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The Crow Strider AU is an Alternate Universe Homestuck comic by Meraki Sunset. It can be read here or here.

One day, during the three year trip through the Medium, John suggests that Davesprite try using Dave's Quest Bed to give himself an actual body. It works, and ends up changing the entire course of the story...

Tropes

  • Abusive Parents:
    • As in canon, all three iterations of Dave have to come to terms with Bro being this.
    • Downplayed as it didn't reach the degrees of Bro, but Jade says she was practically groomed for SBURB by Grandpa because he knew she was supposed to play it. He also mixes up her name with Ann, Joey and Jude's sometimes. She later states that he often left her alone for months on end, only returning briefly to teach her taxidermy and hunting or to store something he collected on the main land.
    • The Condesce being this to Nanna and Grandpa ends up being a major motivator for Nanna joining the final battle.
  • Accidental Misnaming: In flashbacks, Grandpa misnames Jade several times; most notably calling her Ann, Joey or Jude.
  • Adaptational Badass: Crow, thanks to God Tiering, has Dave's Knight of Time powers. Also, thanks to how John resurrects them, every player that was dead by the end of the story reaches the God Tiers.
  • Age Lift: A rare case of this being a physical power — Nanna, upon ascending to God Tier, gains the ability to change her age at will, going from an old lady, to a younger adult and even turning into a kid at one point (making her look identical to Jane). She decides to stay a youngish adult, since she missed being able to stand up straight.
  • Alternate Self: Every kid but Jake ends up with one. John has June, Rose has Jas, Dave has Crow, Jade has Josh, Jane has Nanna, Dirk has Hal, and Roxy has the other Roxy.
  • Ascended Extra: Nannasprite is given a significantly heightened role in the story, acting as both a Parental Substitute for the cast and later regaining her physical body by dying on Jane's Quest Bed.
  • Beware the Silly Ones: In the "Game Over" timeline, the Mayor knocks the Condesce out and briefly gives the group a fighting chance against her. The author confirms that he did this on purpose, since the Condesce, like the Black King, is a tyrant and the Mayor is still a rebel.
  • Big Bad: The Condesce is the most prominent villainous force in the comic.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: As in canon, the Condesce does this to Jane and Jade, but this time Crow gets dragged into it too.
  • Call-Forward: During their conversation after defeating the Condesce, Rose and Jas discuss the Ultimate Self, and Rose comes to the conclusion that reaching the Ultimate Self would make one detached and cold, to which Jas responds "Hehe, like a robot." Most of the Ultimate Selves in the epilogue had to be stored in soulbots to contain their being. Lampshaded by a log on the same page, saying "She knows," while also justified thanks to Jas having become Rose's Ultimate Self and having the knowledge of all Roses across all timelines.
  • Came Back Strong: By the end of the story, EVERYONE has gone God Tier.
  • Death by Adaptation:
    • Thankfully a temporary example, thanks to John's paradox abilities — in canon, it was ambiguous as to whether or not the Mayor was killed in the "Game Over" timeline. Here, the Condesce unambiguously killed him when she regained consciousness.
    • Nannasprite dies in an alternate timeline. Unlike the above example, it doesn't get undone.
    • Gamzee dies toward the end, though fortunately, Tavros gets him to his Quest Bed in time.
  • Demoted to Extra: Lord English only appears once here, when Gamzee talks about the three years he spent under his control. This is justified as there's only one Lord English throughout Paradox Space, and it's the canon Vriska and her ghost army that fights him, meaning there's not much room for our cast to encounter him.
  • Dies Differently in Adaptation:
    • If they died at all in the original, the Mayor is assumed to have died in the Game Over timeline when Aranea and the Condesce bashed planets together. Here, the Condesce just stabs him.
    • In the original, God Cat is erased from existence after being prototyped with Tavrosprite. Here, it's prototyped with Halsprite instead.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: Everyone is alive again, the Condesce and Lord English are vanquished, Jack Noir has implicitly turned over a new leaf and the heroes return to Earth, ready to start a new life together as a family.
