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Post by plainWonder on Apr 27, 2019 22:12:51 GMT
Meat Page 6. I gotta say, snatching people from the Game Over timeline was a good way to invest us back into these characters. Plus, unlike the post-canon selves, they don't have 'certain victory' all written over them - by which I mean that I think it's unlikely they would be killed outside Universe C, since its existence and their ability to live in it was their Ultimate Reward. Admittedly, the planet they've inherited is less than ideal, but that was never stipulated in the rules. Meanwhile, John himself with his retcon powers remains more earthed in the plot, also because this was the timeline he originated from in the first place. Still unsure how the fact there's 1 John but 2 versions of his selves will get resolved though. I kind of doubt the New Game Plus versions (Cosmic Reset? still unsure on what to call them) are going to be joining their adult selves in Universe C, though the idea of the post-canon selves serving as guardians amuses me. I also doubt the NGP's are going to create their own timeline in Universe C to inhabit, with John joining them after 7 years. They would be deprived of 7 years of John, and even though he mostly kept to himself in the post-canon timeline, that would kind of suck, and not even Dirk creating an Autoresponder for John could bridge the time difference adequately. So, I figure they might just pick up one of the spare teen Johns (or rather, export one from the timeline, just like how John is now duplicating the Game Over selves). Maybe the one (John) that John sent to LOWAS when he went back to consult Terezi. ... Hmm, after seeing Blaperile checking out the Load Game & Save Game links on Homestuck, I think I've decided to call this new timeline the Reload timeline!!  Anyway, I suppose we're in for a perspective switch back to John now, and indeed like I said previously, I think LOLAR is the most likely candidate. It wouldn't feel entirely right for John to leave Rose hanging for now in favour of, say, fetching Dirk first. Also I'm interested to see whether Terezi is still there - I think she might actually have left already to go clownhunting. Though it would interest me to see whether John would contemplate his black feelings for his version of Terezi, upon seeing this teen version of her. --- "The sky is really blue. But it’s a different kind of blue than Earth C’s sky; it’s less, somehow, like someone took a photo of the sky and turned the contrast down a little, just enough to make the clouds blend into the horizon." ... This is Andrew Hussie criticizing his own art, isn't it? Hahah! This must be LOLAR, so I guess it's back to John now, since we're in Command Prompt Land again. "That is to say, it isn’t the kind of sky promised by a paradise planet. Just an ordinary one." Oh sure, that's the in-story explanation: it lacks promise. "You realize suddenly how much you’ve missed the ordinary, as opposed to the supposedly perfect." Oooh, heheh, guess John got bored by the idyllic parts of Earth C. "You’ve been away from home almost as many years as you lived there. It’s not just the sky. Everything else is exactly and nothing like you remembered it: the scent of damp grass, the quality of the air, the solitude." Wait what? John went back to Earth?? What plot point could he mess up there without messing up the events leading up to the Reload timeline? ... Has he travelled back to his own atmospheric page? Since he says he's "home", it isn't the exile's future or Dirk and Roxy's. Guess it'll be either John's actual home or Jane's, but... What could he do here that wouldn't mess up the timeline?? ... Steal Jane's Dad just before she Enters? No, wait, she tried to follow him around on LOCAH... Yeah, Blaperile's correct in that if he sees his Dad, he'll be very sad. "A woodpecker raps away incessantly at the tree with the tire swing outside your old bedroom window." XDSFSFSF, so it's really his home, in the past! ... I would rather like him to visit his Dad's past, but I doubt we'll ever see his childhood. Still, what could Rose have sent him here to retrieve? "You couldn’t think of anywhere else to go, so you and your little army are sitting in a circle in your old backyard exactly one week before the meteors hit." Hopy shit, he didn't zap them to blankspace?  Hah, I guess John's at school and Dad's at work. And the neighbours... Well, the suburb might be deserted during office hours, actually. Would be funny if in the background, an elder crazy cat lady is seen ogling them from behind her curtains, or something. Wow, okay, so, in case he's already went and fetched... everyone of the B1 and B2 kids, and his "little army" is complete, this must be a time skip! That must've been an awkward meeting altogether! Welp, so much for the conversation with Terezi, and seeing Karkat & Kanaya's response (in case he fetched Jane right about the time she was on LOFAF). "It’s you, Rose, Dave, Jade, and all four of your teenage progenitors, each dressed in god tier garb. No trolls. No one who can die" Yep... Guess, like some of the platform conversations, as well as the LOMAX ones, we'll just have to imagine all the fluff. It's the Meat path for a reason, after all. We're jumping straight to the Meat of the rest of the "meat-up".  "No one who can die from anything less than a heroic sacrifice. At least, this is what you assume to be the reasoning for Rose’s instructions to assemble your party this way." Well, Rose might have had a Light vision showing only they went to confront Caliborn, so then this is just self-fullfilling prophecy. Guess we're left with the idea that, in the abandoned session, everything might still have gone to shit, if no-one of these kids came back. We know how the confrontation between Aranea and )(IC went, and how the trolls fared against them all. Eeesh, I hope that's not the fate in store for these versions of Terezi, Kanaya and Karkat. One Game Over death for them was enough. "Wind slices down the street, between the neat rows of bungalows. It’s chilly, carrying air from the mountaintops with it. Even that feels different. The wind moves through you now, under your skin and right into your bones, skimming their hollows the same way it does the homes of your salamander neighbors, or the open mailbox in front of your childhood house." The wind still skims the void, but the boy is part of the wind now. Hey, I didn't know of the mountains near John's home. Are they in the direction of Pipe lake? "The smell of a cake baking wafts from the open window and the sick stench of browning sugar fills the yard. You used to hate that too, but now it makes you want to—" ... PFffff, so Dad IS home. Unless he put a cake in the oven and put a timer on, we know he owns a timer. Now I picture Dad seeing a bunch of people in coloured pyjamas in his yard and immediately putting a cake on. Those poor, homeless clowns deserve some real food after all. "> Dude, don’t cry in front of all the cool teen versions of your friends. You hold back your tears with a big, ugly snort." Aww... I actually thought he wanted to just run in and hug his Dad, actually. But this... "Jake is sort of ruining the mood anyway by bouncing away on your old Green Slime pogo. Doesn’t he realize how dangerous that thing is? Of course not. The fool." Jake, stop, what are you doing. Behave yourself, man! It's like he's a goddamned empty-headed consort. "Dave fractures the silence by broaching a subject that’s on everyone’s mind but yours, apparently." Why he's an adult now? "DAVE: so whats gonna happen to everyone we left in the wrecked time line" ... How thoughtful, actually. I mean, John can't just dismiss them as irrelevant. No matter the actual state of the timeline and their relevance to the ending, Kanaya's Rose's girlfriend, Terezi is Dave's ex, Karkat is still John's buddy and the mayor is the mayor! The other dudes, PM and the villains, as well as the sprites though, are less relevant to this party. Hope John doesn't say the timeline has vanished into the void by now, like Alt Future Dave's. "JOHN: uh, well. JOHN: i don’t know actually. i’ve been to that time line four times now and it always pretty much goes to shit." It also happens to be your timeline. So, what does he count as his separate appearances in the timeline, then? He appeared in Dave's room, out in LOHAC, on LOFAF, on Derse, went back to LOHAC, appeared after Game Over, zapped back to meet with Terezi, and now he's zapped back to retrieve everyone! Maybe he's taking some of those appearances as a single one. Like the original Game Over is one, Reload is two, and then some other times? "DAVE: oh ROSE: This has been bothering me as well. Is Kanaya going to be ok? ROSE: And by Kanaya, I guess I mean... everyone?" I knew it. ... Can Kanaya be a euphemism for everyone from now on? "DAVE: yeah what about karkat DAVE: and terezi DAVE: and the MAYOR?? JADE: oh my god!!!!! DAVE: what JADE: actually dave, i hate to say it but... JADE: i think john might have actually saved the mayor by bringing us all here?" Okay, Jade is indeed fine again. Hey, yeah, she was about to threaten the mayor to get Dave to cooperate, wasn't she? Ooooh, this marks it, this is the first time every B1 kid was featured in the same conversation. What a unique accomplishment! "DAVE: jade that is seriously uncool JADE: i KNOW! JADE: i was gonna kick him right into the lava! DAVE: that is fucked up on so many levels i dont even know where to begin DAVE: its like an escher staircase of cartoon villainy" Yes, Grimbark Jade wasn't all bark! But her idea of villainy was childish on some levels still, because that's just what she's like! "DAVE: i got nothing DAVE: its so DAVE: so... JADE: grimbark? :B woof woof DAVE: jesus no jade its stone cold evil DAVE: i cant believe you just said that shit and then woofed at me DAVE: i cant DAVE: i cant even look at you right now" Yes, Dave was really attached to the mayor in this timeline, even more so than in the final timeline leading to Universe C. But uh, welp, I hope this doesn't cause any fractures! We got to remember, they aren't in the best place here, emotionally. All of them still have all these unresolved psychological issues, more so than the post-canon selves. "JOHN: uh, everyone, can we... Everyone turns to look at you immediately, like you’re an authority. Which you kind of are." Yes, John, you can't bring a group of teenagers together as an adult without knowing something about handling emotional outbursts. Face it... You're a dad now.  Or at least a big brother. "You are struck with the sudden and uncomfortable realization that you are the only adult in the yard. You’ve never felt like an adult until this moment. Eighteen came and went and nothing really changed except that you’re pretty certain you could grow a bitchin’ mustache now if you wanted." That's just how it is, you feel like the same vaguely irresponsible person until you are trust back into a group of people where the age difference is felt the hardest. And heheh, now I'm reminded of Davesprite's note impersonating Dad, chiding John about growing facial hair in his absence. "And you might even have one by now, if you didn’t feel a sense of duty to uphold the sacred Egbert family tradition of shaving at least once per day, even if it isn’t really necessary. You owe at least that much to the memory of your departed father." Aww. "JOHN: let’s chill out for a minute. i’m sure this is all very confusing to all of you. JOHN: about the time line you’re leaving behind... yeah, i get it. it’s weird. JOHN: i’ve already left one major time line behind. well, two if you count the one i just came from, where we’re all adults. JOHN: the truth is, i have no idea what happens to these time lines and all the people living in them, when i just... zap out of them, to use my retcon powers to change stuff?" For doomed timelines it's simple: you either die and become a ghost, you go back to change the timeline, or you get erased when someone does the second thing. But for John's retconned timelines, yeah, it's not as clear. If it doesn't work like with doomed timelines, there's already a bunch of duplicate timelines out there with associated ghosts in the dreambubbles. Meaning a lot of new confused human ghosts, which we haven't seen anything of until now. I wonder, dead or alive, if any of these duplicates will be brought up again. Well, besides a John like I've already theorized. "JOHN: they might stop existing completely. i don’t know. JOHN: the thing is, we can’t really think about it. JOHN: it’s tough, but if we’re all acting like heroes here, and trying to do the right thing, then we have to put it all behind us. JOHN: it’s a sacrifice we’re making. JOHN: i mean, we’re risking our lives by fighting a powerful monster, sure." This would be a rousing speech if you weren't the one to have kidnapped them. And, seeing as you're an adult and they're teens, kidnap is still the right word here. Can't wait to hear input from the B2 kids about this, actually. Dirk could blow all John's arguments of the table in a heartbeat, actually. Heheh. HEARTbeat. "JOHN: but the sacrifice i’m talking about... is saying goodbye to the life we thought we belonged to, and all the people in it. JOHN: probably forever. JOHN: it sucks, and i’m sorry i had to ask this of you all. JOHN: but there’s no other way. JOHN: everyone who has ever existed, and will ever exist, is counting on us... i think? JOHN: so... JOHN: yeah. > Shrug." So on the one hand, John acknowledges he might have left Earth C forgood, but on the other hand he saw it as a goodbye, not a farewell. Still, he's right to address the threat Lord English poses to Paradox Space as well as the continued existence of the universes inside Genesis Frogs. I mean, the continued existence without threat of annihilation by a time travelling mobster. "It’s all you can think to do to punctuate your speech of lukewarm inspirational value. Judging from the confused looks from the others, all of them may share your assessment of your own oratorical skills, except for one person. She’s perked up at your spiel, regarding you with alert and admiring eyes." Boyfriend material, isn't he, Roxy? Yeah, how's John going to take this rehash of their first meeting. It's one thing to long back to a moment, but to revisit it, him an adult and she a teen? Awwwwkwwwwaaaard. "ROXY: that was a fine ass speech and idk if i speak for the rest of my peeps here but im fuckin psyched ROXY: lets do this shit" Well yeah, Roxy did have her shit together the best out of everyone. She overcame her character flaw (the drinking) on her own. "She *wonks* at you." Her typos transcend media. " JOHN: uh. You weren’t prepared to get passively hit on by the Definitely Not Legal version of a girl you used to have a crush on at the age she was when you first met her, only a few hours after you watched the Actually Legal version of her engage in passionate hand-holding with her possibly aromantic skeleton alien monster girlfriend. You start to sweat, and again the unwelcome odor of undercooked meat emanating from your body makes itself known to your nose." Of course Roxy is more okay to hit on him, see her Dad crush. Meanwhile, John has all this *history* he's thinking about. Also, he might actually don't want to interfere with the "whatever" that is Roxy/Calliope! That would be sportive of him, if it were true. Lastly, how many times is the meat-odored sweat going to remind John which path he's in, hahah. ... Is it the same in the Candy path, some sickening sweet smell sticking to him? Crumbs of sugar in his hair? "You quickly distance your mind from any additional discomfiting thoughts about your old and semi-ex flame, and propel yourself into a wildly unrehearsed tactical planning session. You review each of your abilities, strengths, and weaknesses, and then cobble together a reasonably sound approach to besieging a young and bratty version of Lord English by way of surprise attack. The planning is mostly disorganized and structureless, although some common themes that often recur involve you and your original three friends leading the charge, since you are the oldest and wisest, and therefore the strongest, with the exception of Jade, whose gaudy array of powers make her the most formidable of the group, bar none. Aside from that, it appears the consensus is that the melee will likely devolve into an absolute free-for-all—at least going by the general patterns of incoherent banter, shit-talking, and points of pedantic tactical disagreement plaguing the jam session. You overhear someone making mention of... a huge, gay hope bubble? That can’t be right, but you didn’t catch who said it. A flamboyant pink spell? Yeah, this conversation is off the rails now." Yeah, these guys were never good at the finesses of planning things out. Partially due to their teen problems, but in the final timeline before Collide, they weren't really planning anything either beyond deciding how to split up. ... How and where did the Hope and Heart powers of Jake and Dirk become known to the B2 kids, though? Did John whisk them away at a later point in their timeline, after Brain Ghost Dirk had already manifested and Jake was killed once by Aranea? Oh, and only by rereading do I understand John designated himself as the oldest and wisest and strongest barring Jade, I thought he meant all four B1 kids, that couldn't be right. "At the precise moment you believe the meeting has outlasted its usefulness, Jake does you the favor of effectively pounding the gavel for adjournment by rocking back a bit too far on your lawn pogo and launching himself over the top of the ride on the next bounce. He face-plants right into the dirt." Still the cosmic butt monkey then. Gotta love the juxtaposition with his more 'mature' version on the previous page. Also, maybe Blaperile is right and the Hope & Heart powers were speculated on, not actually witnessed. Unless Rose had a Light epiphany. "Dirk goes to help your yard clean the Jake off its dirt." ... Yes. That is definitely a thing that can be really happening. "Jade follows, to help out. It seems she wants to chat with Jake, considering it’s the first time they’ve met, from her perspective. Some eruptions of chatter can be heard from other members of the group." Aww, okay, it's time for a platform conversation parallel. Who'll approach John then, Roxy? But Rose would want to talk to her at some point, too. "It’s easy to forget, since the reunion between your friends and all your young relatives happened so long ago from your point of view, but this is all quite novel to everyone here. They’ve hardly had a moment to process it, since your plan to drag them all off to fight Lord English has understandably stolen the thunder of an otherwise poignant homecoming. Poor kids, you think." Wow, this alienation is really something. It must be jarring to experience some shit for the semi-second time, seeing people with baggage that, from your perspective, they've already cast aside. "You decide to give the teens some space to work through their shit before you take off to save the universe." Off screen reunion time! But where will John head to? "You end up wandering all the way around to the other side of your house," Is he going to meet Dad by accident? Or at least watch him from a distance? I figured he couldn't do much in the yard without being noticed if Dad was home, but maybe I was wrong. I like Blaperile's idea that John will leave him a note. He could forge one, making it look like Nanna wrote it, actually. ... Or maybe he will write something his teen self wouldn't know how to put into words, yet... "Your dad’s sitting right there, smoking his pipe and operating his professional-looking, boring, gray PDA. He’s got the kitchen timer set up on his desk, and you can hear the notes of his favorite fatherly jazz album filtering out through the window, which is open only an inch." Oh, so Dad is home!! Guess he was to engrossed in his interests to notice anything amiss, and John was ignorant of his Dad's actions that day, apparently. ... No mention of the Crosbytop, but then that might have been too silly for this emotional moment. Poor John. He won't be able to contact him without messing up the timeline, and anything less than direct contact (a note, PDA message) might ring hollow in his ears too. It's sad to think, but there's no saving his Dad, not without creating another timeline, and that might have unforeseen consequences. But John might still have thought about it, or start thinking about it. Unless he feels that doing so would rob the event of importance, plus that he would start feeling obligated to save everyone's loved ones once he started. His Dad raised him better than to be so self-centered! "The sun is hitting the glass in such a way that you can’t see his face." Oh, he's facing the window? I thought he was sitting behind the desk, but apparently he was somewhere else, near the grammophone, perhaps. Also, featureless guardian, that never stopped being a thing! "> This is probably the last time you’ll ever have the chance to talk to him... The urge is overwhelming. But you can’t, and not just because your feet won’t move and your throat is closing up. It’s just that... it