I guess my problem is that it's different, not that it's a bad thing, but it's a different style from Homestuck, which is what I'm here to read.
    • The intermission is there to give us a better insight into the Trolls (since before all we really got was them being assholes to the main cast, as fun as that was) and will probably reveal some detail about the game. Most importantly, it will probably reveal where everything went wrong and why, which could have ramifications in the main story.
    • It's not an intermission. It's part of Act 5.
    • Word of God has stated, in response to a rather childish rant about Act 5 "ruining" Homestuck, that this is not a different story, it's the same universe, it's all canon, it's all background, and it's all important. You came to read Homestuck, okay. You ARE READING HOMESTUCK. You're just not reading about the kids right now. And you know what? I'm not in any hurry to get back to them. This change of perspective was good; it keeps the kids from getting stale and lets us return on a blank slate— which is really good, because as of the EOA 4, everything is going to change.

  • Andrew has a way of revealing important information in the least descriptive way. The death of the Black Queen? How do you know she's dead? There was no corpse. Jack used that bunny thing? How did Sollux die? Oh, we are told in one sentence something that is never referred to again. Just all sorts of information that is brushed through far to fast.
    • There was no corpse? Judging from the explosion mark on the floor surrounded by chunks of clothing and blood...seems clear enough to me, killed with extreme prejudice and lots of firepower. It wasn't too important HOW she died, since the present had to continue being a secret a while longer. More important was that she had and Jack was getting her ring...
    • Sollux was killed by the Vast Glub, which was introduced a few dozen pages beforehand and plays a fairly critical role in Hivebent's plot. Without it, the off-planet trolls would presumably have resettled Alternia, making the Intermission impossible unless Slick and the other exiles somehow fought off every troll in the galaxy.
      • Technically they would have lost the Mother Grub in the meteor apocalpyse, meaning they would've been unable to reproduce anyway.
    • Important things will be foreshadowed and elaborated on. If it isn't than, it's not important despite what you may think.
      • Exactly, the BQ's death and Sollux's were relatively unimportant.

  • The killing of characters at such a huge degree. This is far beyond Anyone Can Die. The deaths of characters tend and should be considered meaningful and with purpose, not to promote shock value by their death and subsequent removal. We are supposed to feel for them, and yet they are stabbed and killed with little-if at all-focus or depth. So why is Hussie doing it? Is it to try and prove that in this instance we subvert the bad writing and reemphasize that Tropes Are Not Bad, when it has been shown that killing characters like this does in fact cause great backlash and lack of fufillment? Is it supposed to be indicative of the chaotic nature of the storyline, which I would more happily buy? Is it just to piss the readers off? That isn't a good way to keep us engaged, especially when death for shock value is wildly considered in poor taste.
    • I always thought about it as more realistic personally. People die, and they don't always die in some heroic or fulfilling way.
      • It's also about thinning the Cast Herd and providing more concentrated impact of story elements. It was also preplanned, and Hussie isn't done yet, so throwing around bad writing is kind of silly. Moreover most of the DEAD characters are still in the story! The only characters that have been killed off for real with no counterparts or ghosts hanging around can be counted on one hand. Bec, AR, Doc Scratch, Snowman, HB, and that's about it, excepting the rest of the Felt given they were pretty much personality-less mooks.
      • Yeah, I'm counting Tavros, Feferi, Equius, Nepeta and Vriska to that list. Dream Bubbles are the afterlife of the dead; they can't effect the original setting except in Sollux's case, which is extreme. They show multiple settings as to how, and why, things could have been different but didn't turn out that way because they still died. This wasn't an issue in Problem Sleuth, where death was a well-established joke and was Played for Laughs and actually a major component to the main plot because of it. Here, characters are dying left and right when we've developed emotional connections in order to strike a fierce blow to our psyche. It was done in Justice League: Cry for Justice, it was done in Game of Thrones and its being done here, with the levity of a gentler series with sparks of darker subtext. Not to say that the level of dedication isn't high and I don't respect Hussie for it, but the writing really does seem to be on the wall.
      • But they're still in the story, ie, not dead and gone, which was specifically mentioned as "ghosts" above. Moreover a few of them at least, like Tavros and Vriska, seem happier in dreambubbles than they ever were in their sessions, and they're absolutely still relevant to the story, in a Spirit Advisor sense. And most of them were minor characters to begin with; Nepeta in particular had about only 6 appearances to her name before she was killed off, and Eridan, Feferi, and Equius were similar. Keep in mind too that most of those characters were introduced less than a year before their deaths and never had a huge impact on the story besides helping advance the plot. Just because you had a strong emotional connection to them and are upset by their deaths doesn't mean the writing of the series is bad either, especially when their deaths were preplanned (Word of God says that they were planned to die from their introduction, particularly Vriska) and calculated to showcase the stakes of Sburb.
      • Vriska and Aranea and their army of ghosts found a weapon to fight Lord English, which also gave Ret John his power. Aranea used the Ring of Life to mess around with the world. Tavros convinced the army to get together without mind control. Do none of those involve affecting the original setting?