  • Exact Words: Upon retconning the timeline, anybody who enters the new timeline must have their counterparts die; in this case, John, Jade, Roxy, Crow, Nanna, Arquius, Erisol and Fefeta all entered the new timeline. While Arquius never happened thanks to Halsprite prototyping with GCAT instead, Roxy and Jake's kernels were used to create Davepeta and Jasperose, Nannasprite dies in the explosion of LOWAS and the Yellow Yard group never tries to ascend Davesprite (thus meaning he wouldn't realign his identity to become Crow), John survives LOWAS's explosion and Jade wasn't there when it happened... but "John" and "Jade" are both still dead in this universe by the time our John shows up since the two transitioned identities during the three year trip and became June and Josh.
  • First Time Feeling: When Halsprite combines with GCAT, he panics because feeling warmth for the first time makes him think he's overheating and teleports into LOFAF in an effort to "cool off his processors".
  • Five-Second Foreshadowing: During the fight with the Condesce, Roxy and Kanaya get healed. However, Jane is currently asleep and Feferi's Life powers are being cancelled out by the Condesce's latent Thief powers. Everybody healed has a scar-like piece of healing energy over their eyes just like Nannasprite, although Nanna doesn't have that scar herself in her human form anymore.
  • For Want Of A Nail: Like woah.
    • Crow Strider's existence, obviously, but many other Sprites get the same resurrection treatment.
    • During the "[S] Game Over" timeline, Crow ends up Brainwashed and Crazy along with Jade. Later, the Mayor gets his hands on Terezi's jetpack and uses it to fly up to the Condesce and knock her out, temporarily relinquishing her control over Jade and Crow. While the events of Game Over still come to pass, more people end up being spared from it.
    • John makes some deviations from Terezi's plans, collecting Equius, Nepeta, Feferi, Eridan, and Sollux's bodies not too long after their deaths so he could revive them in the new timeline. He also mistakenly retcons in between Erisol and Arquius arguing over Fefetasprite, which gives Fefeta the opportunity to slip away and hide amongst the confusion, averting her Fefetasplosion and death. Subsequently, in the retconned session the prototyping goes completely differently as described below.
    • Instead of prototyping with God Cat like Vriska intended, Tavrosprite prototypes with a Fairy Bull, in defiance of Vriska.
    • Lil' Hal gets prototyped alongside ARquiusprite, due to John screwing with the timeline. Then, God Cat pounces on him, resulting in him being double-tier prototyped with it.
    • Dad Crocker dies when his jail cell explodes.
    • In June and Josh's timeline, Nannasprite is killed when LOWAS explodes, leaving the kids without a guardian and averting the Me's a Crowd of the canon timeline.
  • Fusion Dance: As per usual, prototyping can cause this, but it's expanded on here. When double-tier prototyped, the game simply puts two parts together enough such that they can co-exist without any attention to the sources or if they actually work together well. In some cases this works out fine, such as Nanna or Jaspers who only had one intelligent component each, Arquius and Fefeta having compatible personalities, and Davesprite and Tavrosprite's Tinkerbull prototyping having one personality mostly overtake the other, some worked out much poorer, such as Erisol, Tavris or Jadesprite thanks to the game failing to account for the mismatch in components. Ascending results in a complete reconstruction of both components to fit together properly, becoming one. For instance, Jasperosesprite^2 was hectic and fast, combining a complete overload of knowledge from Rose with a need to express it from Jaspers, resulting in a Motor Mouth who felt as if she couldn't talk fast enough, but after ascending, Jas is much calmer and able to process her knowledge much easier.
  • In Spite of a Nail:
    • The events of [S] Game Over still happen, leading to the deaths of Karkat, Jane, Jake, Kanaya, Rose, Gamzee, the Mayor, Aranea, Terezi and Dirk.