would be a really bad idea to bother him. It would totally freak him out, to have an adult version of his son show up out of the blue and knock on his window like a creep. He probably wouldn’t even recognize you." :/ True enough. But John didn't think about rewriting the timeline to save him so much as how his immediate action would be responded to in the moment. "> Fair enough. It’s time to go, John." The narrative prompts are a lot more lenient and respectful than in Homestuck proper. "You return to the backyard. Your teen friends have split off into genetically segmented groups: Roxy and Rose sitting in the grass, Jade and your shared ecto-parents laughing together by the Green Slime pogo, and the Striders leaning against the farthest fence, with a tense foot and a half of space between them. It’s heartwarming." I think the Strider conversation is going about as good as on LOPAK. Hopefully even smoother, because the original took a while to get going. Though it must be a tad painful for John to watch all this unfold, seeing as he can't have the reunion he so desires. "But something doesn’t feel right about it to you, possibly for selfish reasons. It’s the selfishness of your own perspective, of wanting the memories you had of the reunion between all these people to be the most notable and legitimate manifestation of this event. To see the moment echo, or play out all over again, to overhear the heartfelt confessions repeat themselves... It feels cheap. To you, that is. To the man who lived through it all before and selfishly doesn’t want to have the memory tarnished with a tawdry reprisal" Yeah, John was hoping that lending them legitimacy through the retcon would improve on the conversations being had. And his memory of the event he experienced was already so gilded, his expectations were sky-high in this regard. ... I feel like the narration might be acknowledging the grown-up fans in this. "You wonder. Do you see these teen versions of your friends as “real”? Are you treating them, at Rose’s behest, as simple puppets? Doing your part to insist they fill friend-shaped recesses in an essential plan to stabilize all else that can be considered important, a distinction no longer applying to them? Do you care at all about whatever fate it may be that you are sentencing these children to? Are you becoming as complicit in the fatalistic evils of Paradox Space as Lord English himself? Are you becoming a monster, John Egbert?" These are good questions for John to have. Because for him to not have qualms, he would be the monster he fears to become. John has to open his heart to them. Blaperile has a good point though, John might have felt this alienated from the post-canon versions of his friends too, whether he realizes it or not. That could explain him losing touch with them. But yeah. He's here now, adult or not. He's got to make due, and see if he can't reconnect with either version of his friends. He'll become a better friend for it. John never had a problem with meeting another version of himself like the other kids had, but maybe it was all along because that kind of existential crisis is only caused in him through meeting people he should love but feels alienated from: Dad, these versions of his friends, all the ghosts in the dreambubbles... "JOHN: uh, hey kids... ROSE: Please, Adult John, don’t do that." Oh hell yes. Better nip that denominator in the bud, Rose. (Heh, Rosebud.) "It’s obvious that she’s trying very hard to hide her apprehension. ROSE: Is it time to go? JOHN: yeah. JOHN: i mean... JOHN: no, if you want to be technical. i can zap us in wherever, whenever. we have all the time in the universe if we want it. ROSE: But if we don’t leave now, you’re afraid we never will? JOHN: heh." I love how in-tune Rose and John are, no matter how much time and space has separated them. "JOHN: i guess it’s true that people don’t really change. they just grow up? Rose gives Roxy a strange look, appearing to silently acknowledge an entire conversation that has been taking place, using a great volume of words that aren’t being spoken." Heh, Rose and Roxy's conversation on the platform was about their moms and how different or not the other was to that person. I take it their conversation went in the same direction this time around. I think John's response is just more proof to the veracity of the claim. Also, more proof on the pile of the ultimate self, on the side, actually. The idea being kind of like, they're the same person but different due to the circumstance. " ROSE: I guess. She smiles." Also, for Rose it must be nice to see the boy she knew still lives inside the man she doesn't know yet. "> Get the show on the road. JOHN: okay everyone... i’ve never zapped this many people before so let’s all just... JOHN: uh, hold hands, maybe? in a circle, i mean. that should work. DAVE: god this is so lame JADE: its not lame its perfect!!! DAVE: nah JOHN: shh! JOHN: alright. is everyone ready, then?" Kumbaya, my lord, kumbaya. Dirk, Jake and Jane didn't get any lines yet, that'll be something for a later page. ... Hah, Blaperile has a good point. John zapped a planet away, twice! Why would this bother him now? ... Is the Masterpiece really up next, wow. (After a scene change to Universe C.) "Only Jade says yes enthusiastically." God, I really missed simply happy Jade. We might still see her on Universe C, but it's with the knowledge she spent three years without any real sapient friends but Jaspersprite & Nannasprite. "The last thing you hear before zapping away is your dad’s kitchen timer going off in his study." Time's up! Appropriate, if they're really going to confront Jake now. I got to say, it would be very nice seeing the Masterpiece how it really happened, and not what Caliborn told us. I wonder what he lied about, if anything. It would seem noteworthy to mention John was an adult, but then again, humans might all look alike to cherubs. It's true that Arquiusprite wasn't mentioned on the character list, but I blaim it on Equius being Voided out, it's been a theme before. It's his aspect, the Expatriate's sign hid the cue ball from Doc Scratch' sight, Gamzee used Equius blood to erase himself from the tomb, and so on. I also think there are odds that characters without dialogue are not mentioned on the character list, like WV. Though it would be weird for Equius/Arquiusprite to be the only troll without dialogue. Davepeta represents the Collide timeline's Nepeta, so that explains her absence from the list. Still, it would need to be explained how Arquiusprite got there and from what timeline. My money is on him uploading himself through Lil' Seb. ... I thought of something. If we start from the assumption Caliborn's Earth is Earth C in the far future, and not put their by say Condy after Game Over, then logically Lil' Seb, Arquiusprite and Gamzee are all from the Collide timeline. |
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Post by Blaperile on Apr 29, 2019 21:01:45 GMT
Live reactions to page 7 of the Meat Epilogue beneath the Spoiler tags! Okay, I assume we're now going back to Earth C and read Dirk and Rose's dialogue? I wonder what Rose wanted to talk about. Is it about John's departure, or is it something completely unrelated to that? And, depending on how much later this is taking place, has Rose already gone back to the brooding caverns to Kanaya, or is she still at home? ==> Yup, we're back to Earth C! And again immediately continuing where we left off. Honestly, I was originally expecting John's mission to be the one where we'd hardly miss a thing while there'd be significant skips on Earth C, but right now the opposite seems to be true, what with how we skipped over John recruiting Rose and the B2 Kids. Pfff, well then. Off they go. Heh, that kind of reminds me of how Lil Seb took Jake for a ride back on the island. And I believe Brobot did the same thing during their strife. For a second I thought she meant 'him' as in Jake, but then I realized that's stupid considering he's unconscious. xD ...You know, Jake does spend a lot of time unconscious, doesn't he? Like when he hit his head in the Frog Temple, or when he fell to the ground just prior to [S] Dirk: Synchronize. Hehe, kind of like how Jade spent a lot of time sleeping. Down as in, down in the brooding caverns? You're the Philosopher Prince, Dirk. You tell us. Pffff, oh god I love this already. This is the Dirk/Rose conversation I've been craving. Oh yeah, I hadn't really thought about it yet, but perhaps Dirk could be of help to her? She's suffering under what these ultimate self visions bring to her, but perhaps he can assist her? It's not exactly the same kind of thing, but he does have experience in juggling multiple splinters of himself, so perhaps there's something useful he can teach her. Eeeesh. Yeah, her condition sounds everything but pleasant. I can't help but notice the use of the word 'ascending', otherwise used for going God Tier and climbing the rungs. This time it sounds more like a spiritual ascenscion, what with how she seems to be rising above her own physical self and becoming more united with her other versions. Like, she's ascending to become her ultimate self or something. I can't help but wonder... can it ever be that two different versions of the same SBURB player can ascend to their ultimate self? Because that's kind of what Jasprosesprite^2 did, and what Rose is going through now, but I can't help but wonder if it would have some ramifications that another version of her already did that, or is doing it. In any case, Jasprosesprite^2 could handle it far better than she can. It seems like for Jasprosesprite^2 she had become one person with an entire source of memories and experiences to access but that it didn't actually trouble her, while for Rose everything seems to be hitting her way harder even when she doesn't actually want to access those memories or experiences and it seems like she's evolving into becoming many persons at once instead of just one person. Just a little bit longer and you'll understand Homestuck so well that you'll be capable of writing the best fanfics yourself, Rose. Dirk you bastard. xD OOOOHHHHHH SNAP. I DID NOT SEE THAT COMING. Heh, it's just like Dirk to be completely downplaying and/or hiding what he's been going through, keeping it from himself. Dirk realizing his ultimate self... it does make perfect sense. Other than what I mentioned earlier, he's managed to juggle 2 consciousnesses before at the same time (his real self and dream self), and sort of merging with splinters of himself (see Brain Ghost Dirk). Which means that, unlike what I theorized somewhere in the past few weeks, Seers are not the only (non-Sprites Squared) ones who can heavily tap into the Ultimate Self. It does make sense for a Hero of Heart to be capable of this, what with how their path is one of the splintered self. Maybe it's just that Class and that Aspect which are most inclined to realize the Ultimate Self? Makes me wonder what a Seer of Heart would be like. Perhaps their speciality would even BE realizing their ultimate self and perhaps that of others, being capable of deducing what they or other people would do when placed in entirely different circumstances, and realizing what the core and potential of that person actually is? To see beyond the nurture and see the true nature. That seems like that would be a role that could have a heavy toll on the person, but it would also be someone to be a gread guide to its team for the individual members to realize their full potential, I think. Rose and Dirk who don't know what to say? Truly a miracle. Pfff, typically Dirk. Truly multitasking everything and downplaying it again. So, that must mean there IS a way for a mortal being that isn't a Sprite Squared to deal with it? Perhaps one of his ultimate self related insights told him April 13th 2019 was the best moment to do it? Exactly one letter removed from the truth, isn't it? Yeah... that would sound kinda creepy. Kind of cueball/Doc Scratch like, really. Is there some kind of deeper meaning here about First Guardians, or perhaps just the omniscient types and/or just Doc Scratch, and the ultimate selves? As long as the solution does not involve a Kernelsprite... :/ Ooohhh, sounds like that will be a scene we'll be seeing more of later. And what the hell does Dirk still have to do right now, considering he already prematurely stopped his and Jake's liveshow? Is there something he needs to do with Jane? Hmm... he probably just means this because Rose could definitely use some rest in the condition she's in right now, but I can't help but think about the waking/dream selves thing, and Alternate Future Rose merging with Rose through her dreams. Is there something that can be done through her sleeping? Is that a state in which she can somehow more easier tap into the ultimate self and all her different versions? ...Which is ironic because back when Dirk still had a dream self he never slept and was just awake all the time. xD Rose, are you channeling the MSPA Reader's thoughts right now? Jeez, is the election going to have THAT much of an impact? The fate of humanity... does he 'see' some kind of future where Karkat succesfully wins the election and then everything goes to shit for the humans on the planet, or something? There are also always irons in the fire. This is another typical hilarious Dirk metaphor. But at the same time... I feel like he might be hiding some exposition within the metaphor. Is every wheel a timeline/reality, with someone responsible for driving it along (depending on the timeline/reality, a First Guardian for the timelines on a planet? A Hero of Time for doomed timelines? John for the retconned realities? Lord English for the alpha timeline as a whole?)? I'm kind of getting the feeling that I now know where a certain part of Doc Scratch's personality came from. :/ Purple and orange, huh? I see what you did there. Sounds like it might also be a subtle statement about the ultimate self, and all those doomed/alternate versions of people. Every version of a person has a certain purpose, that seems to contribute to the 'character' of that person in some way. For example, a doomed self will service as a reminder for course correction for the alpha version. The pre-retcon versions of characters died, but still they contributed by feeding in a way into the eventual timeline that would be created, and also by feeding us general character development for that person that gives better insights into that particular person, or something like that? |
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Post by plainWonder on Apr 29, 2019 21:03:08 GMT
Meat Page 7. Guess we're kind of turning this Discussion thread into a liveblog thread guys. Apologies for any inconvenience caused. Well, seeing as to what movie I just watched on Sunday. "We're in the Endgame now." I wonder if it'll switch back to Earth C before showing us (the tail end of) the Masterpiece scene. I'm curious to know how truthful Caliborn was about the scene, what he may have omitted from his retelling (the presence of the leprechauns, maybe?), and also how it concluded. I wonder if it'll be told from Dirk's perspective, after the B1 kids have been stolen. He's got the closest connection to Cal and Arquiusprite, after all. I wonder how his perception of his puppet might have changed, too. For all we know, LOTAK might have been ripe with allusions and phropecies regarding the thing, thanks to his denizen. That's another thing connecting him to LE, after all: Yaldabaoth. Just cause he never went into the Lion's Mouth doesn't mean he didn't harvest every bit of intel and backstory. This is Dirk 'Batman Gambit' Strider we're talking about. --- "The boxing bell is going off like it's having a fit." Well, I did ask for Dirk's perspective. Wrong Dirk! Okay, so it seems like the POV will be changing hands like a baton pass on Earth C. That would mean we're in for Rose's POV next, and I wouldn't mind that. Tight-lipped as she would still be even in her own mind's narration about her plans, it'd be nice to see things from her end! "Dirk has to stick a finger in one ear to hear what Rose is saying over the cacophony of boos and buckets being lobbed toward center stage." Not sure if it would be worse or not for trolls to have thrown that bucket. "He considers it all pretty fucking annoying, so he flips off the crowd and jumps the ropes. Always a good idea to abscond from the stadium before the customary show-end riot hits full swing." ... So his whole upset-the-audience-into-rioting is par for the course? Dear god, are all his fans hooligans? ... That actually runs pretty close to what happened in AIDS, come to think of it. "ROSE: It’s not so much “what is up” as “what is down,” the answer to which is, proverbially: Me." Down for the count, not down in the brooding caverns, naturally. You know, since she's ascended to the highest top of the surface. "ROSE: I mean that both physically and philosophically by the way. DIRK: You’re down philosophically? ROSE: Yes. DIRK: I’m not sure what that actually means. ROSE: What doesn’t it mean, Dirk." Oh my freaking god, these guys might even be more amazing together than Dave and Rose, it's a sight to behold. "DIRK: Glad to see that my genetic predisposition for melodrama is still alive and well in my slime-progeny even after all these years. ROSE: Please don’t interrupt. This is important, and I’ll need all the energy I can spare to sustain even a heavily monologic transmission of the relevant facts." Yes, Dirk, please cut Rose some slack, she only has so few monologues left in her. "ROSE: Anyway, the matter at hand is my “condition,” with which you’re already familiar. ROSE: I’ve struggled to devise the right way of telling you without causing undue alarm, which would unquestionably trigger the overbearing tendency of yours to “solve the problem” for me, which is not the kind of circumstance my constitution can withstand these days. ROSE: I can barely lift a wrist to my forehead to telegraph my infirmity, of late. Your bullshit is precisely the thousand-pound feather that could knock me clean through my apartment’s plate glass window." While I don't disagree Rose's condition might be severe, I see she's still well enough to heat a scalding plate of sarcasm. Also, wouldn't Jasprosesprite^2 be better than Dirk at handling her situation? Her feelings for interacting with a clownesk version of herself not withstanding, it's a Rose that already went through the ultimate self thing. Granted, she had fake magic Sprite powers to help her cope, as well as bullshit feline asshole personality issues. "I’m taking solace in the fact that your infirmity doesn’t seem to have spread to your vocal cords yet." Right, got to remind myself that actual voices are being used to talk with one another. Still not used to it for Homestuck characters doing this when phones are involved. The only time it happened in-story was when a "shellphone" was involved, after all. "ROSE: The bottom line is this. ROSE: I am ascending, and it is terrible." ... Hmm, could that imply that the Ultimate Self is the last of the god tiers, or pretty high up there, at least? It would take a ridiculous amount of XP, seven years may or may not be enough, but if it's about the accumulation of self-reflection & general knowledge, a Seer of Light would be pretty quick to collect that kind of required boons. "Rose adjusts her position on the couch with the body language of one about to dive into the latest gossip about a mutual friend. The mutual in this case: her tortured psyche." So the therapist is seeking counsil, in a way, is she? "ROSE: Years of refining my Seer of Light powers have cursed me with what is approaching near infinite prescience. Dwelling in this idyllic post-canon realm has worn down the barriers separating my primary consciousness from the memories and experiences of all my doomed alternate selves, which were forgotten and discarded over the due course of our journey." So that implies they were many, more than we'd assume immediately. There's Dream Rose, Alternate Future Rose, pre-retcon Rose (now Jasprose) & B2 Rose, but it appears there are more still. Well, okay, there's also Reload Rose now, I guess. "ROSE: As I approach the realization of my Ultimate Self, I cannot stop the extant knowledge from seeping in. I am plagued by near constant visions from the less fortunate versions of myself, as well as a broadening view of the metatextual nature of our existence." She's starting to become self-aware, before you know it she'll be addressing us directly through the Fourth Wall! Well, it's not like we didn't have a smug monologic narrator before. (Did I mean Doc Scratch, Andrew Hussie or Lord English? Yes.) "ROSE: It drains all of my energy to keep my consciousness focused on relevant events, but even then I am losing my ability to discern what is and is not canonically relevant, let alone what is also true or essential." Well, okay, if she can't even discern between her own life, fanon and fan fiction, she might really have a problem. "ROSE: And all of this is making me incredibly fucking sick." Rose is getting Homestucksick, is it? "DIRK: Oh. Is that all?" My first thought was: blatant sarcasm. But then... We don't