  • Wow, and to be honest, I was very concerned about how John was going to stack up compared the God Tiered allies of his own former session, and I still am in terms of his basic power compared to theirs....but Jake's situation blows the others straight out of the water...and Roxy's. and Jane's. Dirk has just completely changed everything with a simple act on Derse. They now have an inborn threat which has just killed one of their earliest sub-bosses..without even entering the session yet! The others don't even come anywhere near that level of capability, or ever will. If this is just some way to show that a badass gay character can exist, Hussie proved his point. And that Jake's capabilities amount to less than nothing. That doesn't settle right with me.
    • We already knew Kanaya was a badass, so it's not just positive discrimination. Think of it more like this; Jake and the others are certainly badass, but Dirk is simply the most badass. It seems to be a bit of a trait of Princes, as Eridan too was by far the most combat capable of the Trolls before entering. Also, the Brobot does some things that Dirk naturally won't be able to, like flight or summoning multiple arms. Dirk's machinations on Derse though are just his particular manifestation of badass, and don't forget Jade was just as active on Prospit!
      • Yeah, I hear you. I'm just thinking that we might be dealing with either a character bias like with Tavros' death due to They Changed It, Now It Sucks! responses like before, only in reverse; Dirk is so good and so capable that the others will always fall short by comparison. Lets be fair; Guardian Dirk cleaved a COMET the size of a small city. In half. The best Guardian Roxy and Jake did was kill high-level monsters in single blows. Also that because of their lack of skill compared-while still having it, I don't deny that-that their presence might be questioned in terms of overall importance. Remember, unlike any other player, Dirk CAN be in two places at once.
      • The fandom isn't so shallow minded that they'll throw a fit when one character is stronger than others, or at least the vast majority won't. There's always the Unpleasable Fanbase elements but they're not the majority. Besides, we already know Roxy and Jane have been up to their own forms of badass actions. Look at it this way perhaps; Dirk as an active class is a more martially gifted Badass. But that doesn't mean that his teammates are any less badass, just a different flavor of it. Sure Dirk might be able to cleave a meteor, but can he stop time? Black out a session? Organize his friends as a leader and yet still be a good friend to them? Probably not!
      • If Dirk is anything like Dave, he'll have awesome martial prowess but end up falling victim to his own insecurities and self doubt. How the original four kids balanced each other out is a great part of Homestuck and hopefully that'll be continued into the next four. Dirk is like the Fighter in the An Adventurer Is You trope; strong in his own right, but lacking the skills to meet all the challenges that will befall him.
      • The Hegemonic Brute was not a sub-boss. He was an agent of Derse, but not a particularly high-ranking one. The trolls got along just fine without defeating him. But let's remember that the alpha session was already screwed up because the Black Queen was killed and replaced by the Condesce. Normal rules seem to be a moot point for the alpha session.
    • This is fairly old, but as of recent updates can you really say his powers amount to nothing?
    • Let's look at the powers of all eight kids at the moment of the gigapause. John, beside his crazy ability to change timelines, can use Breath to evade Grimbark Jade and blow away the glitches. Rose is a Seer, her role is mission control. Dave can rewind time; he's not going to, but it's his decision. Jade manipulates space, juggling planets like small balls, and that's even beside her First Guardian powers. Roxy can create any object out of thin air, in particular the matriorbs that are crucial to the trolls' hope. Jane can resurrect the dead; if she can do it to ghosts as well as corpses, she's THE Game-Breaker or the session. Jake's capabilities are so far unclear, but it's pretty obvious that they are vast and unusual. And Dirk's badassery boils down to melee fighting, building robots and... ripping souls out of the bodies, which given the nature of the narrative, I'd chuck right into Awesome, but Impractical bin. At the moment, he seems the 'least' badass of the characters. Although the comparison is not really fair, given how their abilities practically don't overlap.

  • I'm more than a little confused about Aranea and what Hussie is trying to say here; is he trying to justify all the killing and all the good people or redeeming people-with all their actions or inaction as part of a larger whole greater than themselves because the ends justify the means in playing this game-that everyone is used as a tool or method to reach the overall goal? That's incredibly terse and disrespectful to those that have died for nothing and did nothing. Many of those who are now killed mattered just the same. In their universe, they were more than just children we saw through the picture or narrative constructs used to bring about shock value. They were young trolls and humans that mattered to the other humans and the other trolls.
    • It's more along these lines. While people can genuinely have free will and chose to be good or redeem themselves, the Alpha Timeline needs them to be assholes and for them to die. They can exhibit all the free will and choices they want, but it simply isn't what their fate is. Just for example, could Vriska redeem herself, become a genuine hero, and be happy? Yes she could have. But she needed to die because then otherwise the Trolls would never have made it to the Green Sun, where Dave and Rose needed a ride, because they're needed in the Alpha Session, etc. Everyone is not a "tool", because there's no greater power orchestrating these events with a sense of emotions; individuals are more akin to cells in you, or cogs in a clock. Events have to unfold the way they do for reality to continue. Of course the individuals have significance, but just as you are not cognizant of the deaths of individual cells in your body, neither are the deaths of a handful of trolls all that important to Paradox Space.
      • Again, morality doesn't enter into it. They simply were fated to die. We as individuals can feel strongly for them, but to mangle a idiom, Paradox Space works in mysterious ways. If Nepeta, Tavros, and Feferi, three kindly trolls, had to die so that billions of trolls could exist in the future, is that right? Paradox Space sees the big picture. Gamzee however isn't exactly getting off scot-free. Kanaya wants to kill him and only Karkat is defending him. Moreover people aren't simply defined by the fact that Paradox Space uses them and decides their fates. They still have emotions, are their own individuals, and their actions and words matter; even Aranea busy being a fatalist points out the importance of Terezi getting closure with Vriska. They're just on a scheduled path through life. Out of verse though, Paradox Space might simply be a lampshading of the fact that as a fictional story, the characters naturally have no free will, beyond little unexpected variations that spontaneously spring up, major plot events are fixed.
      • Keep in mind too that the exposition Aranea gave should be taken with a grain of salt, as it's flavored with her own opinion. It's highly possible that Hussie decided to have the theme finally directly, heavily addressed in comic because the characters are outright going to defy it and break free from Paradox Space. You Can't Fight Fate has been a theme of the comic since Act 3 at least, though up until Aranea it had never been directly addressed beyond a few loose comments of Rose's, so it may become a major theme of the comic after having bubbled under the surface for years.
      • The big point of this comes down to a possible loopholed excuse for characters being Stuffed in the Fridge or allowing the death for shock value that Hussie has allowed to be glossed over by the fans. Even if there is a reason for their death and they mean to die because it has to work this way, you're still killing someone to enhance another person's plot or to get a rise out of the audience.
      • Some characters are just plain unimportant to the plot despite being an Ensemble Dark Horse, and all of the Trolls who died (excepting Vriska) were basically static characters with little Character Development. That's not bad writing though, even if you disagree with it.
      • Yeah, and they didn't have to be. Hussie specifically chose to make them that way. Enhancing another character's plot by death and removal of other characters when they are supposed to matter on some level is when they are Stuffed in the Fridge. Hussie just found a loophole to get out of experiencing the normal flak for it.
      • Tropes Are Not Bad. Hussie didn't find a "loophole" to avoid "the normal flak"; Stuffed in the Fridge's Trope Namer had some backlash to it but the trope itself has been used for ages, and he clearly didn't escape any sort of fandom complaints, as people threw massive fits when these characters died. Most people have simply calmed down since the characters died over a year ago (save Vriska and the handful of characters that have died since) and are still in the comic as ghosts anyways.