    • The triple tiered sprites, Davepeta and Jasprose, still come into existence, just in different ways.
  • Like Brother and Sister: John and June very quickly hit it off.
  • Like Father, Like Son: During a brief flashback montage, we see Mr. Egbert's father and Nanna's husband, who, barring the mustache, has the exact same facial structure as his son (read: nothing but his nose.)
  • Little Bit Beastly: By the end of the comic, we get this with Jade and Josh (part-dog), Crow and Davepeta (part-bird), Tavros (part-fairy bull), Hal Strider and Jasprose (part-cat).
  • Meaningful Rename: Davesprite, after becoming human again, calls himself Crow Strider.
  • Me's a Crowd: To incredible degrees.
    • John and Jade have their post-retcon counterparts, June and Josh, who managed to survive their fated doom thanks to a loophole.
    • Dave has Crow and Davepeta.
    • Rose has Jasperose, later Jas.
    • Jane has Nanna who ended up becoming human again thanks to ascending on Jane's Sacrificial Slab.
    • Roxy has post-retcon Roxy, who was brought back from the dead after the Condesce was defeated.
    • Dirk has Hal and Arquius, the former managing to get a body thanks to prototyping himself and later ascending.
    • Fefeta and Erisol also co-exist with their living components, alongside Davepeta and Arquius.
  • Off with Her Head!: Her Imperious Condescension is finally killed when Karkat beheads her with his sickle.
  • Power Dyes Your Hair: After ascending, Crow's hair turns black, likely because he's part-crow. This also applies to any sprite that was prototyped with an animal (barring Jade and Josh), if the animal's color was different to their hair color.
  • Spared by the Adaptation:
    • Thanks to Crow's intervention, Jade survives the Game Over timeline.
    • EVERY Troll who died in canon gets revived in the climax, thanks to John captchaloguing their bodies and Quest Beds.
  • Suddenly Speaking: While described as a chatterbox, Fefetasprite never talked in the original comic onscreen before her death, while her increased screentime here gives her more chances to do so.
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Twofold with Gamzee:
    • His being forced into sobriety by running out of sopor pie had poor effects on his mental state after spending so long constantly stoned. This made it easier for Lord English to turn him into the maniac that skulked about the meteor for three years.
    • He also died soon after his mind control was severed, as Lord English would be unlikely to actually feed or rest Gamzee's body, always leaving him in far off places without much food whenever he relinquished control. The only thing that kept him alive was the Cherub's possession. This warrants Nanna to revive him, and Tavros to take him to his quest bed before he dies again to help him ascend and gain immortality.
  • Take a Third Option: It's hotly debated in the fandom whether or not Gamzee was driven insane by Lil Cal's influence, if he was naturally like that when he was sober, or both, and the former options are debated in the comic. However, a newly ascended Nanna deduces it to be something else; he was indeed possessed by Lord English, but he also was in a poor mental state due to how quickly he was forced into sobriety after running out of pie, making him easier to influence. She puts a modified Tiaratop on his head to cut off the mind control, and imbues it with Life power to help it heal his brain, turning him back to his old self.
  • Team Mom: Nannasprite, being the Token Adult of the group, acts as this to our heroes.
  • Wham Line:
    • God Tier Calliope explains to Josh in a Dream Bubble what the "Alpha" Timeline we've been following really is: It's an Absolved Timeline, a timeline very similar to the Alpha, but not canon. An Absolved Timeline can reach the same end as the canon Alpha Timeline, but unlike the Alpha Timeline it can be rendered doomed if the session becomes unwinnable.
    • The first of many in quick succession — when Aradia is watching everything be destroyed by a black hole when Vriska is facing off against Lord English, we see another Aradia... and next ot each of them are arrows saying "Our Aradia"... and "Canon Aradia".
  • Winged Humanoid: Crow Strider, obviously, but Davepeta and all of the God-Tier trolls also qualify.

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