know how far Dirk's powers extend, do we? What shards of his has he had access to all this time, if Brain Ghost Dirk is any indication? "DIRK: Well, in the spirit of full disclosure, DIRK: Same." Ooooooh, wow. So it's the same for him? If he was nurturing the mother grub of all splitting headaches all this time, no wonder he pisses on the whole audience experience every time. While he would have more experience juggling disparate experiences, it was already a strain on him back when it was just him and Dream Dirk. Can you imagine him having to jostle Arquiusprite's thoughts & desires, or god forbid, some part of Lord English' experiences too? ... Okay now I'm curious as to what it's like for Dirk. ... Dirk's Ultimate Self experience would have been one of those things I would have liked to see speculation of, back on the old forums. But alas, we're archival readers now, not serial readers. It was not meant to be. Got to say though. If it's this hard on the god tiers, how must it be for Terezi? Because I'm pretty sure post-retcon Terezi forced an ultimate self revelation on herself through her mindy thing. It might be that Mind is the aspect best suited at handling all these inflows from doomed timelines and conditional experiences. Or it might be that Heart is, they're related aspects, and Heart is supposed to stand for Soul. It just might depend on where you think the self is defined: in actual experiences, or in the potential for them, realized or not. "DIRK: We are suffering from the same condition, Rose." So... Does this lend more stake to Dirk's idea for backing Jane, or is it just one of those situations where he can't discern the right course of action any more, that Rose was referring to? "She allows several rare conversational beats to pass in silence between them, to process the admission." That's how you know things are grave, when Dirk and Rose stop talking. "DIRK: I guess I used the wrong phrase. You are suffering from it. I am adapting to it. DIRK: I already have, really." No, wait, THIS is how you know things are grave: when Dirk insists he's got a handle on things. "Adapting", like he's the AI version of himself, not the human version. "ROSE: When were you going to tell me this? DIRK: When you were ready. ROSE: So you have determined that I’m ready to receive this rather critical piece of information now, of all times? ROSE: What distinguishes the present from the other moments you could have mentioned it?" Well, isn't today the day that things become relevant again, Rose? April 13th? "DIRK: Wow. Well, when you put it that way, it makes me sound like kind of a dick. DIRK: But I guess it isn’t far from the truth, either." Well, you already sound like kind of a Dirk, most of the time, so " ROSE: Unbelievable. DIRK: Look, it’s not something you just spring on people that frivolously. DIRK: “Hey folks, just so you know, the boundaries of my awareness are coming apart, and now I know almost everything, about everyone, everywhere.”" "I can see into forever!" Okay, so it was more Dirk's low self-esteem springing up again. He was waiting for someone to "get it" and make the first move. So, is the omniscience thing coming from Arquius' unfathomable depths of AI? Or its connection to Doc Scatch??? " DIRK: “Also, the process should be tearing my body apart, but actually I’m handling it quite well. Thanks for the concern though.”" Imagine Dirk as the dog in the "This is fine" image. "DIRK: There will be time to explain all this. DIRK: Despite whatever appearance of callousness I’ve maintained in withholding this information from you, I actually do have your best interests in mind. I don’t want to wear you out on this call." Gotta say, omniscient Dirk working behind the scenes with whatever boatload of narrative information he has on hand is both assuring and worrying. "DIRK: For now, I’ll just mention that I’ve been alert to your problem for some time, and I’ve been devising a solution which should permanently remedy it without compromising the boon of your expanding consciousness." ... Definitely tipping back into worrying. It's for the lack of kernelsprites on Earth C that I'll give Dirk the benefit of the doubt, for now. "DIRK: Would love to tell you, but I’ve got some work to do. Why don’t you stop by my studio later so we can hash this shit out in person." ... I dearly hope his solution isn't: "Here, upload your consciousness into this Rosebot. There! All the limits of your feeble immortal biological coil, removed." So, Dirk (and Jake) have a studio, Rose has an apartment, Dave 'n Karkat 'n Jade a hive, John a house. I wonder if Jane has ended up owning a mansion of sorts (the White House doesn't count... yet). Also, Dirk hashing things out is funny, because of Dave's former sylladex mode: hashmap. " DIRK: Right now, you should get some rest." Hmm, Blaperile has some theories rest might help her condition. I wonder if, through sleeping or some other process, Rose might be able to actually 'act' through her alternate selves. What if she could make contact with Reload Rose, send her some bits of the bigger picture without overloading her with information? "ROSE: Actually, I’m feeling oddly invigorated suddenly. I think I’m good for more exposition, if you are." ... Okay didn't see that coming. Either she's scathingly sarcastic right now, or we're in for a treat. "DIRK: Can’t say I’m surprised. But no." Nothing to perk up Rose better than the promise of secrets not yet revealed, I guess! "ROSE: Have I caught you at a bad time? DIRK: Nah, but there is an election coming up, and my work as a political operative is going to be absolutely essential for the fate of humanity." See, Rose could think Dirk is being falseful, but she's nearing omniscience so probably not. Still, Dirk is forgetting to include other species' fate in his calculations, not just humanity's. "ROSE: I see. Wheels within wheels, I assume? DIRK: There are always wheels. Wheels are everywhere. DIRK: They aren’t my wheels or yours. The wheels don’t have owners or designers, but they do have caretakers. DIRK: They won’t keep turning on their own without someone to grease the mechanism." This is turning into a Dave metaphor again. ... But hmm, that's a mechanics metaphor he's using. Is that a reference to that Rosebot I theorized about... or Arquiusprite? Cause if Rose could act through Reload Rose, Dirk could act through either his Reload self or Arquiusprite! Here's to hoping there isn't a shard in Lord English influencing his behaviour, or reading his every thought and intent. "the full brunt of the sunset: purple and orange, blending brilliantly on the horizon." I see what you did there. Yes, Dirk and Rose's first actual conversation was brilliant. "She’s right about him, he thinks. While his ecto-daughter views herself as having a somewhat deft artistic hand that lends itself naturally to a gentle push-and-pull style of influence, Dirk knows his methods are mechanical, like those of an engineer. There is nothing adaptive or interpretive about his method. Every piece has a purpose, a slot, an interlocking mechanism that is functionally pointless without the whole." Yes, it's been pointed out on occasion Rose is quite elegant in her ways. Those ways don't include tidying her room, but still. With the visuals being used to describe both of Rose 'n Dirk's different takes on influencing people, I am reminded of how Names in the "Practical Guide to Evil" story feel different for each person. For one, like putting on a tailormade pair of gloves, for another, like observing the methodical churning of a machine. I already felt quite a few times reminded of Homestuck while archive-reading PGtE (not done yet!), it's only fitting it now goes the other way around again. Also, thinking about the wheels metaphor has gotten me thinking about LOHAC, and now I have the Clockwork theme from the Medium album stuck in my head. |
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Post by Blaperile on Apr 30, 2019 21:12:38 GMT
Live reactions to page 8 of the Epilogue beneath the Spoiler tags! Oh man, I wonder if we're gonna go back to John now. Assuming he manages to zap to the expected moment, we should now be heading straight into the events of the Masterpiece. I'm very curious how that will be handled. Are we just going to read about small parts of it? A sort of recap of what happened in the fight? Are we actually going to read it in full? No matter what, if we do get to read a significant part of it, I assume there will be no dialogue for Arquiusprite? Considering he wasn't tagged as a character. I also wonder if this page is already going to reveal something that comes after the events of the Masterpiece, either what the fate of the B2 Kids is after they locked Caliborn into Lil Cal, or transitioning to Vriska using the Plot Hole against Lord English and the B1 Kids being released from their prison (page 8 of the Epilogue WOULD be hella appropriate for a Vriska appearance). Perhaps not, maybe it will focus on just the fight? If it's "just" the fight, I think we WILL get to read a significant part of what happened there. Anyway, let's find out! We're entering some really exciting territory here. ==> OH HELL YES, HERE WE GO! Where he is? Hehehe, yeah it was always a bit unclear in exactly which location the Masterpiece took place, right? I wonder if we're gonna get some more details about that, or not. I assume it takes place somewhere on LOCAM. Huh... it's dark? Doesn't sound like the epileptic paradise that is LOCAM. Perhaps plainWonder's right that they're in Caliborn's Lil Cal shaped station? Oh man, what if the first thing they see are flashing poolball eyes? But yeah... if they ARE in the events of the Masterpiece, then it just goes to show how much of an artistic interpretation that was because when we saw the Kids zapping there it wasn't dark. Huh... that sort of reminds me of the darkness of the cloudy Skaia in Caliborn's session, but Skaia cracked open and from it came all the poolball planets. Normally it shouldn't be that dark anymore over there, right? Assuming John zapped to the time and place we are led to believe he zapped to, at least. Oh yeah, her dog senses might come in handy in this darkness! An alternative would have been Terezi, had they brought her along of course. Oh my god. Kind of like the spotlights on the Masterpiece stage. Ohhh boy, here we go! This is definitely the Masterpiece battle. I wonder how long it takes before Caliborn lets them know that yes, he definitely saw this coming. I kind of wish we get a comment from the B2 Kids about Lil Seb being there. Pffff, oh Caliborn. So attached to that puppet. I wonder what Dave and Dirk's reactions are to Lil Cal being there. Pfffahahaa, reprise of their epic staring battle? xD > Cans: Burst out of nowhere Kool-Aid Man Style. ...What??? ...WHAAAAAAAAT???? Caliborn doesn't know... who they are??? Oh god. OOHHHHH GOD. Wait a second. It suddenly occurred to me; back when the Masterpiece first came out, there were some discussions on the forum about the fact that in the Masterpiece Caliborn seemingly didn't know who at least Arquiusprite was, and how surprised he seemed by everything that was happening to him. Which was weird, because Caliborn most definitely knew who Arquiusprite was, and come on, he made the fucking Masterpiece beforehand and knew exactly what was going to happen. I just waved that off at the time as Caliborn just pretending that he didn't know they were coming to fool them and catch them off guard later, but this... This is very weird that he claims not to know who they are. Either he's lying, but I see no reason for him to be lying, what good does that do for him here? Or... this is not the Caliborn we were expecting. OOHHHH MAN. Then who is this Caliborn? The only other Caliborn we knew of was Alternate Calliope's brother, but he most definitely died and couldn't possibly be this Caliborn. So what gives??? What's going on here??? Pfff, that was not the reaction I was expecting from John. Hehe, looks like a reference to the start of the strifes between Dave and Bro, and Jake and Brobot. I don't entirely recall the way John and Caliborn's earlier strife started, if it was also in a similar way. Oh yeah, there was a scene in the Masterpiece of Caliborn just laughing very hard. I don't recall whether it was in the beginning of the fight or not, though. I do remember thinking that it was supposed to be an indication that he knew they were coming... which doesn't seem to be the case now. WELL THEN. CALIBORN YOU MASTER TROLL, YOU DEFINITELY HAD ME FOOLED THERE FOR A MINUTE. Ha, he says it just up front. When he was a boy... so, was it yesterday? Oh my god, so Caliborn decided to move on and try his hand at yet another form of art. John, stop him before he decides to start singing. Man... John and the others have no idea what's in store for them. Tsk, looks like it wasn't just Lord English who had a tendency for an unhinged jaw when firing his lasers, looks like he got that from Caliborn already. Yeah... he probably did prepare this speech in advance, didn't he? xD Ahaha, he's being very meta again. I love it when he says things that seem to be adressing the fans instead of the actual characters. I'm almost relieved we know how this fight was going to end or I'd almost start thinking he meant it literally and would turn them all into the clay for his Masterpiece. Wow... that's the end of this page. It was a relatively short one, so I'm wondering if we're gonna immediately continue with this scene or if we're going to break it up with another visit to Earth C. Nonetheless, I'm very curious how the rest of these Masterpiece events are going to be handled! Are we going to skip right to the end of it, at least when the B1 Kids are sucked up, or are we actually going to have all this played out in detail? I kind of hope the latter, I'd love to see some actual dialogue from the other Kids here, there hasn't been that much. |
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Post by plainWonder on Apr 30, 2019 21:14:16 GMT
Meat Page 8. It doesn't FEEL like it could already be time for the Masterpiece, but then, what else is there? Until now we've been switching back and forth between Earth C & John. Unless we now go see what post-retcon Terezi has been up to, I guess it might be time to witness the penultimate moment of Caliborn's ascension to Lord English, the last moment being when LE hatches from Doc Scratch. --- "> JOHN: Zap to your final destination. Where the hell are you? DAVE: where the hell are we DAVE: i cant see shit" Welp it's time for this?? ... Unless John misfired and they're in the Furthest Ring, I'd think that they'd find Caliborn in his station on LOCAM. ... I don't suppose there's going to be an actual stage like in the Vine videos. If that were so, it appears someone killed the lights, though. Maybe something prevents them from actually going to Caliborn, like they're missing a crucial artifact and they wouldn't be able to escape from LOCAM with John's powers to return to the same moment with another retcon. We know the juju almost instantaneously can absorb them. ... It'd be something if the events of the Masterpiece somehow preordained them into doing something first. "JADE: shhh! It’s dark. Not like “someone turned out the lights out” dark. More like “someone destroyed the concept of light at its very source” dark." I suppose that, in Caliborn's art, it would be "vantablack" dark due to the absence of a light source he never bothered to draw, but I doubt they just zapped into one of his scribbles he made after John beat him up. Also, it's a good Light wasn't capitalized in that description. Though, to think about it, Void would look enormously black, wouldn't it? ... Did John zap them into the Void somehow??? It IS the place where Caliborn's soul was stuck for a very long time, after all, but that is after the Masterpiece took place. "It’s a darkness that fills up your skull. Jake puts this more eloquently, as always: JAKE: By golly it is indeed dark as fuck." A+ observation, Jake. "ROXY: shoosh!!!" That makes two of the girls shooshing them. ... For a minute there I thought they recognized this void, until I remembered it was Game Over Roxy and post-retcon Jade that ended up meeting Calliope's ghost. "Jade breaks off from the group. She moves through the air gracefully, ears twitching as she sniffs through space like a bloodhound. “There!” she exclaims, and points down. All the way down." Being a bit destracted by unformatted sentences uttered by one of the main characters, I'll be honest. But yeah, I suppose the Space and Void player are most qualified to navigate this... realm. Caliborn's version of the Veil, maybe? Since it would appear they're not alone here, after all. "All the way down beneath you there is a light source. Gray, focused—like a spotlight, except that it’s folded over the curvature of the space beneath it. At the center of it stands teenage Lord English, all decked out in his ostentatious god tier jammies." ... Ah. Not a stage in the literal sense, but Caliborn did prepare a grand scene for this faceoff, in that he literally prepared the shittiest scene imagineable: none at all. "Gamzee’s there too, for some unfathomably stupid reason. There’s a robot bunny chilling out on top of a chest, lookin’ cool and kicking its cute little bunny legs back and forth." Welp, that sure are the beings present for the Masterpiece. That was the chest Caliborn kept the juju in, hoh boy. "You hope that neither of these unexpected dramatis personae will play a role in the coming battle, because it wouldn’t feel right whaling on either of them at this point." Of course they're going to stay irrelevant, what are you saying? :B "Lord English is holding something that looks like... Lil Cal? It’s definitely Lil Cal" So, uh, John recognizes the puppet then? ... Well, granted, he did see baby Dirk/Bro with it on the meteor, and during the ten years since someone must've described the thing to him at one point. ", and Lord English is definitely waltzing around with it in his little spotlight in the middle of the nowhere, swinging the puppet around by both its floppy arms. Well, rather, he was waltzing around. He stopped the moment you looked at him." ... Pffff he wasn't even expecting them right then? He was just playing pretend with Cal for who knows how long. "> Behold your adversary. JOHN: ... CALIBORN: ..." No. No, we're not doing this again, are we? The epic frown off. "JOHN: ... CALIBORN: ... JOHN: ... CALIBORN: ... JOHN: ... CALIBORN: ... JOHN: ... CALIBORN: WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?" What. The fuck. ... Does... Does Caliborn not recognize John because he's an adult? Or... I mean... Timelines... Okay, yeah, Blaperile reminded me about something. Caliborn in the Masterpiece didn't seem to recognize John. So. That could mean that. This. Is. Pre-retcon Caliborn. Fucking Hells. Even if they get sucked into the juju... That means. Lord English is pre-retcon Caliborn. But post-retcon Caliborn might be a seperate entity. That means he's an unknown quantifier, but that would mean Paradox Space is seriously screwed, right? A Caliborn not destined to become Lord English would be free to do whatever he pleased with his Lord of Time powers, and then all bets are off. Even if his pre-retcon self became the bane of endless universes, he was still limited, sanctioned by Paradox Space. FYI, with pre-retcon & post-retcon, here I meant that I think that, this Caliborn never had John zapping into his room. But, now that I think about it some more... He would still have recognized John and the others from the consoles. (Hmm, unless the consoles only showed Caliborn images from B2, but I didn't think that was the case.) Meanwhile, I don't think the ghost of the Caliborn that Alternate Calliope 'ate' would be dressed in god tier jammies and be chilling with Lil' Seb and Gamzee... "You simply refuse to answer his question. Instead, you do something so much better. Something that will make both his inevitable fate and your regard for his character incontrovertibly clear." Is it a punch in the face? Tell me it's a punch in the face. If this Caliborn turns out to be blameless in the rise of Lord English, the second hand embarassment will be palpable. "> Give him a thumbs-down." Ah. Beatdown, imminent. "Lord English drops the puppet. For a moment he looks shocked, maybe even a little afraid, but it passes quickly. He starts laughing." Wow, okay. I didn't think I was ready to consider liking the idea of a version of Caliborn that is more jerk-with-low-self-esteem, but, here I'm getting there. "JOHN: uh. CALIBORN: NEVERMIND. I KNOW WHO YOU ARE." ... Oh, then scratch everything I just said. Guess the dorky theatrics finally gave it away, huh? Well, granted, Caliborn is a self-professed slow learner and been shown to be slow in the uptake in some regards. "CALIBORN: IT WAS FORETOLD. BY THE MASTERPIECE I MADE. WHEN I WAS BUT A BOY." With Caliborn, it's never clear if he's just boasting or being sincere. It might be that 7 years passed for him in his session too, but if he had been 13 at the time he could be 20. Then again, if he was 11... He'd still count as a teenager. "JOHN: what? CALIBORN: BE QUIET. CALIBORN: I’LL HAVE YOU KNOW THAT YOU JUST INTERRUPTED A GROUNDBREAKING INTERPRETIVE ART PIECE. CALIBORN: IT WAS THE FIRST OF ITS KIND. PERFORMED ONLY ONCE. AND MADE MORE VALUABLE FOR ITS RARENESS. JOHN: wow. CALIBORN: I SAID SHUT UP. IT’S RUDE TO TALK THROUGH THE OVERTURE. CALIBORN: BUT DON’T WORRY. ALTHOUGH YOU MISSED MY VERY IMPORTANT DANCE DEMONSTRATION." ... Interpretive dance. His wickedness really knows no bounds!!! "CALIBORN: NOW YOU WILL PARTICIPATE IN SOMETHING EVEN MORE IMPORTANT." Welp. Caliborn has Fate on his side in this one. He knows what's coming! Guess we're left to see how straightforward everything will unfold now. "The young Lord’s face begins to distort. The unhinging of his jaw reverberates in the empty space. He laughs through the remainder of his nefarious soliloquy, which he has possibly prepared in advance for this moment." I was thinking he'd start shooting lasers, but it would appear the rest of his 'soliloquy' may consist solely out of "HA. HA. HA." repeated ad nauseum. "CALIBORN: BY NOW, SURELY MANY HAVE WITNESSED MY MASTERPIECE. CALIBORN: AS IT HAS CIRCULATED THROUGH THE BLACK VEINS. OF THE DARK WEB. CALIBORN: TRILLIONS HAVE WITNESSED ITS MAJESTY. HATERS AND FOOLS ALIKE." That might be a LITTLE bit overestimating it. Unless, of course, he's talking about all of the ghosts in the dreambubbles, rebubbling the memory ad infinitum. I'm reminded of Gamzee's rap, though, about the trillions being bled. "CALIBORN: BUT NOW. THE TIME HAS COME. CALIBORN: FOR EVERYONE TO SHUT UP ABOUT HOW GREAT MY MASTERPIECE WAS. CALIBORN: AND THE TIME IS NOW AT HAND..." To see the truth or lack thereof in the masterpiece. "CALIBORN: FOR YOU ALL TO *BECOME* MY MASTERPIECE!" ... Wow. Epic. Okay, that was delivered perfectly. If we weren't in the epilogues, I'd have expected an [S][noparse] page next. Gotta say, for knowing how this will go in broad strokes, I'm glad at getting the finer details filled in. So, Caliborn seemed to imply in his Masterpiece Jade still had her First Guardian powers. Guess this scene still takes place in the Green Sun's gaze then. I hope I'm forgiven for being confused. Post-canon takes place outside of it, but Caliborn's session was spawned in Universe C. So at some point, he fell back into the Green Sun's domain somehow. Maybe simply by Entering his session. He thusly entered canon, and gained quite a bit of relevance to Paradox Space. "A young Lord stands on his stage. It just so happens that today, the thirteenth of April, 11111111111, is this boy's wriggling day. Though it was 18 sweeps ago he was given life, it is only today he will obtain ultimate power. What will this young Lord do?"[/spoiler] |