  • So, Lord English is unkillable. Yeah, he's an opponent who can be defeated, but not killed and prevented from causing further death and harm. So theoretically, there's no way to stop him ever. Yeah, time to turn the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism back towards the right, first...there we go. Now, he is the ultimate evil and he can't die. Heroes can't really win now, can they? Destroying him permanently was the ultimate objective in all this and allow for universes to be birthed afterwards. Defeating him sounds like a lost cause when it just means he's still around, so why?
    • You're misunderstanding things. Universes are still birthed, but he's summoned into them in order to doom them. Our heroes are going to be the first ones ever to DEFEAT him, and keep him from consuming their universe, and he effectively only has one shot per universe since he's summoned at the end of that universe's timeline. Not only does this mean they won't have to deal with him a second time, but it will also demonstrate that he is DEFEATABLE, and that the POSSIBILITY to destroy him exists. Other heroes may beat him down the line, but it's not the job of our heroes.
    • LE is also still very nebulous, and very well could be necessary. After all, the story is a Coming of Age Story and what better way to reinforce maturity than by accepting death as necessary? LE also is probably not the final antagonist; as Vriska, Rose, and Aranea have subtly been hinting at the final antagonist is probably going to be Paradox Space (ie, Fate) itself.
      • Assuming LE isn't some sort of personification for Fate, which is highly likely.
      • Yeah, you realize how much how much demonstration matters, right? Next to nothing if he isn't killed in the process and allows the universe to be created. He has to be stopped in order to be defeated. Arenea is essentially saying that the players don't matter because while even though they are fated to quote-on-quote 'stop' Lord English, they aren't fated to succeed. Heroes should succeed..and they shouldn't be made to nothing like so many before them. Apparently Jake isn't going to kill him, which means the threat is still there. Hell, Meenah started this whole thing and killed all of them. If anything, she's a main antagonist who should be wiped from existence.
      • You're seriously babbling on in such a way that you're using your own hypothesises to back up further points. It's incoherent and unconvincing. The fact of the matter is that the heroes are going to succeed, and they're going to stop Lord English enough as to foil his plans for their universe, giving hope to future Sessions. You know how much demonstration has mattered? A LOT, thanks to Rose's Game FAQS walkthrough. As for Meenah, she's not an antagonist. She did what she did to preserve the consciousnesses of her and her friends. Otherwise they'd of been erased utterly. They couldn't succeed, so between being ghosts and not being ANYTHING AT ALL, she opted for the better option.
      • And again; Lord English as we understand him seems to be integral to the process of Sburb anyways. Judging how the story is going to turn out at this stage with such a nebulous and mysterious character as Lord English is a bit hasty. Let's just calm down and see where it goes.

  • We already know what the Handmaid looked like as a kid, so why did Hussie leave her pre-Scratch incarnation silhouetted in these updates? Apart from her horns and her outfit, there is no potential surprise to spoil.
    • Because she could look different, pre-Scratch.
    • There's not much of a reason why she should look different. She's still biologically the same person in both incarnations, and Grandpa/Jake and Nanna/Jane have already set a precedent for consistent appearances across the Scratch.
    • Her outfit however is likely completely different!
    • Her post-scratch counterpart still hasn't been introduced in a technical sense, so it'd be just a little out of place for her to not be silhouetted when she isn't part of the dream bubble discussion.

  • Feferi is one of the least important trolls; by my reckoning she appears less often than any troll except Joke Character Nepeta. Her ancestor, the Condesce, is the Big Bad of Act 6 and by far the most important of the troll ancestors and possibly the most important troll in the entire comic. ??? And it's not some reversal thing; the next most important troll ancestors are probably the Handmaid, Mindfang, and the Signless in some order, all of which have "descendents" who are highly featured in the comic.
    • Andrew uses Writing by the Seat of Your Pants constantly; when creating Feferi he probably had little idea that the Condesce would become the Ascended Extra that she is now, and didn't plan to make her as important. At any rate, Feferi is plain and simply rather boring as a character. Her personality is near identical to any number of other characters (Jade, Kanaya, Terezi, really pretty much any of the girls in the comic as she cribs from all of them to some extent) and she simply never really got her chance to shine, similarly to how God Tiered Aradia (with personality near identical to Jade) made only a handful of appearances before having a a bridge dropped on her off-panel. She is however the most plot important of the trolls aside from the main ones, being even more important than some like Kanaya or Terezi. Without her intervention, the entire series of dreambubbles would not even exist, though the reveal of Paradox Space kind of renders that point moot again.
    • In any case, Andrew seems to have recognized this, admitting that Meenah was his attempt to create a Pisces character that didn't "do nothing and then die".

  • Why does Hussie keep calling Equius' Navy/deep blue blood Indigo?
    • Though most people are aware of Indigo as Blue-Violet, it in fact has a wide variety of ranges, and deep blue is a perfectly acceptable thing to call indigo. There are some varieties in fact that match his blood color exactly.

  • Should John's duel with Jack count as a victory in the Heir of Breath's favor? While he did manage a hefty blow upon the Slayer, he ran from the field and he was not truly killed, merely humiliated. I know I was not the only one calling for his death when John showed he would be more than capable in a one-on-one duel by re-positioning himself and negating damage by becoming the wind.
    • It was a dreambubble. John couldn't have lost even if he had been "killed", as he would simply have stopped dreaming. Jack also is now hurt and still tired. Not a win or a loss for either side, but more importantly, it shows from an authorial standpoint that Jack is basically a non-issue now. If he tries to fight the Kids or run rampant as he did in Act 5, that shit ain't gonna fly.
      • A non-issue? Jack is still one of the most powerful enemies in this group of adversaries on the battlefield. A duel between Jack and John aside-which was amazing in every possible way-being rather equal, the fact remains that he's still active and could stab others at his leisure. Who knows if the others can also displace their physical body like John can-I could imagine Jade doesn't have to worry about physical damage ever again- but we have to remember that he still is a threat.
      • John got the upperhand on him solo. Dave is likewise probably immune to physical damage in the same sense as Jade (stomp that Reset Button as hard as you can), and Rose's own prophecy means she'll probably never be caught unprepared for him. Jack is indeed a non-issue, something Vriska reinforces shortly thereafter.

  • Kanaya/Rose. While I'm happy for the Rosemary shippers and saddened for those who had other ideas like John/Rose, I wonder why Hussie decided this worked better. Honestly, it feels like he's Pandering to the Base - because those shippers were so loud and so prevelent, that he just went with it despite evidence to the strength of Rose's relationships with her male friends and possible romantic partners in the contrary.
    • I likewise did not agree with the ship but don't label it as Pandering to the Base just yet. Dave/Terezi, a ship almost as popular, has been shown to be kind of lacklustre as an actual romance and it's entirely possible Hussie brings it up only to sink it more conclusively. I personally agree with the assessment you made; Rose and Kanaya had a bickering friendship but there never seemed to be any chemistry to me. We'll just have to see how it pans out. It's pretty unlikely that any canonical ship (with possible exception to Karkat/Terezi since they're increasingly becoming Star-Crossed Lovers) will hold to the end of the series. Besides, it's not all negative. A growing ship with the canonical Rose/Kanaya now is John/Roxy, which has room for infinite pranks.
      • I definately agree with the possibility that these will not last, but part of me wonders and is annoyed by the context associated with Hussie putting such dramatic depth upon the Rose/Kanaya kiss. Just to cement it? Just to make all the other shippers rage? To see how the fandoms react? Because I know Kanaya/Rose is going nuts in their ship. Also, John/Roxy.....You see, the humor is there, certainly...but the lack of character development and interactions with one of the heroes of the story and the drunk concern is rather headscratchy when I think about them as a potential couple. Character depth and powerful dramatic tension exists for Kanaya/Rose, but in that same vein, it also existed for John/Rose.
      • The biggest reason for it is probably the date. 10/25/12. The Big Damn Kiss for Cascade's anniversary. Also the drama is immediately subverted. Hussie simply does not write straight romance stories and pretty much any ship that has come up in story thus far has completely disregarded fan expectations. But then again, there is the possibility there simple is a canonical ship this time. Your complaints, while well articulated, mostly stem from the Ship Sinking of John/Rose. There's simply too little information about where Rose and Kanaya will take their relationship and how Rose and John will react to one another to say how that particular ship will play out. Another thing to consider is that Homestuck is an experiment for Hussie. He could well have canonized the ship for precisely those reasons, to test how a fandom reacts.
    • Keep in mind that Rose is drunk as a skunk throughout all this; most notably, her accidental use of the term "date" seems to come as a surprise even to Kanaya. It's entirely possible Rose will deny everything once she sobers up, if she even remembers it.