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Post by Blaperile on May 1, 2019 20:54:00 GMT
Live reactions to page 9 of the Meat Epilogue beneath the Spoiler tags! I assume we'll now go back to Earth C, to the moment where Rose visits Dirk to continue their conversation? Time to teach Rose some lessons straight from the Heart? Unless we do continue with the Masterpiece scene because the previous page was rather short... let's see. ==> Wait what??? Epilogue two??? When the first page of the Meat Epilogue said "Epilogue One", I just assumed that it meant that the Candy path would be Epilogue Two. So, this is like a new act/chapter then? Makes sense, considering that there was sort of a cliffhanger going on at both fronts, what with the Caliborn confrontation about to start, and Rose about to go to Dirk for some very interesting and important lessons about the ultimate self. Still, I definitely didn't expect this! I would find it interesting if we're now going to see some things from a very different perspective. Like, the confrontation with Caliborn from either his perspective or one of the other Kids than John (probably not...), or possibly now the perspective from someone in the Furthest Ring? I mean, in the Acts of Homestuck it often occurred that the start of a new Act would mean a very big perspective switch. Now I'm VERY curious what this page will bring. AKA if you read Homestuck Okay, so we just continue with the Masterpiece events then, looks like. Yeah, this seems like a pretty good indication that we're gonna be skipping some of what came next now. Oh??? Now you've definitely got my attention. What went different IRL then? I assume the most important parts of the Masterpiece, AKA the B1 Kids being sucked up by the Plot Hole and Caliborn, Gamzee and Arquiusprite being locked into Lil Cal actually happened, right? That would be a massive twist if that was all a red herring. The question is... are the differences just because Caliborn wanted to tell his own story and/or forgot the details himself, or did he see something else (and redered in claymation) than what will actually take place? OH FUCKING CHRIST ON A CRACKER YOU HAVE GOT TO BE SHITTING ME HOLD THE FUCKING PHONE WHERE IS THIS GOING Does... does this simply imply that perhaps they DID manage to put up a fight against him before they were sucked up or... does this imply something far deeper than that??? THEY WERE ACTUALLY SUCKED UP RIGHT??? Can I just say I love this sentence? YES IT WOULD SURPRISE ME, ACTUALLY. How can the fight possibly have been any sloppier than a claymation where Caliborn's basically just pressing the clay puppets against each other? xD Ah. That's what he meant by that. Okay yeah, that DOES make sense. Kind of like the fight John and Caliborn had during [S] GAME OVER. Definitely not in terms of the details of how exactly they fought, no. Again, I didn't imagine them actually pushing against each other like clay puppets or something, I did imagine some actual powers being used, punches and kicks being thrown and what not. But still... I'm sitting here with quite the raised eyebrows, wondering if this is leading into a very shocking (and/or shitty) twist. Aha, there we go! Looks like the most crucial part did happen like we imagined it would. Hussie, you had me doubting there for a moment. But now... what are we gonna see now? A description of what it felt like to John as he was sucked up by the Plot Hole, to continue with him and his friends being released in the Furthest Ring, or what? Heh, I think this is the first time the narration in the Epilogue actually refers to him as Caliborn and not "teen Lord English"? Wow... quite a deep description. So, not just the way it looks and the powers it grants are meta, the way it pulls you in is also meta. xD Eeeesh! He's actually CONSCIOUS in there??? Oh dear, I hope that it won't feel to him like the eternity it actually was in between this moment and Vriska using it against Lord English, because that would be utterly awful. Is he also going to consciously experience the moment where his past self put his arm inside the thing? And the question is... once the retcon powers are granted to his past self, does his present self still continue to have these powers or will he permanently lose them to his past self? Which would mean the retcon powers are in somewhat of an eternal loop themselves, looping between Past John and Present John forever. Oh fuck, his glasses are broken??? THAT'S a first! Man, if he comes out like that in the Furthest Ring, that might mean he'll have a hard time fighting if he can't see very well. I can't help but wonder what happened to Dave and Jade? Did their glasses/shades also break with this fall? Pfff, if only you had your Colonel Sassacre book with you, right? xD Good thing it emphasizes that it's quadrillions of years from an outside perspective. Hopefully it will be far, far less from an inside perspective. Not just for John, but for the others as well. ...Eeesh, that's what the page ends on. We just started Epilogue Two, but this would have been quite the worthy cliffhanger for Epilogue One as well. |
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Post by plainWonder on May 1, 2019 20:54:13 GMT
Meat Page 9. Let's see what Rose is up to. No, seriously, this might just happen. Just for us to switch back immediately afterwards to John. The events of the Masterpiece are so important, though, I'd thought they'd happen near the climax to the epilogues. Unless the epilogues are shorter than I'd thought of course. There's still Homestuck 2, and wouldn't it just be something, for the part of Meat that takes place on Earth C to build up to that. --- OOooh, this counts as the start of Epilogue 2, huh? So... I suppose that means Mean encompasses several epilogues, even if the chapter count keeps incrementing. If this were Homestuck proper, the Epilogues & Prologue would have had separate titles, too. Prologue : yeah, i had a feeling that was going to come up again someday. Epilogue 1 : Rumble in the Pumpkin Patch Epilogue 2 : MY MASTERPIECE. "If you were one of the haters and fools who saw Lord English’s masterpiece circulating through the black veins of the dark web," So, from starting the first sentence I get the idea that we won't be changing perspective just yet. But John hasn't seen the masterpiece, so he wouldn't be impressed. "and were rendered agog by its majesty, then you probably have a pretty good sense of what happened next." ... Hah! Yeah, but Andrew won't be pulling a Hivebent on us here... will he? I'd really like some more succulent details. "You probably also wouldn’t be rendered that much additionally agog if you were told it didn’t happen precisely as conveyed by the young Lord’s expertly produced claymation theater." OOoooooOOOOHhhhh, interesting yes. ... Well, unless the narration will now drily inform us that the events did not happen to clay figures but actual people. That much, we already could guess. ... Ya know, I wonder. The sprites squared never featured in Act 7 because back when he wrote and produced the animation, they weren't part of the story yet. Could this mean that Andrew worked out the events of the Masterpiece beforehand, and only later thought of things like Arquiusprite emerging from Lil Seb, and Gamzee being dissected? ... It would be a grand psyche if Lord English turns out NOT to contain the soul sludge from Dirk, Equius and Gamzee, but uh, yeah, that probably won't be the case. We (the MSPA Reader) already had a mental breakdown about this. "Would it be that surprising if the first four heroes weren’t immediately captured in the juju," ... YES. YES THAT WOULD BE SURPRISING. ... THEY DIDN'T GO IN WILLINGLY DID THEY? ... Did they exchange pleasantries (or unpleasantries) before Caliborn captured them. ... This can't have been a joint plan they worked out to 'save' Caliborn from becoming a mindless mobster kingpin chained by providence into doing Paradox Space's dirty work. "Would it raise any eyebrows if the action turned out to be a bit sloppier than that?" Sloppier as in... less coordinated? Well, these are the same kids who went Game Over in another timeline, I can see how. Unless the narration means, sloppier action as in, more stilted, broken up by banter and revelations being exchanged. "A bloody"- ... Bloody? They weren't killed first, were they?? "-nose here." Ah. "A stray wedgie there. Someone trips on a cape." So, more like school yard scuffles instead of boss battles then. Like Caliborn & John's first stand off. "stray honks from the sidelines." Useless minions are a pain, eh, Caliborn? "Would it rock anyone’s world to discover the stop-motion feature did not treat this battle royale with the utmost fidelity?" Not if THIS is the extent of the differences, no, that's more expansion than contradiction, after all. It would just mean Caliborn's version was more succinct, akin to Doc Scratch' white lies. "No one who witnessed the spectacle online would react to these discrepancies with much surprise. But you are not such a witness. You are still John Egbert," Narration, I don't think you quite understand what POV means. Really would like to see later on that Andrew's ghost is, well, ghost writing all of this in the dreambubbles. "and you had no idea what sort of raucous teen pandemonium to expect when you zapped into the lair of your nemesis to throw down. Which is why you were completely blindsided when, upon feeling overwhelmed by the melee, Caliborn sprung his gambit on you and your three best friends to even the odds." You were completely blown away by this stunning revelation. Really, the juju, really? Rose didn't tell you about THIS, did she, and you should use a moment to contemplate that. You know, as you are sucked into oblivion until it's time to emerge from the other end. Guess his/our perspective will be ending here, then, after he's finished getting sucked into the juju? And only when they team back up with the B2 kids later, will he learn that his attempt to stop LE before he became that very monster, caused it in the first place. "He opened his little red chest, and out came his white, house-shaped juju, levitating there, threatening to behave as the weapon many treasure hunters throughout history have described it to be." Ah, but do the descriptions do it justice, does it really do what Caliborn claimed in his claymation. "Upon a second look, it’s not quite white though. It’s colorless, null. A house-shaped hole in your confining reality. A hole that insists on being filled." Until I read the "being filled", I thought that maybe they'd actually end up in blankspace somehow. Then again... The juju that John got his retcon powers from should've chronologically already been filled, and it was still see-through. "You tried to resist its overwhelming pull, but to no avail." Okay, so yeah, this is still happening. "Not negating your powers, your strength to resist, so much as it seemed to overwrite them." It's basically retconning his powers, where retconning is used in the same context as the effect he has when he zaps to an earlier moment on the timeline: he overwrites what happened before. "You landed in the abstract prison it contains face-first, alone, and with a force that made you flip over a few times and skid along by the flat of your chin." Oh wow. Okay, they're actually going to be spending at least SOME conscious moments in the juju. ... So, might that be also how John got granted his powers then, a conscious decision made by the four individuals trapped in the juju? It's been theorized before that John's retcon powers are a combination of the 4 B1 kids' aspects: he travels through Time and Space, creates new alpha timelines (new Light, as in fortune)... Also, free as the Breeze (Breath) something something. I'm pretty sure how he landed was akin to Vriska's slides at the hands (fists) of Kanaya & John. Blaperile has a good point - would John still have his powers after past John got his? Or were they an ontological paradox to begin with? That would suck, though he might still find a way to travel back to Universe C regardless. For one, there's the possibility to travel through the Furthest Ring and reach the old B2 session. "You groped for your glasses instinctively, finding them in two cracked halves. You cradled their remains as you looked up." Wow, his glasses were broken?? Eesh, another childhood treasured heirloom lost. Guess we now find out if godhood grants 20/20 eyesight regardless of eyewear. ... Maybe he needs to reach his next god tier first. I'm reminded of Jake getting his 'eyes' knocked off during Dirk: Rise Up.
"The blurry, distorted face of your laughing nemesis"
Nay on the 20/20 part then. Though the distortion might be due to Caliborn grinning maniacally.
"was the last thing you saw before the chest door slammed shut and plunged you into textual obsolescence."
Oh, so John can 'see' outside the juju then.
"And here, you are now stuck."
Stuck in a house-shaped object. A home, if you will.
"You will not emerge from this holding cell, from an outside perspective, for quadrillions of years."
Implying, then, that that is Lord English' own age? Or perhaps, the span covered by the Green Sun's influence?
"It is not long at all until you begin to wish you had brought something to read."
Pfffff. Guess John's sylladex contents were pretty bare bone, or he had no access to it.
Also, it would seem he's separate from the other kids, damn. If he could've talked with them, he could've at least apologized for his (and post-retcon Rose's) mistake in person, before they started their prison sentence. |
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The One Guy
Rust Maid
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Post by The One Guy on May 1, 2019 21:16:20 GMT
Figures. As soon as I start getting into it a bunch of IRL stuff comes up to prevent me from reading on. Anyway, I'm finally able to get some reading in, so let's get started. "Epilogue Four"s here we go. Edit: I do feel I touched on some controversial subjects here, and maybe this is the wrong time for me to do so as I've been rather scatterbrained lately, so uh, I just wanted to warn you, I guess. Meat page 18:
Ah, right, Dirk is supposedly writing this now. I thought about this after last reading session, and it occurred to me that it'd be cool if Cephied_Variable or ctset turned out to actually be Dirk. I mean, all it would really mean is that Hussie and the other (assuming that one's not also a character) are writing pretending to be Dirk, but suspension of disbelief and all that. Regardless, I doubt this is the case, but it would be cool. Anyway, back to the content.
Wouldn't that mean the entire multiverse is gone?
John continues to be susceptible to the voices in his head. Except he wasn't before, and if Dirk is to believe he was narrating the entire time, so why does John suddenly react to the narration now and not before?
Candy page 16:
So Jade, Dave and Karkat are dating now. ... Well, I've already stated my feelings on that.
Well, at least this point is addressed.
So is this supposed to imply something about Troll reproduction? I'd rather they just leave that subject up to headcanon.
I, uh, what? I mean I know it's a semi-popular ship but that's as a joke ship. I thought Jane just wanted to settle down with Jake, heck, I thought she hated Gamzee, or at least found him annoying at best. Not to mention Gamzee still worries me that he's up to something.
So Jade did try for blackrom with Karkat, no wonder things aren't working out. She'd be better off just going for normal redrom, there was at least some chemestry there.
Meat page 19:
I feel like this is making light of the issue, as if one can simply just decide they want to change their gender. But then, that's the real-world issue, who knows how things work for Cherubs.
...Aaand then the whole "cherub thing" defense falls apart immediately upon reading on. I might get on every SJW's case for saying this now, but I do not see how Roxy could possibly be nonbinary. I'm not saying it isn't possible for someone to realize they're been wrong about their gender identity, but Roxy? I just don't see it. Especially since she seems perfectly happy as a female in the Candy route, which has spanned far more in-universe time than this one. If she legitimately has reason to question her gender, then she would be doing so there too, because that's how gender works. ...Oh well, in the end it doesn't really matter what gender she/they is, it just bugs me that this is spreading the wrong message.
Well ... Ok, I take back some what I just said. There's a difference between "identifying as nonbinary" and "not identifying oneself," and this seems to imply it's the latter, which I'm more okay with.
And back to bothering me again.
Well that took a dramatic turn. I ... have no idea what just happened to Jade. The "black, perfect circle" thing seems to imply it has something to do with the black hole, but why now? Does it have something to do with John opening the wallet?
Candy page 17:
Ah, another page that I find really interesting, but I don't have anything to add. It's been a while. I guess it's nice to see what is likely the overarching plot of the Candy route picking up for once, what with John starting to notice things getting too perfect and stale.
Meat page 20:
Ah, so Jade somehow merged consciousness with her other self; that still leaves the question of why.
Ok, that's worrying, and Jade's once again the victim of mind control of a sort... Though I am a bit confused. Red is Caliborn's color, but Dirk is referring to a female cherub. I mean, there was just the talk about gender, but he is still clearly male by every definition. The Cherub Twin's mom, maybe? I forget, was the mother the red one?
Candy page 18:
I disagree with much of what Jane says about Troll reproduction, but I do have to admit she brings up some good points. It really is a grey area.
Ah, so Jane and Gamzee went the more kismesis route, that makes more sense, but it still doesn't seem to be something Jane would want to go into. Also, can you really blame me if I find this whole lessened version of kismesis thing that these epilogues introduce a bit disturbing? I guess the part where she treats the issue casually when talking to Jake helps alleviate some concerns, though.
Huh, somehow this concept never occurred to me (outside of obviously non-canon fan works), but I guess it does make sense with Bec being male. Still something I'd rather they left to headcanon, though. Also, wouldn't it be more likely she has both reproductive organs, and thus not be bereft of her ability to reproduce?
And that's all the time I have for today. Uh, I can't really think of a good outro here; I guess I'll just say I'll see what happens next tomorrow (or, hopefully tomorrow at least). |
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Post by Blaperile on May 2, 2019 20:30:42 GMT
Live reactions to page 10 of the Meat Epilogue (page 2 of Epilogue 2) beneath the Spoiler tags! Probably time to continue with Rose and Dirk again? I have to say though, both the Rose and Dirk situation and John's situation are in a really interesting position right now that I'm eager to see continue! ==> Psyche, time for someone else entirely! Man, I know I said that I was eager to see either Dirk and Rose or John again, but this counts as well. All the other Kids, both B1 and B2 have had at least a bit of dialogue so far, but Jane's really had nothing yet so far. Not to mention, I very much want to get a better insight into what her own reasons are for running for president, and what she truly thinks of the Trolls. I wonder if this is chronologically taking place shortly after Dirk's conversation with Rose, meaning he might pop in soon. This gonna be good! Oh boy, what kind of horrid news? She's not going to be horrified at the idea of someone else, Karkat, running against her for president, right? Pffff, so far for the smooth and controlled business woman. xD Ah yes, there's the Jane we all know and love. The one who can be very, very emotional about stuff that bothers her. Welp, looks like Dirk didn't warn her this was going to be a thing. Just like old times he's mostly pulling the strings in the background then? I didn't expect she'd take this news that hard. Hehehe, ironically enough that reminds me of Karkat's conversation with Jade from a long time ago. HMMMMM, SO VERY INTERESTING. I guess Jane was expecting the Creators to be one unified front? Perhaps she should have talked about it with them first, then. Kanaya might want to have a word with you about that phrasing 'bout vampires. Pfff, oh Jane. xD At least it's good to see that she really doesn't have any bad feelings/intentions towards the Trolls. But she's thinking too narrow minded again. Just like how when she was yougner she just wouldn't get any of the hints from Dirk and Roxy, about their lives and Betty Crocker. Aha, there we go! Best thing she can do is obviously try to win, but still consider Karkat a worthy opponent that deserves respect for the different opinions he has, and make it a fair election. Let the people choose who they want to support. Hehe, kind of like Dave and Karkat had been figuring out for themselves as well. Honestly, it could go either way. Both of them probably have a significant amount of people who'd vote for them as their leader. Huh??? What?? Then why does she feel differently now? What's going on that makes Jane feel she HAS to be the president now, and not Karkat? Oh yeah, right!!! How could I forget. Interesting... what are her opinions on that? Is she not a fan of the Mother Grub process and does she prefer cloning then, or what? ...What? Why not? Does she fear it will lead them back to their violent ways from Alternia and cause a war on the planet, or something? ...Welp. Jane... If anything, the government should at least be a good mixture of the different species so everyone's rights and preferences can be taken into account. I don't think having a Troll as a president would be that bad, even if they themselves are very much for the violence. If the government is mixed enough then things shouldn't get too radical in any direction, right? You really, really should have been talking about this with the others, Jane. If you believe this is so important, then at least you should have talked to the Trolls you know personally about it. Oh boy, what kind of thought? I honestly can't think of anything. Pffff, I did not see that coming. The question is, does she mean she need Jake, just for his support in the election because he's so popular and could get plenty of people behind her? Or does she need him to talk to? Oh man, conversation between Jane and Jake incoming? Or perhaps Jake's still unconscious from that tranquilizer dart, depending on when this is taking place. NOPE, he's clearly awake. xD Well, that confirms that. Also, I'm really happy to be getting some ordinary Jake dialogue in here. So far, both in the stadium with Dirk and in John's retcon quest his dialogue was rather limited, other than his rapping. I love how Jake still continues to talk in such an old-fashioned way. Pffahahaha, oh man. Why am I surprised. xD Oh boy, hopefully this is not going to turn into a reprise of Jane getting upset that Jake's just gonna continue talking about himself and Dirk while Jane doesn't get the chance to talk about what she feels or wants to say. N'awww, some things never change. Is... is that a pail? 0_0 I love how it seems like he didn't even flinch that hard from getting a pail straight in the face. Poor innocent Jake. Welp, Jake's still interrupting Jane whenever she wants to say something. That's not good. Still, I like that he's aware of how people are using him. ...Jane's not going to get around to saying anything, is she? xD ...Eh? What does Jane have in mind for Jake? Something that DOES support her in her campaign but at the same time matches with Jake's interests? Same, Jake. Same. xD Oh boy. She's secretly going to have the press notice the both of them together, so that it fools the press into thinking Jake's openly supporting her? Pfff. Probably her evening then. xD Ahahahaha, perfect metaphor. Jeez... Jane's taking these political games very seriously. That last sentence is kind of ominous. She's not... gonna try to hook up with him again, right? We all know how that turned out last time, and if she'd just do it for the politics now... eesh. This reminds me of how in the B2 session, during those 5 months Jane hardly heard from Jake and he didn't even notice it. Pfff, imagine he comes and asks where his kipper is. xD Yikes... I have a very bad feeling about where this is heading... |
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Post by plainWonder on May 2, 2019 20:34:39 GMT
Meat Page 10. So, with little fanfare, we've passed the point in time that is the Masterpiece. I wonder if John's next interaction with the outside world will be granting himself retcon powers, or whether from his perspective the next thing is being summoned by Vriska. That being said, I wonder how Vriska will react to seeing these people emerge from the house artefact, you'd think she'd be very surprised. Will John & co. have felt it to be hours from their perspective, being trapped? Or longer? Can't have been years, or their relative age difference wouldn't matter any more. Also, is Davepetasprite^2 nearby for their confrontation with LE? If not, this definitely won't be the final showoff! But if she is, well... I wonder how things turn out, this almost can't already be it for Lord English. Then again, if the perspective now switches back to Earth C for a long time, by the time we switch back the plot could be culminating. I also wonder if there will be any interaction with the people outside the Black Hole's event horizon (I know, contradiction in termini there). Like, post-retcon Aradia, who'd been watching the mayhem unfold. --- "Jane Crocker sweeps into her office" Well then. That answers that. Mary Poppins-style entry for them, then? Courtyard Droll isn't around to be wielding an umbrella, fortunately. I'm interested to get a good look into her mind, given all we've heard said about the state of Earth C, and Dave's mistrust in her. Also wondering how her relationship with her Dad has evolved over the years. Wouldn't at all be surprised if he was still leaving supportive notes as well as confectionary in her office. Blaperile has a good point, Dirk might be coming around, being her campaign manager. Their relationship was always interesting, due to the similarities to as well as the differences with John & Dave's. "The sun cuts through her venetian blinds, painting butter-yellow strips of light all the way from one end of her impeccably tailored office to the other." In other words, exactly the state in which a private investigator likes their office to brood. Stations may change but demeanors don't do as quickly. "It’s a lovely day, like most days, so not terribly remarkable except for the horrid news that she has just received at her customary morning press conference." There's competition afoot and its name is Vantas. "[Jane] brushes her hands over her hips to smooth the wrinkles out of her powder-blue pencil skirt. Then she hems, haws, puffs out her cheeks, and takes a very deep breath before snatching a pillow off the nearest couch so that she can scream into it." So majestic. And such a Jane thing to do, too (even though Rose started the whole screaming into pillows for Homestuck), remember the time she was being 'supportive' when Jake was contemplating Dirk's affections? Both times, really. "There are, surely, a multitude of ways for a person to find out that an acquaintance is running against you in a presidential election. From a carapacian reporter, in front of twenty-six other members of the interspecies press, was not the method Jane would have personally chosen." Welp. Well, yeah, it stood to reason Dave wasn't going to say anything, given his misgivings about her. 27 reporters, huh. Kinda wondering about how representative they were to the entirety of the populace. All the bigwig stations must've been represented, of course, but then it would seem humanity has an overly large representation in those already. "She cannot believe that Karkat would do this to her. This is no longer a political fiat (which the election would surely have been had she run uncontested by any other civilization-founding celebrities) but rather a battle between “friends.” What did Vantas think he was doing?" Well, uh, it seems that he's giving you fair competition where you seemed to be of the idea there wouldn't be any. That's not really a good starting point for a politician, Jane. Seems like her business-minded attitude is indeed influencing her campaign strategy. "This could not have possibly been Karkat’s idea." Yeah, I'd thought she'd be on to it quickly. "He is not cut out for politics, neither intellectually nor in the very important matter of social constitution. Certainly not when it comes to economic policy. In fact, Jane is pretty sure that Karkat Vantas would probably literally burst into flame if too many people happened to look at him at the same time, like a vampire walking out into the sun." I was going to say that's unfair of her, but then she's never known Karkat when he's aflame with purpose, only the Karkat that's been hurt too much and suffered too many losses to remain motivated. Also, of course she'd "think of the economy" first. That's hilarious given Dave's concerns. "Wait. Jane lowers the pillow from her face and stares at her brass-and-glass art deco ceiling. Was that vampire thing xenophobic against Kanaya?" Well, at least we know that IF Jane's really xenophobic, as Dave fears, she's trying to become aware of when she is and doing something about it. Of course, trying and succeeding are two different things - just as Karkat. As for it being hurtful, well... Good thing she never met Game Over Kanaya, she might have had some objections to death-by-light-from-above. "Dave was certainly no Dirk Strider, no Rose Lalonde, no Roxy, but he had that same scheming gene, buried deep down beneath his transparent onion layers of posturing and, frankly, rather outdated humor. An instinct to plan." Well, I wouldn't have said as much - if it was genetically determined there's no reason Dave couldn't have just not inherited those genes. But then, I'm all here to see Dave's take on scheming, sure. He's had a great example in John planting ideas about apple juice in his head. The bar is already set. "And despite being inarguably the dimmest of his family’s impressive ecto-biological stock... Oh, dear. Stock. That’s likely a problematic word, isn’t it?" Yep, seems like Jane really is trying. Can't believe I'm saying this, but if Kankri were here, he might have some good advice for her. A lot of bad, too, but still. "Despite being the least mentally gifted member of his family" Eesh, okay, but she's still got a lot of prejudices to work out. "Dave has always had an awful lot of opinions on the economy. In fact, Jane cannot remember a single conversation she’s ever had with him that wasn’t about the economy. She thinks back to one time at John’s eighteenth birthday when Dave engaged her in a rigorous and rather one-sided debate about deregulation and the failure of “neoliberal austerity measures” until Karkat had to come over and put his hands over his roommate’s mouth to make him stop talking." Well, I guess he's really, REALLY concerned. Can't blame the guy, though, but poor Jane, Rose knows what that's like, being on the other side of that trailing, lumbering monologuing. At least Rose's monologue's don't meander. "carapacians were widely known to be swayed by underdog populism." That's because their civilisation was founded by WV, isn't it? "And the consorts? Who had even given them the right to vote in the first place? In any other year..." Oh, so... Does that mean the consorts only got their right to vote so recently, after 5000 years. That's... Well, that might just be indicative that until recently, their political activism was nothing to write home about. Jane starts to chew a pencil and it's just so FITTING for her, she's so fidgety, it's probably how Jade ended up being so giddy. "In any other year, this wouldn’t be a problem. She’d be happy to accept a graceful, temporary defeat and let Karkat play president for a couple of years. After all, unlike her, he was not immortal." ... Eesh, so, yeah, that confirms that Karkat's godhood isn't expected to be eternal, unlike the humans. They could be wrong about it. But what is so special about the current year, is the political situation on Earth C THAT volatile, or is Jane aware of things about to unfold on a cosmic scale - or even pan-cosmic, if she knows about the events back in canon with the Black Hole 'n all. "But Earth C’s paper-thin idyllic history was very close to a boiling point—its very first boiling point, in fact, which will have everything to do with the problematic nature of troll reproduction." Ahhhh, right. So that's why she's aiming for the reigns. Didn't think her 'political takeover' had so moral reasons. ... Or, well, at least humanitarian. "The first generation of natural-born trolls obviously cannot be entrusted to a troll." ... Well that's just cruel. I know she'll have reasons given troll history on Alternia and B2 Earth alike, but it's their purpose as gods to change the world for the better, together. Guess now we get to see the parts of her thinking that gave Dave reason to brand her a fascist, semi-serious or not. "The citizens of Earth C were able to rest easy knowing that the government held careful rein over the... well, over matters of equity. No one could possibly trust something so important to a troll, knowing what everyone knew about their violent history." So it's the hemospectrum she fears would be reinstated. She's equating their biology with their ideology then, thinking natural-born trolls are fundamentally more oppressive as to those birthed through scientific means. Oooh boy. That's a whole steaming pot of problematic thinking. "Jane presses her eyes shut and runs her fingers along the fine-grain patterns in her mahogany-paneled desk. She is about to think something that she has promised herself never to think again. In fact, she is about to say it—this horrible, ghoulish, girlish thought that used to rule her world and make her so terribly weak. The shameful thought is expressed out loud in the form of a defeated sigh." ... Is it... "I wish Dad was here?" Even if he's still alive, she might have tried to become her own woman, cutting more ties than is healthy. "JANE: I need Jake." Pfffff, okay, yeah, that I understand. She needs his support to swing the voters. Guess Jane is also trying very hard to be "over him", just like Jake with Dirk. I can see how well that is going for her. Now I wonder how the Nannasprites are doing. "She spins around and, still sitting on her desk, presses a familiar entry on her phone’s contact list." Either it's Jake and it's familiar to her because she still looks at it ten times every day, or Dirk's because they get along so well and are working together on her campaign. "JAKE: Ahoy ahoy!" ... Yeah, this is going to be so cumbersome for Jane, I can just feel it, her old feelings now causing quite the opposite response towards everything that makes Jake who he is. "the ol’ horse tranquilizer trick." Just... just how many times has Dirk pulled this on him already? And how many more times is Jake willing to go through with their show? "JAKE: Which i suppose i should have seen coming, as dirk has ended all of our matches in this fashion for the past week." ... Jake. Jake, honey, you need a coach. A non-robotic one. Or settle for a non-shitty spirit guide. I know that narrows it down to basically zero, as far as sprites are concerned, but still. "JANE: Oh dear. That sounds absolutely terrible, Jake. Is there anything I can do to help?" I wouldn't like it if Jane keeps pretending to care for Jake if there wasn't any truth left to the gesture. "JAKE: Help? Gadzooks woman! I hardly think myself in need of help. JAKE: Its a jolly good adventure working with someone so predictably unpredictable as our good friend dirk!" Then again, it would be hard not to get exasperated by all of this... airheadedness, well meaning as it is. "You would think that Jake enjoyed the sadomasochistic nature of his and Dirk’s personal and professional relationships. Judging from the last conversation about election strategy with Dirk, he seems to be perfectly aware of this feature of Jake’s personality. You can’t be too nice when courting his endorsement, Dirk would say. He doesn’t respond to nice." So Dirk is still being rather methodical in his interactions with Jake. :/ But I mean, Jake does respond better to challenges, at least initially. He appears not be scared off/by Dirk though, I wonder how he's worked through his feelings about their breakup? "something big and hollow and metal connecting with Jake’s head. When Jake comes back to the phone, he’s yelling into it." Jake's life is just like a cartoon on even the best of days, isn't it? "I appreciate very much that you have called me out of the blue to say such nice things to me with no ulterior motive! From anyone else, this would have been a portentous statement. However, Jane knows that Jake English could not have possibly meant this with anything but the utmost sincerity." Well, I wouldn't mind it for Jake to have developed a level of self-awareness, but yeah... That's unlikely by now, isn't it? "JAKE: Because i must note that although i try to stay sporting about what comes at me, i cant say that i am chuffed about how much of my correspondence lately has to do with the marketing of my image. JAKE: Its beginning to feel like all people want from me is to stick my derriere on a signpost for their own profit." ... Well, okay, he's become self-aware to the extent he realizes people idolize him and pine for his affections. But that's just because he was so very much affected by that during the session. It'll take a lot longer for him to pick up on more subtle and rarer things, though. "It must be so difficult. For you more than the rest of us, due to your, let’s say... JANE: Natural gifts? JAKE: Huh?" Well, guess he doesn't realize his good looks yet, at least. "JANE: But you know that I have always wanted what’s best for you, right? JANE: And I am ready to give that to you. JAKE: To give me what? JANE: The best, Jake. The very best." That could be very ominous, "what's best for you". But what would it be if it were sincere? A way to follow in his Grandma's footsteps, while ensuring he doesn't blunder and blow up anyting unintentionally?" Jake is quiet a moment, and Jane can hear the rusty gears turning in his head." Insert "*thinking*" smiley here. "JANE: You should stop by to see me this evening! JAKE: Do you mean my evening or yours? Were in different time zones right now and i dare say that the sun just went down here so if you wanted to have a soiree on my time youve missed your chance." It'd be a fair question, assuming Jane could've been in his neighbourhood. I'm sure their meetup won't go quite as nefarious as pretending they're dating to the press, right? ... Right, Jane?" Jane feels her fake smile flexing so hard that it was beginning to hurt. Oh yes, she loved this man in basically every category that you could possibly love a person, but sometimes talking to him is like trying to build a house of cards while riding a mechanical bull." Ah, so they were facetiming? Note the past tense in 'loved'. :/ Well, old flames do still elicit feelings of friendship, a lot of times. "JANE: Mine, of course! I’ll have the best year of your favorite crocodile-made scotch flown in from the Consort Kingdom and we’ll have a little catch-up. Jake actually hates scotch, and only drinks it for appearance’s sake. But for this—for this unbelievably pivotal moment in the history of the planet that they created with their bare hands—Jane is willing to spend a few thousand boonbucks to watch her old friend pretend to sip at the same glass for a couple of hours while prattling on." So: A) Crocodiles might be living in Scotland, if the scotch authentic. Highlander Crocs in kilts and playing bagpipes. Glorious. B) Boonbucks are the currency running the economy, which explains how they can all be so rich. Of course, their influx of cash could've disrupted the economy, but if it had Dave's would've already complained about it. C) Guess there's never been something as disruptive to happen to Earth C as the Mother Grub, then. Not even natural disasters. D) Plan Fake Date is apparently, actually going to happen. "Time to work your magic, Crocker." Magic being ruthless business-minded political scheming, I hope. Since she's serving Jake drinks he doesn't like, it'll all be for pretense, down to the drinks too. But I wouldn't like to be in Jake's shoes if she starts to fake-fancying him. |
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The One Guy
Rust Maid
Posts: 1,148
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by The One Guy on May 2, 2019 20:37:03 GMT
Ok, I've got some time to do more reading today; let's get started: Meat Page 21:Honestly the whole problem with troll reproduction is that we're applying Human standards to Troll issues. Trolls are biologically designed to send off their genetic material and have their kids fight for survival on their own until they are chosen by a symbiotic species to raise them. Infant mortality is a required part of the system, but by applying human morals, this survival of the fittest scenario would be seen as wrong, thus the "natural" way of troll reproduction becomes no longer natural and produces too many grubs. I would say that one solution would be to go full natural. Maybe not to the extent of reintroducing lusii, but actually having the grubs fight their way out of the brooding caverns. It would come with the problem of promoting aggressiveness in Trolls, but it seems to me that this is the entire reason Troll's developed moirallegiance. Of course, I can imagine this being a very unpopular option. Another option would be a compromise: Trolls can breed naturally, but have the collection happen less often than in the original system. Regardless, there are more options than the extreme ends both sides are proposing. Then again, being forced to choose between to extremes when the best solution is in the middle tends to happen a lot in politics. Anyway, it seems we'll be getting back to John next page; I'll be looking forward to it. Candy Page 19:Well that was unexpected, I'd considered the possibility that the two routes might cross paths at some point, but isn't this route supposed to have lost its relevance and thus there would be no need for the meat route to interact with it? Furthermore, I figured if a crossover did happen it'd be near the end if it did. This does make it interesting how it changes the experience depending on how one reads through the epilogues. Had I started with the Candy route, I would have no idea where this Jade came from, and had I fully read the meat route first I might have more information about why she arrived here. Meat Page 22:So Meefish went through the server. That's connected to Scratch's manor, right? Wouldn't that mean she's going to end up in the black hole? Then again, that is where Jade is going too, before arriving in Candyland. Interesting. Candy Page 20:Ah, right, Jade wanted to see Jane so she could revive her. I suppose it's possible arriving in the Candy route was not a deliberate act at all, which would preserve the route's irrelevancy ... which would mean that this Jade was, intentionally or not, shunted off into irrelevancy ... and quite possibly permanently dead.... Meat Page 23:Well that sure was a page. Candy Page 21:Is that a typo or a stutter? Okay, so with Aradia and Sollux busting in, I retract my statement about Jade being shunted off into irrelevancy. Wait, so Christianity is still a thing in Earth C? I would have thought the fact that they literally know who made the universe that Jesus was from kind of disproves the idea of the biblical god. Don't turn into the Wicked Witch now Jade. Ok, so it was other Calliope who called Jade into the black hole. Wasn't she green, though? Maybe I'm remembering wrong. Anyway, she says she's here to protect this world, so that means something will end up threatening it. I wonder, will it threaten both routes, or just the candy one? If it is both, will she protect both, or will the Meat route fall? Is the Meat/Candy dichotomy also signifying an Lord English/Muse Calliope dichotomy? I'll just have to read on I guess. Meat Page 24:I wonder if Jade's shoes had some sort of power anchoring her to her reality and that's why Muse Calliope had her kick them off; they are the whole "no place like home" slippers after all. And Terezi appears. I almost feel like I should have read this page alongside Candy Page 17, as both end with Terezi greeting John and calling him a loser. I wonder where Terezi is in her timeline in relation to her talking to Candy John. Meat Page 25:Whoops I almost started on Candy Page 22 before realizing that'd be starting "Epilogue Five." All I saw was that John was apparently talking to Terezi; I assume that one was over the phone. Anyway, onto Meat Page 25: There's more to individuality than knowledge. Two people could know exactly the same things and still have different personalities, opinions, values, etc. Of couse when dealing with the concept of ultimate self, then in could be possibly said that two versions of the same person knowing the same things become on individual. And now you have me reading the Wikipedia article on Kierkegaard (or, at least, the summary at the top); nice job Homestuck. That's a rather disturbing amount of control Dirk has. It's one thing to know exactly what's happening and to know that it's inevitable that she won't stand up, but it's another entirely to actually make her not stand up through control over the narrative. I'm assuming this is the same sort of power Lord English had, albeit, not consciously, and Muse Calliope likely has this ability too. Actually, it's probably how she got Jade to fly to her in the black hole. If this turns into a battle for control over the narrative, it could be quite interesting. Nonetheless, while it does complicate the issue of free will, it also validates the concept, as without free will, then control over the narrative would be impossible. Meat Page 26:Ha! I was right that the shoes had this significance, at least metaphorically. Yeah Dirk, you're attempts to save Jade were doomed from the start; I already know from the candy route that Muse Calliope wins this particular narrative battle. Meat Page 27:What are their opposing goals, though? Not about Jade, but their ultimate goals; I still don't know what either of them are trying to accomplish. So "the dead cherub" now has a presence in both Earth Cs. Although her goals seem noble, there's no way to be sure, and I don't like what she's doing with Jade. Regardless of intentions, She does have a leg up on Dirk: She's present in both whereas Dirk gave up on Candy C. Welp, I guess Calliope is taking over the narrative now, what a way to end "Epilogue Four." I'm certain now the routes are done in parallel, given that Calliope arrives at the end of both "Epilogue Four"s. And with that I'm done reading for today. I'm halfway through the epilogues and things are finally picking up now. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next! |
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Post by Gab on May 3, 2019 0:23:44 GMT
I intend to wait on fully discussing Epilogue stuff until more people here are fully caught up on both routes, but let me just say. I had been thinking about some stuff about myself recently, and was a little undecided. I kind of still am, but the epilogues gave me courage to commit to it a little further. So that's all for now. Really enjoying watching your progress, btw.