  • Jane's tirade against Jake comes across as a bit of calling the kettle black. First, he tried to start a conversation, and while he was overbearing and forgot her birthday-a reasonable thing in the case of their ongoing survival taking precedence over these last months-he is not coming across as someone who is a terrible person or has done anything wrong to earn this "The Reason You Suck" Speech. He's still the nice person he's always been, trying to effectively talk and deal with this situation and she's being incredibly overzealous about something that he's trying to fix. Its unreasonable and makes no sense; Why turn this into yet another "angry girl, stupid boy" stereotype situation, when the boy might not be a dumbass or have attempted to make amends? I caught that "damsel" comment too; he never questioned their competency.
    • Jake not only forgot her birthday, he hadn't spoken to Jane in weeks. All his conversations are about Dirk problems which only rubs it in Jane's face that she threw away her chance. It's not "angry girl, stupid boy"; it's "frustrated girl, clueless boy". Read the dialogue too, she's not mad at Jake specifically, she just wants him to stop talking about Dirk. The brief window were it looked like he might get it had her calm down considerably. Also, just because someone is well intentioned does not mean their actions are without fault; Jake ultimately is imposing greatly on his friendship with Jane by being selfish and talking about his problems all the time. Jane's reaction, while hyperbolic and emotional, isn't too far out of the norm for situations exactly like this. Jake does remain calm throughout the whole thing, which is naturally the ideal to resolve complicated emotional issues, but Jane's anger is entirely justified and understandable.
      • Anyone reacting the way she had? That's not understandable. He tried to apologize for his mistakes. He was complimenting her on her actual abilities at dealing with people-seen time and time again an act ago-and never once questioned their competency, which her 'damsel' jab at him was levied as. She didn't speak up, either during the text chat, which she had more than ample time to. My point is, she called him 'thoughtless' and 'self-centered.' A thoughtless person does not immediately consider rushing to help a friend despite the situation, nor does a self-centered one. In both those instances as well, a person who is honestly repentant and trying to make amends is neither of those things. You claim selfishness where none exists. I see entitlement-which has been with Jake since the beginning when it comes to his friend's time-but not selfishness. Which is a whole other kettle of fish to work on, and not under the guise of girl-power notions about guys being terrible. Now its starting to sound like a wave of dislike, which is what i was afraid of..but definitely towards the guys.
      • "My point is, she called him 'thoughtless' and 'self-centered.' A thoughtless person does not immediately consider rushing to help a friend despite the situation, nor does a self-centered one. " He is thoughtless and self-centered. He doesn't even understand why Jane is mad because he doesn't think he's done anything wrong. Even when Jane tears into him, he still tries to turn the conversation to his problems with Dirk. That is not a healthy friendship. Just because Jake is trying to talk it out does not mean his actions are not wrong nor are they acceptable to Jane. Again, Jane overreacted, but she brings up a pretty good point and something Jake has to understand about himself. Intention is well and good, but how you come off to people is how you actually are perceived. Additionally this isn't some misplaced feminism (which never even entered the discussion to begin with), because Hussie has fully covered the spectrum of feminism from the shallow (Gamer Girl jokes) to the actual (Porrim, Kanaya, more outside that having a wide spectrum of trolls from all walks of life, feminine males and masculine women and feminine women etc.). What's pretty obviously happening is Jane is fed up and venting on her friends; she outright says as much when she talks to Roxy moments later. Teenagers have never been known for their excellent emotional control.
      • Roxy summarizes it pretty well a few pages later; saying that while Jake is well intentioned he can come off as a jerk sometimes. Likewise, in short succession, we've seen Roxy stopped drinking, Dirk is an incredibly needy person, and Jane has repressed depression issues because of their session. This act is taking the characters established in Act 6's first parts and showing they have more depth to them, probably following on fan complaints that found them too similar to their counterparts.
      • "Teenagers have never been known for their excellent emotional control." Oh really? Why don't we look at the Beta group. John, despite a rather minor issue with anger and being on a ship with nothing to do for two years, has turned out to be rather well-adjusted towards his friends and needed a good laugh after defeating Jack. Still a good man, still an incredible hero. Also, growing up a little is a plus. Jade is also doing well, considering she broke off with Davesprite on good terms and has a good relationship with her ectobiological brother. Dave is having an unrelated crisis involving how if he ideas are lame, but appears to function completely fine as someone who converses with other people. Rose just admitted social and physical interest in Kanaya-though we don't know if that will go anywhere-and has really come into her own as more engaging and frankly, more compassionate of a person. Back to Jake, He's definitely wrong by intent and by means. I agree he's entitled and shallow and that's hurting the relationship between him and Jane, and he needs to learn that. However, he could have been like Eridan, who didn't care about anyone's feelings but his own to dangerous effect, or Sollux, who only gave the smallest issues for the people in his inner circle and screwed everyone else. But he isn't, and Jane knows it. Those troll relationships were bad or potentially bad friendships and romances. Jake is better than that by whole leagues. Jake has to simply stop being ignorant, and her screaming in his face and running off emotionally compromised doesn't help her or him. Also, "this isn't some misplaced feminism (which never even entered the discussion to begin with)" Okay, there was the female solidarity, the 'I don't know what this clueless pair of damsels would do without you.' comment which tries so solidify an attack Jake did not make, and the blanket rage over the male characters presented by Roxy. It certainly seems to exist.
      • Nobody's saying Jane didn't overreact. But your examples are cherry picked and painted in the best context possible; John's "anger issues" were a grand mal temper tantrum, Jade has thrown her own fits at Karkat, Dave has composure but is broken up inside because of it, and the fact that Rose went insane with grief and rage was a plot point in Act 5 Act 2. Moving on the the other teenagers, we see all the drama in the Troll sessions, Karkat's continuing angst and anger as he's not certain what he's doing with Terezi, Terezi's own fits of the same, Kanaya's depression, etc. Teenagers do stupid shit, Jane's done stupid shit, this isn't an attack against Jake as a character, Jane's just angry and blew up at him. Points valid but reaction not. As for the feminism... I don't know why you're continuing to bring this up. They had a discussion about "shucks buster" being a thing. Jane and Jake use archaic words all the time; if you replace damsel with "girls" or something similar, it's just "OH HOW COULD WE EVER MANAGE WITHOUT YOU", which is rather more the point. Likewise, Roxy doesn't have blanket anger to the boys on her team, as she just points out they can be kind of douchey, and Dirk's relationship with Jake was unstable to begin with. This isn't "grr boys suck girls are so much more level", this is emotional depth to characters.

  • Why take the time to emphasize the fact that Aradia stayed behind to delay Jack if it clearly didn't work and yet resulted in nobody getting harmed? Aradia's alive and well, Jack and PM aren't delayed at all (despite taking multiple breaks and flying at apparently the speed of light), and it doesn't matter. If Hussie just wanted an excuse to get Aradia out of the plot, he already had one in that she and Sollux needed to push the meteor. Mentioning something of complete irrelevance and making it seem like it has great weight is utterly baffling.
    • This is Homestuck, and we don't really have any idea where Jack and PM are in relation to the meteor. Just because Hussie hasn't shot his Chekov's Gun yet doesn't mean he forgot about it; he deploys them when no one expect them. Like, all the time.
      • Except we see that PM and Jack are chasing the meteor when Lord English blows up his first dreambubble; Dave watches as PM and Jack do. Besides that, there's a difference between having a plot point that's not brought up and having a plot point that means utterly nothing being ignored completely after mentioned. Unless Hussies goes with some sort of Ass Pull Face–Heel Turn for Aradia recruiting them for Lord English, and her sheparding the dreamselves being an elaborate ruse, there's figuratively no outcome of that particular event that would have any impact whatsoever. So why even write that?
      • Except timespace doesn't work in the Furthest Ring and it can't be properly navigated without a guide. Visual proximity doesn't mean anything, as demonstrated with the Troll meteor and the Green Sun. Also, uh...it hasn't even been a full act since the proverbial Chekov's Gun of Aradia staying behind was set on the table. Chekov's Guns of Hussies have sat in wait for much, much, longer than that. As just demonstrated with Trickster Mode actually. You're essentially whining about the magician's act before he's finished his trick, settle down.
      • The fact that timespace isn't direct just makes the fact that Jack and PM aren't completely and utterly lost in the Ring all the more of a Contrived Coincidence, but that's another headscratcher. The point is, Aradia is alive, PM and Jack are alive, and we've seen that none of them have had any shifts in character outside of their characterization before Aradia's delay. There is no reason to have written Aradia's delay as some sort of Heroic Sacrifice and yet he placed major emphasis on it. Trickster Mode was not a preplanned Chekhov's Gun, just something cherry picked out of some of the sillier jokes in the past, something Andrew does all the time. There are certainly major events that have been referred to and will be shown, like Jade negotiating with Echidna, but this is definitely not one of them.
      • "Trickster Mode was not a preplanned Chekov's Gun" Um...prove it? You're definitely invoking a confirmation bias here something fierce, making conclusions about things that aren't even finished playing out yet.
      • Hussie has said many times that he uses what he deemed "Retroactive foreshadowing"; where he basically "seeds" a story by throwing out some stuff that's kinda unexplained and can follow up on later. Early Trickster Modes were all over the place, one included a Zelda reference, another had the famous candy John sprite from a sprite edit thread on the forums, and more later on added musical bits from future albums. If you want more proof than that... Hussie specifically stated recently that the recent Trickster Mode arc was a shout out to it's popularity in the fandom. But that has no relevance to the discussion at hand and is another point entirely.
      • I knew the above, and would move to argue that the basic narrative function Trickster Mode serves was probably always there and the surface content could've been anything, but you're right, it's a tangent. Back on the point, this Aradia thing still hasn't concluded, so we can't actually judge if it's poorly executed, a shitty excuse of getting rid of a character, or what have you. Aradia's presence in Open Bound indicates that she still has a part to play in Hussie's plans.
      • Couple of things; first, it's worth remembering PM originally chased after Jack, after a semi-lengthy interaction with Serenity after Jack took off; it's entirely possible Aradia and Sollux slowed down Jack enough for PM to catch up to him. Second, what Aradia tells John about what she wants out of the treasure hunt is surely relevant to her overall standing.

  • John's recent nap has brought me to a headscratcher that's been prevalent throughout the comic; the concept of the player's competency and abilities that mattered to their overall goals. Why is there all this uselessness at the moment, when things are becoming so critical, it could lead to death or failure? At the moment, what they really need in Alpha is a Big Damn Heroes moment from John to save them-probably with that Void Ring so he can be all trickstery. And he's being a lazy punk. Not really acceptable right now, since the dreambubble events are going as they are. His current usefulness is voided when he's the only one that should be able to be relied on and powerful enough to make a difference. Several of the trolls had this problem, as well....currently, Terezi certainly does, and could even be working against the cause.
    • He's a lazy punk for being asleep when he doesn't even know he's arrived yet? He probably fell asleep before they arrived and didn't notice when they did, he doesn't know anything about the situation so it isn't his fault. Do you wake up in the middle of your sleep suddenly knowing that people are in danger? The reason Hussie does this throughout the story is to create drama.
      • For no logical reason. John knew that he was entering serious mode as soon as he entered the new session. Jade told him, and he heard it from the others three years ago. On the very day he is supposed to fight once again and prepare himself to create a universe, he sleeps deep into the day? No person in their right mind would do that given the knowledge he has.
      • Its been a 3 year trip. He's probably lost track of night and day, so his sleep schedule might get a little messed up. He might not even know what day it is. In fact it might be in the middle of the night. Its not logical to expect him to know when he's going to exactly arrive. All he knew was that he'd be there in 3 years.
      • Also, he had no way of knowing that it would be a dire situation when he arrived. The plan was that they would have as much time as they need because a null session has no reckoning. If Jade hadn't been mind-controlled, there wouldn't really have been any danger — and obviously they didn't foresee that, or Jade wouldn't have entered the area anyway until everyone else had gone ahead of her and killed the Condesce.
    • It's most likely that Aranea put him to sleep. We know she had been manipulating Gamzee in the meteor to get her hands on the Void Ring.