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Post by Blaperile on May 3, 2019 20:25:58 GMT
My live reactions to page 11 of the Meat Epilogue (page 3 of Epilogue Two) beneath the Spoiler tags! I'm very, very curious what we'll be seeing now. I think it's likely that we're going back to John, but the question is, what will we be seeing? I'm eager to find out how the confrontation of Vriska and the Ghost Army with Lord English continues of course (fresh dialogue from Vriska, Tavros and Meenah would be nice!), that would of course be the TRUE "meat" of this epilogue, but I wouldn't be surprised if first there will be another page perhaps just detailing what John's time inside the Plot Hole is like. Maybe indeed even him experiencing his own arm being put inside the thing. And I'm also very curious to see if John will retain his retcon powers afer that experience or not. Alternatively, it would be nice to see something from the B2 Kids who were left behind after defeating Caliborn. For their sake I honestly hope they're not doomed to living the rest of their lives in the remains of Caliborn's session. Anyway, let's continue! ==> Yessss, back to John it is! I'm pretty curious how the situation with John's glasses will be handled. Does he still actually need them now that he's a God, or did he just continue wearing them for their emotional value or something? I do wonder if Rose fully realized what the consequences would be of John's decisions. Most likely she did know this was going to happen? Oh!!! Looks like the barriers inside the Plot Hole separating them from each other weren't as magical and thick as I was expecting. Well, if they really ARE going to spend an eternity stuck in there from their perspective (probably not???), at least it's good if they can hear each other... I wonder if John can also hear both Dave and Jade from where he is, or that perhaps he'll only be able to hear one of them? A completely white room then. To be honest, I hadn't even really expected there to be any walls in John's prison, I guess I was just imagining a vast landscape of white nothingness. Ah, good to hear that at least they can both understand what the other is saying so they can have at least a pretty normal conversation. Looks like Rose already made first work of accounting for Dave and Jade's presences! ...Pfff, I just realized the irony of how the Homestuck Epilogue is again finding a way to do conversations between characters who aren't in the same physical room, just like how Homestuck itself used to have so many of these before the characters actually started meeting up. First with all the different phonecalls John, Rose, Dave and Dirk had, and now also within this prison the kids have to talk to each other without being capable of seeing the others. ...I take back what I just said about them being capable of hearing the other just fine. Yeah, looks like time will be flowing very differently in there than in the outside world. Not to mention the fact that the Plot Hole is or will be banished to the Furthest Ring, a place where time ALREADY flows very differently. Which is probably a good thing for their sake, hopefully it means it won't feel THAT long before they get out of there. Hmm, so it's not just time. The Plot Hole is really neutralizing EVERYTHING, it seems. So Rose probably won't be capable of having any useful visions, while John won't be capable of zapping or doing a Windy Thing, I assume? Errr, what could that be? Some shrapnel from the fight between the B2 Kids and Caliborn, or something else entirely from perhaps a really long time later? I have no idea what it could be. ...You know, I wonder if what the Kids are going through here is the standard "being stuck in a juju" experience. As in, I'm wondering if perhaps Caliborn, Arquiusprite and Gamzee, who were locked into Lil Cal, would also be conscious in there, experiencing it as some kind of prison? I have a feeling they have to engage Karkat mode if they want to remain audible. But honestly, what the fuck is going on out there. PFFFFAHAHAHA, Rose and less words. Now that's just wrong. xD ...Karkat can't whisper. John can't yell. I suddenly understand everything. Oh John, you still don't realize you're actually creating Lord English here. ...Heh, actually kind of appropriate how both events actually contribute to defeating Lord English: out there the B2 Kids were tasked with "defeating" Caliborn, while the B1 Kids will presumably be tasked with defeating the adult Lord English once they get out of here, together with their allies in the Furthest Ring. This event might be responsible for both the creation AND the demise of him. ...Maybe John's imagination will be so shitty that it basically amoutns to the shittyness with which Caliborn portrayed the battle during the Masterpiece. xD Ahahaha, okay, John's doing a better job at realizing what's going on out there than I expected. Looks like time's still progressing pretty linearly though, for now. Perhaps until the chest is banished to the Furthest Ring. Heh, what with how they can at least somewhat hear what is going on out there, perhaps they're even going to hear it when Past John, Vriska, Aradia, Meenah and Aranea are out there talking. And Vriska would be the most audible, what with her tirade against Hussie there. xD That would be hilarious to get John's reaction all over again. Alas, we're never going to see/read about the actual battle. xD Ohhh, beneath him! So they really are oriented as if they're in a "house" shaped object, like the Plot Hole actually was. I was actually kind of imagining that but rather in a more horizontal form instead of vertical, with the 4 cells being basically next to each other. D'aww, poor Dave and Jade. They've had it so rough. I guess there's not really a right or wrong in that decision, it's definitely a difficult choice. I think John doesn't have to tell them everything, but that he can at least tell them a few general things to assure them. Finally a mention of Terezi! It's been way too long. I wonder what John's feelings are about that, about how many years she's already been gone? I wonder if they totally lost contact with her after that first conversation after she'd just arrived in the Furthest Ring, or if they kept in touch. And whether, when we hear from Terezi again, time has progressed for her by about as many years as had passed on Earth C. And I'm still very curious about how this story is going to end for Terezi. Will she ever go back to Earth C? How about Vriska and Davepetasprite^2? And will Aradia ever come along? And there's of course the matter of John himself? She's also got sharp horns. Sharp laugh. Sharp walking cane... Haha, n'aww. Looks like there's still a remnant of those black feelings for her! Good thing it's very likely that John's going to encounter Terezi out there in the Furthest Ring. And I do mean the post-retcon self, but I'd love to see pre-retcon Terezi and Vriska again no matter how unlikely it probably is. Wow... In Homestuck itself we didn't see THAT many interactions between them implying this kind of relationship. It makes me wonder what those few years were like in between everyone settling on Earth C and Terezi departing for the Furthest Ring. Did John and Terezi really keep such a close contact? Was it perhaps due to Terezi leaving that John started getting more isolated in the first place? Maybe what John truly needs is a Moirail to talk to about this stuff? Looks like he's cropping up his issues way too much, and he really should start talking about it with someone. I... wow. Okay, that hit me completely out of left field. To be honest, I don't know enough about depression to say something about whether what John's feeling could actually be caused by depression. I have no idea. Eeesh, John...  Man, this Epilogue has done a bang-up job of making me feel incredibly sorry for John and everything he's gone through. SUDDEN MOODWHIPLASH OUT OF NOWHERE. Huh??? It's actually doing something? Honestly, I'd be shocked if John could actually do something like that here, considering that this is the very device that gave him those powers in the first place. ...Welp! It was worth the try, at least. Yeah... looks like this is going the way we thought it would, after all. For a minute there I'd begun doubting it however. PFFFFF, oh John. What a time to spill the beans on that. |
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Post by plainWonder on May 3, 2019 20:27:49 GMT
Meat Page 11. Is the resolution of the Masterpiece really going to fall in between pages about Jane & Jake's fake date? Maybe not. Maybe we'll see something from John's perspective first, inside the house juju. Giving himself the retcon powers. Coming to terms about some things. But I suspect he won't be able to contact anyone. At least, it would surprise (and entice!) me if someone contacted him while he's hidden away so remotely in there... Speaking of contact, how did John intend to have read anything inside the juju without his glasses or contacts? You can only spend so much time squinting. I also wonder what they'll do when they're let out. I mean, they haven't become any better at fighting, and LE has. John won't zap his friends, Vriska and Davepetasprite^2 away to confer in a more secure location, right? Assuming he still has his retcon powers by the end of his stay in the house juju. --- "That’s that, you think. Your glasses are broken forever, and you totally fucked up and underestimated young Lord English. Rose should have known better than to trust this to you alone." Well, I guess having a mental breakdown is one way to pass the time. I'd rather he had some sort of breakthrough instead, though. As for the glasses... Maybe a non-final death will restore them? Or by ascending to his Ultimate Self god tier. Whatever that'd do to his personality... "Rose, Rose... your smart, amazing friend Rose, you can almost hear her voice now. > Listen closer, jackass." ... Ah, so Reload Rose and the others can still talk. Their jails neighbour each other after all - they represent the four blocks of the house - but I didn't think it'd be enough for them to confer. Though, I rather think they're limited in what they can do in here, right? Unless... Unless by being in the house juju, they can influence some things inside the plot, still put some things in place so some time loops are fulfilled and stuff is prepared for bringing down LE! Pretty sure they're barred, narratively, from performing a jail break, though. Ya know, I've talked about the sentiments behind the narrative prompts before, and I just now realized that the kind of intruisive, inflammable language they use are a throwback to Homestuck's narration, since now that we have this POV-type story, the language there in is more shaped towards the person in question. "You’ve only realized right now that your cell has walls, because it’s awfully bright in here. It’s so white that nothing in the cell is casting a shadow. Looking around, you realize there is no apparent source to all this bright light, making it hard to tell where the floor ends and the walls begin." Oh, I figured it was dark for him, but yeah, the house is white. Maybe the jail cell looks to each as what their idea of being imprisoned in a house-shaped object should be like, and proportions of the space go to match that? Hence why John can't yet tell the floor from the walls, he's got only an inkling of an idea. "JOHN: yeah, i’m here. ROSE: Oh, thank goodness. Everyone’s accounted for then." Hah, John spaced out while the others reconnected. Nice. I'm interested to see what ideas Rose will bring to the table. So it all comes back to four kids, standing idly in separate rooms, huh. "Are you okay? JOHN: what? ROSE: Are you OKAY?" Okay, either the walls muffle the sound of John is like "this situation does not warrant the use of the word 'okay', rose. 'okay' is definitely not how i would describe us being right now." "JOHN: i think so. i can barely hear you though. You can hear a thud from Rose’s corner, like someone slumping against the wall in relief. Well, that’s what you’re doing at least." That's pretty much all she needed to hear right now. "DAVE: this is kinda dorky to say out loud but i dont DAVE: feel... time" ... They're cut off from all their aspects now, are they? That'd just make them ordinary people. :/ Or maybe it's in reference to time outside of the juju passing way faster, relatively. "DAVE: thats not just me right you guys feel it too DAVE: or dont JADE: yeah JADE: i mean theres obviously space inside this box but i cant do ANYTHING JADE: its like im blind" ... Okay, so I'm left to wonder. Would the egg sword and Jade's First Guardian powers still be usable? I'm assuming Dave had it out, so even if their sylladexes are inaccessible they might be able to do something. "The noise outside the juju grows. Something sharp and metallic splinters above and rains down on the top of the chest." That isn't something to do with the pirate party finding the chest in the dreambubbles... So then, what? Did the B2 kids do something with the chest after exiling (excorcising? ... INcorcising?) Caliborn into Lil Cal? Blaperile has a good point. Do all the soul splices inside Lil Cal experience this in the same way? ... Do all the soul splices in LORD ENGLISH experience this in the same way?? In the sense that the mobster is just a prison they can't escape or influence? "ROSE: What did my future self say it was we had to do? JOHN: erm... she never rea—" Oh this is going to be so embarrassing. "The metallic noises rain down harder, drowning out Rose’s attempt at being loud." ... It's that the noises are metallic, otherwise I was almost beginning to think it was more like the white noise. And that would have made me think of the Scratch. That would sure be something though, if the B2 kids initiated a Scratch of Caliborn's session. Actually, what if that was how Alternate Calliope's timeline came to be... "JOHN: NOW I CAN’T HEAR YOU! JADE: TRY USING LESS WORDS The length of the silence coming from Rose’s corner communicates just how difficult a task that is for her." Pfffffffff. Incoming character development for Rose: being concise. "JADE: WHAT? ? JOHN: I KNOW IT’S ALL A BIT ABSTRACT, BUT... JADE: NO, I JUST CAN’T HEAR YOU! DAVE: JOHN YOU SUCK AT YELLING JOHN: UGH!" Pfffff, I thought John would be better at yelling coherently, being Karkat's counterpole. ... Blaperile points out the similarity with Karkat sucking at whispering. XD "Now you understand defeating young Lord English was never supposed to happen. Not the way Adult Rose was implying it would. You surmise the other four teens remaining outside the juju were the ones meant to be tasked with his defeat." It just sucks that John has to come to these admittedly wrong decisions by himself and couldn't have been given more information to work with. "And judging from the cacophony still emanating from beyond the walls of this house and its confining chest, they are taking the task seriously." Okay, so the B2 kids' fight is still going on. Still unsure what the metal sounds could be about though. Aside from Dirk hacking at the chest with his unbreakable katana. "But what does this mean for the four of you?" John, don't lose hope, you said it yourself, you'll be unloaded... some time. "You try to picture what’s going on in the battle outside, but it’s not easy. > Use your imagination." Of course, the house juju's powers run on imagination! No, wait, he's just going to give us his idea of the proceedings of the rest of the Masterpiece. Sadly, he doesn't have any clay at hand. "The coolness of the action in your mind’s eye is belied by the actual sound effects booming all around you, which you can only describe as vaguely stupid." Welp, guess the bar of wedgies is still being cleared only marginally. "There’s a lot of hysterical screaming, which, if you’re not mistaken, is coming exclusively from the male combatants. ... Well, Dirk IS living and breathing anime. "Almost as if an outrageous bubble of pure Hope were enveloping the stage, is how you would describe it if you didn’t mind sounding ridiculous." Hah, John still doesn't believe in the application of Hope. "Then you hear... it can’t be. Horses?? No, not simple horses of flesh and bone. These horses are metal, if we’re to believe they’re horses at all." Oh! Right, Arquiusprite summoned those Metalhoofs. Well, that's what I picture they were, Caliborn represented them with metal horse figures... But perhaps he even created robo-centaur butlers and the like. *shivers* "You figure no one will ever truly know what’s happening out there. You doubt anyone would even be able to handle how incredible the raw, unfiltered account of this teen brawl actually was, so it’s probably for the best." Welp, and we were doing so well just now. Eh, it seems the battle unfolded pretty much exactly as foretold, only with some of the more stupid details removed, curtousy of Caliborn's impatience with stupidity. Which in this case might not have been entirely bad. "you overhear Dave from one of the rooms below you, raising his voice to speak to either you or someone else." Right, they are not all on the same level, since it's a house-shaped prison. Uh, but wasn't Dave supposed to be in the part of the house with the extra window? It's been too long, I probably misremember. Oh, wait, yeah, they went through the fourth wall via one of the bottom panes, and it stood for Dave. Never mind. "Once more you ruefully reflect on these teen versions of your friends, and all the questions they must have for you. For each other. What would you even say to them?" The responsibilities of an adult, John never expected they'd be this hard. He must be growing more appreciative of what his Dad went through with him without even knowing it. "You’re not even sure you could handle it, if you were Teen John. You’d have too many follow-up questions, which Adult John is in no way prepared to answer." Still, I wouldn't mind a little one-on-one between Johns. A John-on-John, I suppose. In a serious way, nothing from the animes. "Would you tell them about Terezi..." Oooh, does he suddenly get an idea, thinking of Terezi? Can't say I think they can do anything to contact her from inside here. Hmm, but earlier, Blaperile thought about what the B2 kids could do with the juju chest, whether they might try to get the others out. That's assuming Caliborn didn't captchalogue the thing, though. Still, it would be something if they could defy what's been foretold and unload the house early, maybe load it with a real surprise for LE. "For some reason her name feels like nails in your heart. Makes sense, you guess, cause there’s a lot of sharp letters in it. She had sharp teeth too, and sharp elbows. Sharp words." Ahhhh, so we get to see what black romance feels like to John. Looking pretty sharp, apparently. Still, her sharp intellect could've come in handy here. It's a good thing chances are good they'll meet again, I'm sure post-victory Terezi has an important role to play yet. "Terezi Pyrope was a sharp girl, and maybe what these sharp feelings are trying to tell you is you miss her more than you realized." Well, John has already acknowledged his feelings about Roxy, guess it's time for the other side of the two-headed coin now. "She wouldn’t have let you neglect relationships with certain friends for so long that you missed whole chapters of their lives. She wouldn’t have put up with you moping around with the salamanders for so long. She would have kicked your ass for being such a loser about everything. She would have poked you in the forehead and called you insufferably lame and told you to pick up the damn phone. You would have called her a weirdo and pretended you hated it, and maybe you would even have believed you hated it. But now, sitting here in this little white cubicle, contemplating your regrets, you don’t think you’d have hated it much at all. Would you tell the teens that?" Oooh. Very good point, actually. Even if John really only knows that version of Terezi from talking to her on two separate days separate by three years, she had a real impact on him. Granted, they also kept contact on WhatsApp as well in Universe C, but during the session was when their interactions bloomed. It'd probably be a stretch for Meat to end with John retconning the post-victory timeline to include Terezi on Earth, with him, right? After they defeat Lord English first, of course. Oh, right, she was there for two years before leaving... somehow. I kind of forgot. Still, five years would've made a difference in where John ended up by the start of the epilogues. "JOHN: am i... depressed??" ... Well. Well, as far as growing self-awareness goes, this might be a very big development! Yes, it does seem that John has become listless on Earth C. Mostly it seemed to have to do with the absence of his Dad. But maybe he'll have other ideas about that, like his misfortune in matters romantic. "as it turns out, you are really fucking depressed. You’re just a giant, wet meat sack of self-involved misery, and all that big, wet, meaty ooze drips out your mouth every time you open it. All the time and space in the world isn’t making it better. It’s something you should have been doing for yourself, instead of waiting around for things to get better." Wow, John. I suppose things will get a little harder for him, now that he's realized this about himself, but I hope he'll find a way soon out of this mess. And so, that's what he's been doing on Earth C, just waiting for things to get better. And no-one picked up on it, not even the other people close to him that bordered on depression before? Like Jade? He really alienated himself... "Well, screw waiting! It’s boring as hell! You are JOHN EGBERT, after all, immortal CREATOR OF WORLDS, the one and only man ever to completely transcend the partitions of CANON ITSELF. You’ve got these powers, remember?" Well THAT's a sudden surge of RESOLVE if I've ever seen one! "You hold up your hands and form a rectangle with your fingers and reach outside yourself, outside canon, to the place your retcon powers come from. You focus. You strain. You contemplate with all your might a place you can zap to, any place but here." There's no place like home, there's no place like home! Kind of wondering if he'll succeed though. He might be cut off from his powers. But if not, canon is his oyster. "You wait. And wait. And wait and... Nothing happens. You slump back down against the wall" Welp! He tried. "JOHN: THE ONLY WAY OUT OF HERE... JOHN: IS FOR US TO WAIT FOR SOMEONE TO LET US OUT. JOHN: SORRY GUYS. ROSE: OH." Anyone up for a game of "I see I see what you can't see"? "JOHN: ALSO... JOHN: I THINK I MIGHT HAVE DEPRESSION?" Well, at least they won't have a lack of stuff to be talking, sorry, yelling about. Rose might be partially delighted to pick at the brains of an adult John, in fact. |
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The One Guy
Rust Maid
Posts: 1,148
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by The One Guy on May 3, 2019 22:23:38 GMT
Ok,"Epilogue Five"s her we come: Meat Page 28:
John doesn't like Monty Python? Well I guess it was stated from the beginning that terrible movies are more to his taste.