  • Why don't any of the carapacians talk in chatlogs? Hussie doesn't even bother to put any of their dialogue in proper quotation either making it really difficult to read what either of them are saying half the time, especially during parts where they talk a lot like the Midnight Crew arc.
    • To emphasize that they aren't players and therefore are substantially more minor characters, though DD shows up in a Serious Business log in A 6 A 5.

Open


  • Here's a pretty glaring mistake for a writer that I frankly can't fathom Hussie hasn't corrected once. In all of Homestuck, Kanaya and Terezi have never interacted. Two of the four trolls to survive their session (discounting Aradia since she's isolated) have never spoken to each other once in nearly 3 years (since they both were introduced prior to Act 5). What's even more confusing is that they don't even comment on each others actions. That's just completely baffling.
    • This is wrong; they interacted in Past Karkat: Wake up.
      • Missing one dialogue in that mammoth flash doesn't negate the point (outside of some of the hyperbolic text); they still don't talk to each other outside that and don't on the meteor. There's no interaction between them at all. There's more deep character development between Terezi and Nepeta, and they interacted only a few times. Hussie clearly can create a relationship between characters with few dialogues, but his avoidance of Terezi and Kanaya interaction just seems like an enormous waste.
      • Just because they didn't talk ON SCREEN didn't mean they didn't talk at all during the whole 3 years on that meteor. That would be silly. I don't think it's a mistake, it's more likely that Andrew didn't have anything important to do with their relationship and therefore he didn't.
      • One take on this is that Terezi and Kanaya are very, very similar characters, and (unlike Vriska and Meenah) it's not in a way that would make their interactions interesting to watch. Plus, with 12 trolls, it's natural that some pairings just wouldn't be explored as much as others.
    • This sort of criticism is a little silly. A work shouldn't be judged on all the things it's not but on what it is. Kanaya and Terezi are multifaceted, interesting characters that feel real without ever meeting each other. If Homestuck tried to make every major character talk to each other, it wouldn't be done before the 2020's.
    • An even bigger question is how come Jade and Rose only talked to eachother four times over the course of the entire comic, despite being two main characters who supposedly have a close friendship along with John and Dave, and how come the mentioned four main characters never had an actual conversation with all four of them involved in it (all of the times all four of them have been together, they've only looked at eachother in silence or were too pre-occupied doing other things)

  • Possible answer to the above and another writing blunder. While there are a wide variety of male characters (Compare WV to Karkat to Equius to Spades Slick and they all have different and engaging personalities), Hussie seems to only know how to write three types of girl. Discounting the few female characters outside the main cast (Snowman, WQ, and PM), pretty much every female character is one of three things. Either she's A) Quirky, upbeat, and overall cheerful, maybe with some odd hobby about herself and repressed angst. Look at God tier!Aradia, Dream!Jade, Feferi, Nepeta, Calliope, Roxy, etc. B) Snarky and intelligent, often with serious angst just below the surface (Terezi, Rose, Kanaya, Aranea, Aradia while she was dead, etc). or C) A fierce loner who really wants to help everyone but doesn't know how to (Vriska and Meenah, though they're both mellowing out into a type B). Now B and C are both slight stretches, but A definitely applies. There are some characters who do escape this, Jane being the most prominent, but even she's really just acting as a Gender Flip of John. What's the deal with all of this.
    • Those are some awfully wide categories! The same can be said about male characters: A) Derpy guys who are awkward and/or assholes (John, Jake, Eridan, Cronus, Tavros, Rufioh), B) Guys who have some great skill, usually in technology (Dirk, Dave, Sollux, Equius, Horuss, Roxy, Latula oh wait those are women) or C) Deeply troubled types with traumatic pasts or presents or disabilities (Karkat, Mituna, Caliborn, Tavros, Rufioh oh wait they're already listed). The thing is that most of these characters fit more than just the broad categories that are put forth.
      • Some of those are indeed awfully wide, and were stretches. Nonetheless it's easy to see immediate parallels between characters like Feferi, Aradia, and Jade, the first two of which outright stopped appearing after this was apparent and Jade underwent somewhat sudden Character Development in Act 5 Act 2 to differentiate herself from Feferi. And the fact that the Alpha Kids are too similar to their Beta counterparts (being the Kids rather than the Guardians) is a widely agreed upon thing, with exception to Roxy and sometimes Dirk.
      • After all, Tropes Are Not Bad, but having a few go to character types and then differentiating them in the details is bothersome too. It makes too much of the cast seem similar, like a Wraparound Background where faces change but characters don't.

  • Jake is being presented as a complete idiot socially and is the hero who is meant to beat Lord English So, why is heroism being presented as being stupid as hell? Entitled fools who aren't open-minded and inconsiderate, and somewhat unintelligent are given the power to defeat Lord English? That someone with faith and no brain should be that powerful...that feels incredibly insulting to heroism.
    • Because it's Caliborn doing the choosing as to who his Archrival and Person Who Can Beat Him is.
      • Except that doesn't seem to have anything to do with Jake's role in defeating him as shown in A 6 A 6 A 5, unless you allow the causality to be reversed.
    • Beyond that, Heroism isn't being presented as stupid, and Jake isn't really stupid either. Jake's a bit slow on the uptake but that doesn't make him stupid, and his social skills aren't really that out of the ordinary for teenagers. Caliborn's whole deal with having a "special brain" though... I have no real clue why Hussie's emphasizing that. Pet issue or a Take That! at people who flaunt Aspergers as a reason to be an asshole? It doesn't fit well with the story regardless.
      • Well, since I actually have it, I think its fair to say I am a little offended, but now the headscratcher comes from how he's being seen. He's becoming despondent, unable to see what his own worth is while talking to Roxy. This is sounding far too close to Eridan, for my tastes and we don't need a Hope player like this again. He doesn't really add much if they're so depressed they can't function. Makes me wonder what's so special about the Hope aspect which is useful.
      • I don't think he's like Eridan. While both seem to get depressed, Eridan seemed like he was always melodramatic, Jake has a good reason for being depressed, he feels like he hurt one of his only friends. Also overcoming despair and proving yourself can be interpreted as hope. It's character development to show that he can think instead of just babbling about adventure and romance.
      • Jake's narrative is going through a point where he's at "Hope / Courage is really doing the things that are hard to do", and the whole feelings jam about everything shows Jake is really just a guy who has a hard time understanding stuff. He's still hung over and bummed out; by the time John and co show up he'll probably be thrilled to work with them. Just because he's sad now doesn't mean it's going to become a focal point of his character. Also sorry if I offended you (or if Hussie did), I was more directing that comment at people who claim to have any disease that lets them get away with being rude without suffering consequences, such as Aspergers, Tourettes, etc. It's a pretty common thing on the internet and I wouldn't be surprised if that plays into Caliborn's characterization, but that's neither here nor there.

  • Wait....so who won the battle between Meenah and Vriska? Everything points-in terms of overall power and ability due to her control of luck-that Vriska took the day, but Meenah still calls them her army and they have to bow to her? Now sure I'm following. Still, I would imagine Vriska won.
    • She calls them her army because she managed to beat Vriska, plain and simple.

  • The Revival Clock's view of just and heroic cannot be based on Luck alone, since there is figuratively no context by which you should be able to control it by those means-Aranea would have to have changed the circumstances to make that death "just". How does that work, exactly? Jade's death was anything but, and that's a big piece of bull.
    • Doc Scratch tells us that being slain "justly" is to be subject to corruption and slain by a hero. Jade was already subject to corruption. All that's left is the Hero part. That's why she introduced Jake into the equation. Aranea manipulated the system so that Jake would "beat" Jade, which would leave her vulnerable to being permakilled. Aranea could arguably not count as a hero, but then again, she didn't crush Jade, she just knocked over a building that wouldn't have crushed her if she hadn't been defeated by Jake. Such a weaselly way of killing somebody is evidence that Aranea takes advantage of the literal meaning of the rules; she is related to Vriska after all.
    • Hussie attempts to explain it here; there are realistically no hard and fast boundaries defining a Heroic or Just death, and Jade falls into one of those gray areas. Moreover, Hussie seems to be contradicting Scratch's characterization of a Just death to some degree, suggesting it has more to do with the person dying than the person doing the killing. Keep in mind, Aranea suffered a Just death at the hands of the Condesce, who is not a hero by any stretch of the imagination.

  • If Cherubs/Cherubim only meet to have children and then leave the egg unattended on a random planet, how can they have any sort of culture, much less a complex mythology involving seven silly lost continents?
    • There's plenty of ways you could handwave it. Maybe it somehow gets passed on in their genes. Maybe they have some sort of magic psychic noosphere that imparts such wisdom. Maybe the knowledge of the kingdom was contained in the Juju.

     Misc. 

Resolved


  • Where the hell does Hussie find time to sleep? He updates more often than anyone in the history of webcomics. That’s some damn dedication.
    • Most of the time he stays up late and sleeps during the day, and goes out in the evening if/when he does.

  • As the opening song for Alternia Bound (Arisen Anew) is linked to Vocaloid, could someone tell me which vocaloid? The voice that did the Doctor Who quote might've been a clip from the Who series.
    • Pretty sure the Vocaloid singing in Arisen Anew is Luka Megurine. The clip from Dr. Who is a straight rip from the episode yep.

  • Why use "Savior of the Dreaming Dead" for Jade's ascension? It's a remix of "Doctor" via "Savior of the Waking World" which is John's theme. Unless "Doctor" is going straight into Bootstrapped Theme territory...
    • Actually, "Showtime" is John's theme. The "Savior" titles have been played along side God-tier ascension.
    • I think "Savior of the Waking World" was Awesome enough to merit a redefinition of what the "Doctor" theme meant, changing it from being a motif for LOWAS to being a motif for god tier. It's the same explanation I'd give for "Terezi Owns". That said, I did find the theme's use jarring the first time I listened to it. You're right to call it bootstrapped.

  • Gamzee often says Motherfucking. What would that even mean to a troll?
    • Either Translation Convention, he picked it up while trolling our universe, or something to do with the way they mix genetic material prior to putting it in the pail.
    • Could be a troll that tries to have sex with the Mother Grub directly.
      • It's probably just Translation Convention. "Motherfucking" is rarely used in the context of actually fucking a mother, and is more often used as just a stronger version of the word fucking.
    • Maybe "Motherfucking" is a universal constant?

  • Okay so... What is up with John and Jade's last names? All of the human kids besides them have four letters in their first names and seven letters in their last names. All of the trolls have six letters in both their first and last names. John and Jade, however, have four letters in their first name and six letters in their second name. Seriously, what is up with this? It seems too deliberate to be a coincidence.
    • Andrew has said multiple times that it is in fact coincidence. John was simply the first named, long before Andrew thought to keep up any sort of pattern. When Rose and Dave's names differed, he took care to make sure Jade's name had 6 letters as well, in line with John's. After that, he's kept to the 4/7 pattern, and the troll names were a reflection of that in part.
    • Also, each of the kids' names are 4 letters. Their last names are 7 and 6 letters. 7 + 6 = ?
    • Homestuck Beta was posted on April 10. 4 letters in John's first name, 10 overall.

  • Why does the Recipe Modus display different Grist costs for a given item's various alchemization formulas? The alchemiter ultimately determines the item's identity from a unique 8-character string, which should be the same for the given item no matter how it was derived. It seems highly unlikely that items can have multiple codes.
    • Think of it as using several different processes to achieve the same result. One process can naturally be more expensive than another yet still give the same result.
    • The question could have been worded better. The problem is that the alchemiter can only detect the final code, not the recipe used to create it. Assuming each item only has one code, the alchemiter shouldn't know which Grist cost to require. Paradox Space feels too much like a Hand Wave to be a viable theory.
      • In that case items could have multiple codes. For instance maybe the final place indicates cost (IE, 00000001 and 00000002 both yield the same item but 00000002 costs more grist). In the range of trillions of possible combinations, it's not unlikely that an item may have 3 or 4 codes. Paradox Space wouldn't apply anyways. The additional cost could also be due to the recipe modus itself, being a "tax" for using it.
      • It could use something other than the alchemiter. Or perhaps we are wrong about how the alchemiter works, if it only appears to work the way we think it does but actually works in a different way that involves time shenanigans and predestination (like everything else in sburb) then it would make sense for different recipes to produce the same item with a different cost.
    • My own guess is that the displayed cost is the cost of alchemizing the individual components, if one were to reverse engineer the recipe. (Explains why a recipe containing a matriorb would be so ridonculous; Kanaya mentioned that the price of alchemizing a new one was astronomical.)

  • Does being God Tier obviate the need to eat? Or have John and Jade been surviving on Gushers for two years?
    • They also had cake. And mushrooms. And whatever was in the fridges + pantries of each of the kid's houses. And a means of duplicating any of them.
      • Also, alchemizers mean combining cake, mushrooms, and pantry contents in varying ways and with various other things to create new foodstuffs; I imagine several weeks were spent on experimenting with food creation alone.
      • Nannasprite made lasagna too for John at one point. Presumably as a ghostly grandmother/mother, she's making sure they eat well enough with ghost food she gets from some place stop asking questions. However a God Tier player theoretically would be okay to starve to death and revive endlessly, as long as it wasn't for some form of hunger strike or something that could otherwise be seen as martyrdom.
    • I don't see how starving to death can be considered heroic or just, so yes, it does. But they do discuss getting food from the planets.