I still don't understand why Terezi wants to find Vriska so much.
I wonder if Terezi doesn't realize he's not the same John she's been talking to over the phone.
Candy Page 22:
And now for a much less depressing John/Terezi conversation. Though I guess Terezi is still starving on her end. ... Or maybe not, she might not be staving at this moment from her perspective.
And once again I second-guessed myself before learning I was right to begin with a few lines later.
It took me a second to remember that's what their baby would be named. I guess this means we've hit yet another time skip.
Uh oh, if everyone being sent to black hole is ending up here, does that Lord English will be arriving at some point?
I guess the political battle between Jane and Karkat was an inevitability regardless. Honestly, the Meat route seems like the better option even, at least there things will (hopefully) be resolved though peaceful elections... and from the sound of things Jane seems to have more power here than she would as president.
So uh, who is John planning to kidnap from a bad situation? I feel like this is supposed to be obvious, but I'm coming up blank. Jake maybe? Or Jake and Jane's child?
Wow, when I started reading this I did not understand why there needed to be a content warning for "Redemption;" now I understand. Apparently Eridan's "redemption" involves mentally turning into Gamzee.
Meat Page 29:
Yeah, using the trickster juju in the election is problematic. Not because of cultural reasons, but because it interferes with one's ability to make responsible, well thought out decisions.
This statement confused me for a bit given what he went on to say, then I realized I somehow read the comma as a u.
I ... have no idea what Dirk intends to do with the rifle.
You know Calliope, for all you say about not wanting to put thoughts into peoples minds, you're not exactly innocent here...
So Dirk plans to shoot Jake with the rife, but to what end? Does the rifle administer some sort of mind control? That would be quite worrying to put it lightly. I could just be jumping to conclusions, though.
Candy Page 23:
Ah, so it is Jake and Jane's child he plans to kidnap. I'm not sure how this can possibly go well, but I guess that's kind of the point. And I can understand his reasoning behind telling his son, but can you really trust a kid to keep secrets?
Oh, of course the one called Tavros would end up the insecure one. Why didn't I make that connection sooner?
Yeah, that about sums up what bothers me about Gamzee's "redemption" the most.
Wait, the show literally has executions?! Things are even worse than I thought.
And you're not even listening to Tavros right now...
"sick of it" Hmm:
John's intentions are good, and he definitely brings up very real issues with his friends, but he also seems to be lacking self-awareness in this whole exchange. He brings up talking past each other, only to talk past everyone, and his outburst isn't solving anything. But then, can you really blame him? This is how he's learned to deal with conflict, you stand up and fight the problem.
Meat Page 30:
Ok, yeah, with Dirk's little interjection, it definitely seems like he's going for some sort of mind control. I should probably point out that the idea of mind control is one of the most disturbing things to me, and it's even worse when applied to politics. If I'm right about Dirk's plan, then depending on the details it may end up being the most horrifying thing in Homestuck for me. So excuse me if I'm a bit, uh, unreasonably antagonistic to this.
Ah, so Jane did decide to go through with this plan. At this point I'm just happy to see things not going Dirk's way.
Hopefully it lasts...
Candy Page 24:
It's interesting how often I find myself agreeing with John's perspective in these epilogues.
So, I think that deconfirms my worry that Lord English will arrive with the ghosts.
So basically what I touched on yesterday with her having the advantage over Dirk, although I still don't know to what extent the two realities effect each other; it could be possible she succeeds in one and fails in the other. Also, it only just now occurred to me to look into classpects, "Prince" is a class of destruction, hence why Calliope tends to focus on that part...
Ok, so is still before she meets other-John for Terezi? If so, the event can't be far off. On the other hand, I've started to consider the possibility that Terezi somehow split as well and there's both a Candy and Meat Terezi. Especially with her conversation about how nothing seems real at the beginning of this page.
Well, I want to read on, but that's all the time I have for today. I may or may not read more over the weekend; I don't like giving myself unnecessarily obligations during weekends, so it'll depend on if I feel like it or not. Anyway, until next session! |
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Post by Blaperile on May 4, 2019 21:47:07 GMT
My live reactions to page 12 of the Meat Epilogue (page 4 of Epilogue 2) beneath the Spoiler tags! Okay, back to Earth C, I assume. The question is, are we gonna continue with Jane and Jake, go back to Rose and Dirk, or go to someone else entirely? If we're gonna continue with Jane and Jake, I'm kind of worried about what exactly Jane's got in mind here, how far she's planning on going in using him for her campaign. There's just so many ways this could go very wrong. Here we go... ==> WELL THEN... looks like we're in the "someone else entirely" category then. Oh boy, tactical meeting between Dave and Karkat? Well well well, look who he have here, it's Jade! Nice to see she's getting involved in this as well. Yeah, I somehow forgot that Kanaya was not the last person we still had to encounter on Earth C, we also still had to hear from Jade. It probably slipped my mind due to her appearances in John's retcon quest already. I'm looking forward to seeing Jade's opinions on what Jane's been doing, considering how well they got along with each other back in the Dreambubbles, together with Calliope. I'm... not sure I really follow what Dave's saying there but okay. All I really need to understand is Dave's way too deep into the implications on the economy. Those are actually some really good comments that I hadn't really thought about yet. Well, there was of course Jane's Dad who grew up as a normal adult on Earth and would understand the working of society better than any of they did, plus the advice of the Nannasprites who have the knowledge of an elderly lady who lived an entire life on Earth, but of course that's still a very limited source of knowledge and experience to base themselves on for a working society. It's not like they brought important books from Earth, or any historians or people who practiced other kinds of jobs than an ordinary business man and someone who ran a joke shop. And then we're not even diving into the Troll society from which there are absolutely no adult representatives, though I guess that's kind of a different matter because Alternia was run by children in the first place. Still, the Alternian society was all based on what came before, and they still had an awfully old and experienced Empress leading them. On the other hand, this seems like it would be a common SBURB thing, if the Guardians are really menat to die by the time the session ends. Perhaps what's really "supposed" to happen is that the new society isn't a continuation of what came before, like they are doing now, but that it's really supposed to be something entirely new that starts there without the history of what came before. Maybe Earth C's society has gotten a bit stunted because of that. This also matches my above thoughts about continuing from the old/SBURB society, but it's also something I'd been wondering about independently as well. How much sense does it really make for the society to keep relying on grist and alchemy, and not developing their own skills for manifacturing products? It doesn't really allow them to build new knowledge, right? So, I think I might be with Jane on this one to restrict grist alchemy. Pfff, New Dersetown though. I think Karkat and Jade realize what the right moments are for them to just let Dave have his monologue. Err... If the relationship between these three wasn't left so ambiguous I'd almost believe she's suggesting for them to make out with each other. I'm... not sure what to make of this. Did they HAVE a romance going on at some point and now not anymore and it's a painful thing to bring up, or what should I be thinking here? xD Ohhh, I always like it when we learn about new outfits for them. That's one of the things I regretted when the Kids went God Tier, we hardly ever saw them in new outfits anymore after that, with only few exceptions, such as Rose's date dress. At first I didn't think too much about this part, until plainWonder made me realize that this implies that Jade doesn't really have a bed in the house and technically doesn't live there unlike Dave and Karkat, but in reality she's been spending basically all of her time here instead of where she actually "lives"? That's pretty interesting. Oh hell yes, great to see that she's still interested in the same things as her 13-year old self. Pffahahaha, so the situation isn't only weird, awkward and incomprehensible for the people outside, it seems to be the exact same thing for them. xD To be honest, I'm pretty sure it was kind of that bad. Ahahaha, yeah, didn't that use to be some kind of fandom joke, that Trolls have two dicks? Dear god. xD D'aww, it's like Jade is their own personal shipper... while also somehow being involved in the relationship as well, judging from earlier comments. xD Science powers activate! Yeah, if Dave wants to do this the right way, he can always use information like this. That would be very helpful in a campaign. God I wish we saw more stuff like this during Homestuck proper. Ha, confirmation that she indeed meant kissing earlier! ...Wait. Shouldn't that also be counted as a personal thing? Ohhh, it's cool to see that she's been working on the fraymotifs though, even after the session had ended! Oh dear god, she isn't done yet. xD If there's one thing Dave's taught Karkat, it's when he needs to get a fucking pen probably. WAIT WHAT. xD Oh man, time to finally state what their relationship truly is? Time for the ambiguity to clear up???  If I had to make a solid guess I'd wager it's something like Dave and Jade< both flipping between  and  feelings for Karkat and him doing the same thing with them, possibly with something extra between Dave and Jade going on. Kind of something like what pre-retcon Karkat initially proposed to Dave for their relationship with Terezi? I LOVE THIS. I ABSOLUTELY FUCKING LOVE THIS. XD This has got to be one of my favorite pieces of dialog in this Epilogue so far. I love how Karkat absolutely doesn't want to be doing this, and Dave's just remaining silent. Heh, so apparently Jade doesn't actually live in the same town as they do. AHAHAHAHA, DAVE YOU BRILLIANT BASTARD. XD Ha, they really just don't wanna face what they're actually feeling here. Ooooh boy, Jade really wants to get answer here! And now, so do I! Pfffff. Maybe they haven't???? I'm really not sure what to make of it though. Earlier Jade implied kissing with them, so have they really just been kissing with her... while possibly also kissing each other but not telling Jade but at the same time living together while Jade lives somewhere else entirely? This is a fucked up situation. ABSOLUTE DENIAL FROM KARKAT, HE'S SO FLUSTERED OH MY GOD! BEST. QUOTE. OF. THIS. EPILOGUE. YET. I'm getting the feeling that Dave and Karkat haven't kissed each other yet but ARE attracted to each other and are just tiptoeing around their feelings for each other. Also, "everyone we know always calls you that", yeah, the only people I can think of who called Karkat differently are Meenah and Sollux and they're definitely not around here. Hehe, kind of like Rose and Kanaya became nearly inseparable! Well, to be honest, Dave and Karkat were also inseparable with WV. Make of THAT what you will, that's an entirely different topic. Hehehe, maybe you could say they're in all 4 quadrants at the same time? I could definitely see them doing that, with these complicated feelings towards each other. And plainWonder raises a fair point about The Sufferer's relationship with the Disciple that also transcended quadrants! Karkat's truly living up to his Ancestor. Gender based quadrants??? xD Is it about time yet for Dave to take issue with the word "gay" again? ...Say what now???? Who has Jade gotten involved with??? I don't think Karkat means WV and PM. xD Ah... well then. Has Jade been doing the groceries then? OHHHH BOY. OH MAN. Cool dodge there, Dave! xD Like hell it is, that's basically exactly what pre-retcon Karkat wanted to do to Terezi. xD Is it about time now to draw out another romance schedule like pre-retcon Karkat tried to do with Dave? Karkat was already supposed to get a pen, so maybe Jade will try using that and it becomes another dick ouija. Dear god, this is a side of Jade we've never gotten to see before, but I like it. xD Perhaps it also has something do with how isolated she grew up on that island of hers, that now in her adulthood she's ESPECIALLY craving these kinds of relationships? Dave... are you attracted to Obama? Ahahahaha, maybe it's about jegus??? xD I love how Jade's just trying to get Dave and Karkat totally flustered. PFFFAHAHAHAHA, WHAT EVEN IS THIS CONVERSATION. XD Oh my god, this is not only turning out to be my most favorite conversation in the Epilogue, but also one of my most favorite over all. I'M WITH KARKAT ON THIS ONE. FLIRTY/IRONIC/SARCASTIC JADE IS SIMPLY THE BEST JADE THERE IS. Wait a second... was Jade being serious about believing Obama/Snoop Dog/Nicolas Cage not being real??? I can't even tell anymore. xD That's... actually a really good point. She WAS sort of raised by an animal. It's even more driven home in Jake, where he was literally surrounded by Lusii as he grew up. PFFFFF. I'm finding it increasingly harder to say just how much I ADORE the interactions between these three. HELL. FRICKIN. YES. IT'S TIME FOR THE ROMANCE GRID. I love how this time Karkat's being on the receiving, protesting end of it. Whoever the person was to tell Jade about Dave and Karkat's romance grid / dick ouija, they deserve a medal. xD WE'RE DOING THIS MAN. WE'RE MAKING THIS HAPPEN. I THINK IT IS AND I'M ENJOYING EVERY SECOND OF IT. XD Exactly what I was thinking. These 3 could basically fill all 4 quadrants all by themselves! To be honest, yeah. That's basically what all their old interactions used to be like. xD Jade fucking Harley, oh my god. xD I absolutely love how I don't even need visuals to perfectly picture this amazing scene in my head. Oh my god, yet another cliffhanger! I can't wait to see this one continue, and see Jade, Dave and Karkat figure it out. Dave and Karkat will just be left completely dumbfounded now. xD Pfff, keep on denying Karkat! xD *raises eyebrows* This is gonna psyche so hard, isn't it. *lowers eyebrows* Of course. xD BEST EPILOGUE PAGE SO FAR. ULTIMATE PAYOFF FOR ALL THIS DAVE/KARKAT/JADE SUSPENSION. |
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Post by plainWonder on May 4, 2019 21:48:04 GMT
(I hope it doesn't offend anyone we're using this thread as a liveblog and aren't reading other responses until we catch up. I hope we don't break up any discussions but instead people get something out of all this.)