  • Where did the Post-Scratch kids get their names?
    • Jane and Jake in the usual fashion, Roxy and Dirk probably just picked their own.
    • Or were left names by Rose and Dave.

  • So what's with the recurring joke that magic doesn't exist? We've got a story that spans over multiple universes, deals a lot in space/time travel, involves a game that destroys the players' universe and sending them on a quest to make a new one, has an afterlife created from memory fragments of the deceased who reside there, has machines that can create the most unusual of items by combining the data of two or more otherwise mundane items, each player of the aforementioned game has the potential to become a demigod with all sorts of cool powers, and a good chunk of the events happening (at least the most important ones) because of the results of said events manipulating the past to prompt said events... and yet somehow magic doesn't exist. Makes sense to me!
    • Hmmm, I think it was sorta confirmed that magic IS real. But none of the things you listed are considered magic in the story, HOWEVER jujus are definitely described as immensely powerful magic artifacts. So magic is real, but very scarce(examples: Lil Cal, Caliborn's cane/machinegun, Caliope's wand/magnum, the red and green suckers, the chain Caliope/Caliborn was bound). I remember the scene were Hussie declared magic "fake as shit", and got filled with lead by LE, but another scenes come to mind, where Caliope was loading her magnum/wand(with precisely one bullet) where she says "Can't very well use magic when your wand is out of bullets." It appears that items with the same duality seen in Problem Sleuth follow the same rules too, eg.: if your tommygun is out of bullets, you can't use the keys to unlock doors; if your magnum is out of bullets(or tiny cueballs) you can't use your wand to do magic stuff. So yes, magic IS real, but Hussie forgot to load his wand.
    • Karkat explains the debate here, in that Sburb makes it so that science and magic become blurred to the point where there's basically no difference, and he tries to convince Kanaya it doesn't matter either way. The two characters who care the most about the issue - Eridan and Rose - both end up going crazy and dying after a short rampage. It also doubles as a Mythology Gag to Wizardy Herbert.

  • The kids spend three years on a meteor being chased by Bec Noir through the void. Why not stop and fight him there? That's by far the best place to do so, since his Bec powers don't work there (as John proved, even a single God Tier can take him on and win in that state, so Rose and Dave shouldn't have had any trouble, especially not with the remaining trolls backing them up.) Well... they can't actually stop, but why not have the God Tiers fly off the meteor, kill Bec, then fly back? It seems like it's by far the best chance they'll ever get to do so.
    • Time and Space dosen't work linearly in the Furthest Ring. Even if they flew off the meteor, it's doubtful that they would find Bec Noir, and it's even more unlikely that they'd manage to get back to the meteor.
      • It has been said that mastery of either Time or Space is required to navigate the Furthest Ring, and Dave is the Kinght of Time.
    • If they fly off and kill him, they won't be able to get back for the same reason Bec never catches up to them. They also can't slow the meteor, since that would alter their path through paradox space and they wouldn't arrive at their destination.

  • Aranea tells Roxy that Jake couldn't keep his hands off her [Aranea]. My question is why did she say that? Was it because she knew Brain Ghost!Dirk was there, or did she think Roxy had a thing for Jake?
    • More like she was nursing her bruised ego. She was trying to go with a "seductive" approach to recruiting Jake, but his trauma from Trickster Mode made him freak the fuck out. Aranea however, took this as him being revolted by her, because to her, she is the center of everything, so she passive aggressively tries to make Jake out as a horndog at the earliest opportunity as yet another reminder of her pettiness.

  • why the hell hasn't anyone force-fed Gamzee sopor slime? It's pretty clear that sober Gamzee is dangerous and that everyone knows that he's dangerous but so far the characters did nothing for several years and then just locked him in a refridgerator. It doesn't upset me too much because it's just a webomic, but it's still pretty disturbing to me that when faced with a person with a curable mental disorder, no one does anything to cure him and instead decides to tie him up and lock him inside of a small enclosed space.
    • It's possible that they simply don't have any sopor slime. Its explicit purpose is to help the trolls sleep by mitigating their Nightmares, but since the creation of the dreambubbles that's a non-issue. We know for a fact that you can't alchemize something unless you either have it captchalogued or can otherwise figure out a recipe for it, meaning if none of the trolls had any lying around and couldn't figure out how to create it, there simply isn't any. Chances are Gamzee ate all of his slime, and either polished off the slime the other trolls had, or else it went bad or something and they never bothered to make more. By the time Gamzee went nuts, there wasn't any slime left to give him and they didn't have the ability to make any.
    • The other thing is that it's debatable whether the slime could even be considered a "cure". There are a lot of implications that Gamzee's murderous subjugglator persona is his sober personality and the only reason he was ever agreeable is because he was always high as a kite. Giving him slime would be less curing his issues and more just sedating him to the point where he wasn't dangerous. Which is still probably preferable to locking him in a fridge, but again, they might not have any slime anyway.

Open

  • Leprechaun reproduction. I'm aware it's more of a self-deprecating reference to the complexities of troll romance than anything, but. Well. Damn.

  • The Furthest Ring seems a lot like general relativity (most likely with the cosmological constant not constant). It acts like special relativity on a small scale, but on a large scale nothing works linearly. There are a few problems with this.
    • When the trolls went to the Green Sun, they followed the path of the light moving from the Green Sun to them. Since the light was going in the opposite direction, they'd have had to go back in time. They could have followed the moving image of the Green Sun that would happen due to the volatile nature of paradox space in the Furthest Ring, but that would only work to a limited extent, as it's possible for two images of the Green Sun to merge and vanish. The best guess I can come up with is that they're really close to the Green Sun, and the only reason it's not illuminating their universe is due to negative curvature of paradox space making it bigger on the outside.
    • Jade says that she and John can't go any faster. They can make their trip subjectively as short as they want by going arbitrarily close to the speed of light. This won't get them there much earlier, but that doesn't seem to be what John is complaining about. Even if it was, following the path light would take (which they're pretty much doing if they're going near light speed and not steering) only locally guarantees getting there soonest. Making small changes in there path would take longer, but they could most likely get there earlier by taking a completely different path.

  • The conversations between the humans and trolls are not in the same order from each others' perspectives, due to time shenanigans. This makes sense. The problem is that it's the only thing not in the same order. Ghosts live in the furthest ring where there is no global time, yet every conversation between two ghosts or between a ghost and a human seems to fit in a perfectly linear order. Is this just a coincidence?
    • That's a fair criticism, but there is one exception. Aradia's first foray into the Dreambubbles, where she meets up with sleeping people and ghosts from all over the timeline.


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