Meat Page 12. Back to Earth C presumably. I gotta say, I'm curious to find out the final page count of Meat. The way we liveblog, the experience is stretched out, so with theories surfacing and such, we might be caught off guard when things are really over. There's only so far that things will be taken, though I guess we're still in for those "original Male/Female characters", I guess. That shouldn't refer to the new Reload timeline John created, I think, with copies of all the people mentioned in the rest of the character list. So, uh, yeah, guess the reason Arquiusprite wasn't mentioned in there was because he remained unseen, voided out if you will. And I guess we shouldn't expect an alternate Equius to have a talking role, either? --- ==> Well! Talk about jumping straight into the action, this page opens with a dialoguelog! Back to Dave, Karkat and if my eyes didn't deceive me, we'll get some lines for Jade, too! Supportive Jade will be supportive. "hit jane right in her neoliberal austerity measures" ... Hah. Well, I didn't think that would get referenced again at all, but it seems after all these years since John's 18th birthday Dave still has issues with the ol' N.A.M. So, Jane's a neoliberal AND a fascist now, Dave? Is that... even feasible? "DAVE: now shes gonna spin some shit about supply side economics but we cant let her control the narrative on that one cause the first thing thats gonna happen once she begins deregulating the baking industry is that some sweet dumb crocodile down in consort land is gonna start putting sparkle glue in the cupcake mix which isnt even the real issue thats just surface issues KARKAT: RIGHT. JADE: definitely" ... Like, Dave I admire you're getting so into this, but you realize they aren't following, right? Also, why would Jane want to deregulate the baking industry if she's the leader of the foremost power in said industry, as well as running for president? Plus, Jane can't control the narrative because Caliborn is already controlling it! "DAVE: i mean earth c has just been play acting capitalism the last five thousand years while we timeskipped ahead to live rad lives as gods without bothering with any of the boring shit that goes into making a civilization DAVE: which is fine i mean you cant really expect a bunch of teens who didnt finish middle school to set up a sustainable form of social democracy that isnt just blatantly ripped off whatever we incorrectly thought obama god rest his soul was doing back in the day" ... Gee, Dave's given this a real lot of thought. Props to him, but I hope that aside from becoming 'an activist' he's also got some legitimite action points to improve Earth C's situation. Guess Sburb really does a number on players, huh? "Congrats, you won, you're all gods now, and also, here's this whole civilization on the brink of collapse, have fun with that. Don't mess this up, I need those people to start the apocalypse in say, 2000 years, k thx bye." (The fact that this civilization, being outside of the Green Sun's influence, may never implement Sburb, is a bit besides the point since I think the trolls would have had the same issue tossed onto them had they actually gone through the victory door.) Right, but the trolls had their home planet already effectively run by children, I wonder if that will come again? Even though they had carpenter droids at their disposal to run some things for them, they might actually be a bit more self-reliant than the humans! "DAVE: but janes got this old school mentality you just know she wants to restrict grist alchemy for the sake of “growth” and when that goes down itll take three seconds flat for some nobody in new dersetown to drop the earth c communist manifesto" ... New Dersetown, I like the ring of that. Would call it New Dersey for short, though. Again, valid points there, Dave! If any revolt started, it doesn't have to be in the troll community, it could just as much be an angry carapace uprising! They're only docile if there's no one to rally behind. Blaperile has this idea that the new society in a universe is not supposed to be seeded with the remains of the session nor the universe that came before it. That's actually a valid point; the only reason this society got kickstarted was through the cloning apparatus that was on the meteor! The consorts and carapaces seem like they would be able to reproduce biologically though, so I'm not sure how Sburb normally ensures the planet is a clean slate for a new species to emerge. ... Okay, so the planet itself doesn't really need to be the place where a new Sburb-playing species rises, true. There's a whole new universe out there. Maybe through "importing" old Sburb technology, the "alpha" planet designation went to Earth C automatically, though. Or maybe First Guardians are expected to 'cleanse' the planet from outside influence normally, but since this society's outside of the Green Sun's influence, that ain't happening. And Jade won't be going Thanos on Earth C. "KARKAT: OH YEAH. JADE: of course DAVE: are you two even listening or are you just making noises with your mouths" Dave realizing he's monologuing? What character development is this. "KARKAT: I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M BEING ACCUSED BY DAVE STRIDER, REIGNING EMPEROR OF SPEWING ENDLESS VERBAL DIARRHEA DIRECTLY INTO MY INNOCENT HEAR DUCTS EVERY DAY OF MY FUCKING LIFE, OF MAKING THOUGHTLESS MOUTH NOISES. KARKAT: JADE, ARE YOU HEARING THIS? JADE: im scandalized JADE: especially when JADE: there are much better things we could all be doing with our mouths....." ... Jade, your animes are showing again. ... I think that maybe Jade doesn't want this relation to be going where Dave and Karkat want it to go. "It’s been a really nice day they’ve been having, and then Jade had to go say something like that. The air in the hive changes in a way that is palpable, in a way that she can’t seem to accurately gauge despite having both superhuman and superdog senses." ... Ah. So I guess maybe Jade just can't get a lid on some of her more... canine inclinations, at time. Welp! "Elements of her outfit resemble her god tier jammies: peasant skirt, sparkly flats, and a bold choice in striped tights." Nice! That's only the third person who created an outfit based on her god tier outfit that we know, aside from Meenah and Rose. "the couch where she crashed last night, and the night before that, and the better part of the seven years before that." It would seem Jade has the wanderlust then, she's more like the vagrant dog that comes visiting from time to time? More GCAT in demeanor than Becquerel, in practice. Heheh. Good for her, after being isolated on an island and then a battleship for so long, she's finally going out & seeing things! "There are other personal effects of hers in the living room too: plants on the windowstill, her bass guitar sitting in a corner" Cool, so when she comes over, she typically lounges here then. Guess the flute never made it over, though. "a horrific-looking periodic table that Dave made her for her seventeenth birthday pinned above the stairwell. He typed it in Comic Sans, and then deep-fried it to oblivion with JPEG artifacts." ... Next up, on For Fans By Fans... "And Dave, with his preternaturally perfect timing, sweeps a hand over his tablet to bring up a new PowerPoint slide on the TV. He returns to his Comic Sans-written political presentation, gruesome artifacts and all" Dave, Dave that isn't professional at all! ", with the grace and proficiency of a man who has diffused an awkward situation in his own household many times per day, every day, for many years." Well, okay, that is really mature. But when Dave is the adult in a situation, the situation is very awkward per definition. "DAVE: alternia: brutal eugenics based space dictatorship KARKAT: NOT UNTRUE." Succinct, brutal, but not dishonest. "DAVE: troll homeworld: lord of the flies nightmare scenario where kids murder each other just to get the chance to get to grow up and murder other aliens instead KARKAT: IT WASN’T THAT BAD." Karkat. Karkat that isn't a valid rebuke. "KARKAT: YOU MADE THAT LAST ONE UP. KARKAT: ALSO, IT WAS DISGUSTING?? KARKAT: GROW THE FUCK UP, YOU UTTERLY CONTEMPTIBLE, POTTY MOUTHED *CUNT*." ... The irony is stark. "JADE: also you know trolls dont actually have two dicks dave thats an offensive stereotype" Are we really doing troll anatomy? Well, I guess it's good to know that the fan theory about Sollux at least isn't applicable to the entire species. "DAVE: trolls: literally ate babies KARKAT: ONLY THE DEFECTIVE ONES. DAVE: like you my dude KARKAT: ...YEAH. DAVE: so thats why our campaign can work" Yeah, Karkat ate grubs, though they weren't troll babies. Also, yeah, Karkat was a mutant, but I wonder if that would really help his case here. "DAVE: btw im gonna be giving a long form exam at the end of this to make sure youre retaining info because this is only like the most important thing weve ever done collectively" Well he ain't wrong. "KARKAT: ARE YOU ASKING ME WHETHER I’VE HEARD THIS EXACT SPEECH ALMOST WORD FOR WORD, INCLUDING REHEARSED VERSIONS OF BOTH THE COLORFUL METAPHORS AND “JOKES,” TEN OR TWENTY TIMES ALREADY? KARKAT: BECAUSE THE ANSWER WOULD BE KARKAT: YES, OF COURSE I FUCKING HAVE." Poor, poor Karkat. "Karkat elbows Dave in the thigh, a move that is obviously meant to be an action of pure, brotherly jest. But instead it comes off as affectionate and overly intimate. Jade’s clever eyes don’t miss this. Her pupils follow the motion of Karkat’s arm, and then they follow the movement of Dave’s mouth as he smiles in what he probably thinks is a totally neutral expression that reveals exactly 0% of his true feelings toward Karkat Vantas. In reality, his veneer is as thin and transparent as cellophane. He is the only person who can’t see through it. Jade does some calculations in her head. Two kinds of calculations, in fact: mathematical ones and personal ones." So, is Jade reading too much into their relationship, or are the dudes just... Both too shy? "JADE: soooooo JADE: do you want a projection of her first years hit on the economy down to the decimal with a 0.3% margin of error JADE: because thats a thing i can do if itll make you stop talking about this stupid election for ten minutes" I didn't know that were First Guardian powers! I suppose it might be her natural intellect though, but we've only known her as the hands-on science type until now. "She proceeds to dazzle the two boys with explications on complex math utilizing taxation rates, GDP figures, and some damned thing called the “Laffer curve,”" Dang, Jade is as much committed to this as Dave! (Or maybe she learned all this because it means so much to him, that could be it too!) "The thing about Jade Harley is that she’s not as good at personal things as she is at other things. Like science, or mastering fraymotifs, or kissing, the last of which she has definitely put a lot of levels into over the past few years because, well, what else are you supposed to do with immortal godhood once you hit the age where the dog hormones start kicking into overdrive?" Guess for dogs, kissing isn't that personal. And well, I guess Jade's only now learning the real consequences of turning into a real-life furry. At least she won't have had lack of candidates to practice kissing with. She might even have become the Witch of Spacing Out Young Adults. "Her high-prescription lenses make her eyes look anime-huge. They might literally be glittering, she’s so completely serious about the issue she is trying to stress." And the fan artists rejoiced for all the new descriptions they have to work with! " JADE: im about to lay out some cold hard evidence so pay attention! KARKAT: OH, HANG ON, LET ME GET A PEN." You can't live together with Dave for years without learning when it's time to start taking notes and grab a fucking pen. "JADE: evidence about..... JADE: our relationship! KARKAT: FUCK" Pfff, okay, never mind. I think Jade might have hit a wall several times over before, trying to either define their relationship or take it to the next level. These dudes are really sensitive about their feelings, after all. But it would be interesting, learning Jade wants to know where they stand just as much as the outside world does. "JADE: you let me live in your hive when im in town KARKAT: I CAN’T BELIEVE... JADE: im preeeetty intimately entwined in both your lives KARKAT: THAT YOU’RE JUST TALKING ABOUT THIS? JADE: AND you dont disengage from about 86.234% of my flirtations KARKAT: WAIT, WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU KEEP TRACK OF SOMETHING LIKE THAT? JADE: so....... are we doing this or not?" So, just like with taking on Lord English and acknowledging the lit fuse that is Earth C society, I guess the coming around of April 13th 2019 is when Jade had enough of all this silly business and wants to know what's what. (Also, I suppose the level of intimacy they shared on beforehand will be left to speculation.) "KARKAT: DOING WHAT?! JADE: dating dummy!!!!!!!! KARKAT: OH. KARKAT: THAT IS KARKAT: THAT IS... A COMPLICATED TOPIC IN MY CULTURE THAT I’M NOT SURE HUMANS ARE EQUIPPED TO TALK ABOUT." Smooth, Karkat, real smooth. Maybe Karkat fears commitment will lead to some of their relationships shifting into other quadrants. And he wouldn't like to be moirails or auspistices with either of them. "DAVE: also totally unrelated to the economy" ... Nice try Dave, but I think this can't be steered back into that track. "DAVE: which not gonna lie is the only thing i want to talk about for uh DAVE: for however long it takes for this other conversation to stop happening JADE: so say no!!! DAVE: well KARKAT: UHHHHH JADE: im not just forcing this conversation for my sake! its for you two as well JADE: i mean after all this time have you two even kissed yet? ?? DAVE: wha" I think Dave and Karkat might actually have been both content to stay uncommitted and fearful to put a label on it. Also Jade's question will presumably remain unanswered, it's already surprising it's confirmed she hasn't seen them kissing. And that is ignoring the matter of whether either Dave or Karkat kissed Jade before. I guess it's only fortunate for this situation that this instance of Jade never dated Davesprite, it would only complicate things further. "DAVE: wha KARKAT: WH-WHY WOULD DAVE: uhh KARKAT: WHY WOULD WE KISS?? DAVE: thats KARKAT: THAT’S... YOU... I MEAN, HE’S... HE’S DAVE. DAVE: we KARKAT: AND I’M KARKAT." PFffffffff, hilarious! I can just see them blushing like tomatoes right now. Can't keep staying in denial bros! "JADE: yes hes dave and youre karkat and everyone we know always calls you that JADE: “dave and karkat”" Hah! Yeah, but they also think you're part of the item, Jade. Care to shed some thoughts on the subject? "JADE: i cant remember the last time i heard anyone mention one of you without the other JADE: the two of you have basically been together since your days on the meteor its SO obvious" Jade has turned this from a personal matter into a fandom matter. "Everyone and their dog knows you're dating, guys! Stop pretending otherwise!" It's interesting to note the different ways Dave has been seen handling relationships. When he dated Terezi in the GO timeline, it went south due her troubles in the black quadrant. When Davesprite dated Jade, it went south due to unresolved Dave issues, presumably having to do with his bros. With Karkat, Dave's been in a stable-ish thing for the longest time, though. " KARKAT: VERY CLOSE FRIENDS WHO UNDERSTAND AND SUPPORT EACH OTHER ON A DEEP AND EMPATHETIC LEVEL THAT GOES BEYOND HATE OR PITY. YOU COULD EVEN SAY THAT OUR RELATIONSHIP... KARKAT: ...TRANSCENDS QUADRANTS." ... PFfffffff, so this could have been what it was like for the Sufferer and the Disciple, then! They were just never ready to commit? That would actually be funnier than it being this deep and fulfilling relationship. It would also make Doc Scratch' misgivings on the relationship even more hilarious. "JADE: yeaaaaaah not gonna lie karkat but that sounds totally kinda gay KARKAT: UGH YOU HUMANS AND YOUR UNFATHOMABLE GENDER BASED QUADRANTS." ... Heh. Actually. Too trolls, the whole gender-based romance thing we have going must indeed be as unfathomable as leprechaun romance. "Jade faceplams." Well that's a new verb.  What part of the body is the 'plam', exactly? " KARKAT: ANYWAY WEREN’T YOU... DATING THAT CARAPACIAN COUPLE? LAST TIME WE CHECKED?" Lolwut. Jade. Jade are you... are you being a Ms. Casanova, a paramour or two in every city you frequent? If WV and PM turn out to be alive for the sole purpose of dating Jade, I'll choke on my drink. " DAVE: wait you saying we arent fun JADE: whens the last time either of you left the house? ??" I know Jade means it as in, she'd like to date them for keeps. But I also fulheartedly believe Dave and Karkat can sustain themselves on delivery pizza and chinese chow. "In her other hand, she tries to grab Dave’s wrist, but he flash-steps to the other side of the couch." Well that's a new use of the power, guess Dave must really have felt alarmed. "JADE: i wanna try dating for real KARKAT: HAVE YOU EVER CONSIDERED KARKAT: SORRY IF WHAT I’M ABOUT TO SAY TOTALLY BLOWS YOUR MIND KARKAT: DATING A SINGLE PERSON, FOR MORE THAN HALF A SWEEP, FOR REASONS OTHER THAN INITIATING THE CONCUPISCENT EXCHANGE OF FLUIDS?" Karkat is trying to throw the issue back into Jade's face by saying she should try dating for a longer period of time. But that's exactly what she's trying to do here! She knows who she wants that with! That poor little troll, he's not getting out from under this. "JADE: third of all karkat arent you from a culture where people are expected to engage in romantic relationships with up to like five people at a time?? KARKAT: THAT’S NOT KARKAT: THAT’S NOT THE SAME THING AT ALL." If he's trying to avoid getting dragged into quadrants with people, he should stop upholding the validity of the quadrants to hold people off. "DAVE: ok jade i think theres a flaw in your approach here cause you seem to think winning an argument on super clever logical grounds is gonna get a couple dudes to break down and fling themselves at you in like, a sexual way JADE: wellll it usually does ;B DAVE: oh my fucking god" So she swoons people by way of her big brain. Jade's got CLASS. "This earns Dave a look. A long, sad one that has Jade messing with her glasses again so that she can peer right at him and apply some more of that faulty personal math to his facial expression." Just confirmation here that Jade isn't necessarily correct in all her assessments due to not being objective. "JADE: dave are you in love with obama? DAVE: jade jesus where do you get this shit from JADE: is it about jesus then? ??" Aaaaaand this has been derailed again. "DAVE: no! DAVE: jesus wasnt even real JADE: i know he wasnt real! JADE: wait... JADE: are you saying JADE: obama was real? DAVE: ... DAVE: yes" Wut. Wai- I- Jade. Honey. Please. Guess for all her involvement in politics since, those isolated years on the island sheltered her WAY too much. "DAVE: obama was real DAVE: he was the president KARKAT: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA JADE: all this time i thought obama was like JADE: an aspirational fictional character that you modeled your life after KARKAT: AHAHAHAHA I CAN’T AHAHA BREATHE... JADE: like snoop dog or nicolas cage" ... Jade. Jade no. You're just making this worse on yourself. For Jade, there would have been almost nothing in Homestuck she'd have seen as a reference to 'real life', would there? "senary numeral systems that allow me to do complex equations in my head" ... Why is Base 6 good for complex equations? I'm probably not good enough at math to know. "KARKAT: WHY IS IT LIKE SOME SORT OF *TRAGEDY* HOW SHE WAS RAISED? KARKAT: BECAUSE SHE WAS RAISED ALONE BY AN ANIMAL?? KARKAT: *I* WAS RAISED ALONE BY AN ANIMAL!" There! It's getting acknowledged again, how Jade's upbringing more resembles a troll than a human's! Becquerel the lusus. "There’s a ripple in the room that makes it clear their god tier powers have just clashed against each other. He shifts his arm through time and Jade warps the space around them so that she’s the one holding the tablet. This is not the first time that they have rearranged the fabric of reality for a petty reason like this. Karkat has permanently sworn off playing board games with them." ... Lol. First real use of the god tier powers in Earth C, and it goes like this! Wait, couldn't Jade have snapped... Right, no, she actually wouldn't have First Guardian powers anymore now, I forgot. Still, what did Dave try to do, move the tablet to another point in the timeline? "The moment Jade brings the paint program up on the television, Karkat stops laughing. KARKAT: NO!" Oh boy. Time for the Penis Quadrant scene, this time with three people. ... This would actually fall under both definitions of a "sketch", actually. "He tries to grab the tablet from her, but she’s hovering well above the ground and he simply is not tall enough to reach. With a shit-eating grin and deliberate care, Jade begins to draw a grid." He's going to jump up to grab her leg, to disturb the drawing, isn't he? "She gives Karkat a pair of fuzzy, angry eyebrows" Now I'm starting to think of the Karkat expressions in that one Paradox Space. "all he accomplishes is turning the redrom trajectory between her and Dave into a redrom loop-de-loop." This is all I could want from a reprise of this scene. "JADE: see me and karkat have great black chemistry! KARKAT: IT IS NOT BLACK CHEMISTRY YOU HORRID NON-CHITINOUS WINDBAG!" A+ denial there, Karkat, props on the response. "JADE: and now that daves all chill hed make a great auspistice" Jade just wants all Karkat's quadrants filled by the three of them, somehow. "JADE: because you and karkat are kind of like moirails DAVE: no JADE: and you and i JADE: well yknow its always been pretty flirty DAVE: jade JADE: EXCEPT! Jade finishes drawing a shaky heart directly into the paint program. It’s so big and bright on the TV that it fills the entire room with red light." She's putting all these names and symbols to the relationship, it might just be too much for these poor boys to handle. "JADE: i call this political arrangement: JADE: fully automated luxury polyamorous space-time communism!!!!!!!" That is not the shipping name I would've chosen, but it's the shipping name we deserve. And hey, communism! Get it? Cause Karkat had a sickle. I wonder what Karkat's take on polyamory outside of the ashen quadrant is, actually. "Jade rolls her eyes and tosses both the tablet and pen over her shoulder. Dave flashes across the living room to catch his very expensive computing device in both arms. The pen bounces off his forehead." This. Entire. Scene. "JADE: i have to go talk to roxy and callie about the election anyway" Well, she's going to let them stew on this for a while. But I'm eager to find out who Roxy & Calliope would back. You might think Jane's a given, but if she's been busy maybe they have grown closer to Jade & Dave! "Jade clicks her heels together to propel herself back into the air and actually winks at them before absconding through an open window." Think happy thoughts! Also, I just realized becoming a god sadly never gave Karkat the powers of flight. "Dave and Karkat both stare after her, silently caught in their own private rationalization spirals. Karkat needs to verbalize part of his out loud." Ah, but can they stay in that spiral or will they have no choice but to break out of it? "KARKAT: WANNA PLAY SOME TROLL TONY HAWK? DAVE: hell DAVE: yeah" Yyyyyeaah, they are not going to have changed when Jade comes back, will they? So even Karkat calls it "Troll Tony Hawk", not whatever absurdly wrong name it'd have on Alternia, and not whatever Tony Hawk's duodecimal name in Alternian would be. |
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Post by ashercrane on May 4, 2019 22:34:23 GMT
(I hope it doesn't offend anyone we're using this thread as a liveblog and aren't reading other responses until we catch up. I hope we don't break up any discussions but instead people get something out of all this.)
I think most people are holding off until the liveblogs are done, actually. And are so far only here for them, as well. |
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Post by Gab on May 5, 2019 14:41:39 GMT
Most of the conversation I've been exposed to about the epilogues has mainly been on this Discord server I'm on, and it's been highly mixed. Probably teetering more towards negative. There are some people who have been deeply impacted in a bad way by some things that happen, and so it's pretty common to see a lot of critical or just dismissive thoughts on it all. Which I'd LIKE to argue with to try to change some opinions but it's not really something I can do in that situation, because they don't really want to hear how they're reading it wrong or something like that. Better to just let them work out, or if it's just not the kind of thing they want to engage with, not to force it onto them.
Anyway, all of that is to say, while I do get to engage with more positive opinions, it's still nice to see some people liveblogging it, and enjoying what they're reading! I have seen some people who didn't like seeing this new side to Jade, so I'm really happy to see someone else like me who does ;B So this has been fun, I look forward to another liveblog update every day!!
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Post by Deleted on May 5, 2019 15:02:07 GMT
Feels weird posting here again in the year of our lord and saviour 2k19. Feels weird being hyped about Homestuck in the very same year as well, especially after so many other stories took its place in my life. With that out of the way, epilogue thoughts. is that how spoilers worked here?..
Reading order:
Meat 1-25 ==> Candy ==> Meat 25-44
By Prince, what an excruciating, visceral read in the best way possible. I love it to death and back.
I know that some people may have... issues with it, but i don't care. It's my favourite Homestuck thing since Masterpiece.
Not to say that it isn't imperfect though. The whole "canon as in-universe thing" idea and its execution still feels to me like a cheap defence against criticism, and Altliope is still the hugemost deus ex machina, but at least it is done a bit more tastefully than homestuck proper.
But besides all that, it feels like a stab at the fandom, immaculately designed, crash-tested and delivered with surgical precision to sting for sure. (gamzee's "redemption"? jade's, uh, situation? all of the xenophobic/problematic/what have you remarks? It feels too on the nose too often to be unironic)
And oh boy does it sting from what i've heard from people at large. But for me, as surprising as it is to my own self, epilogue did, in fact, fix Homestuck, even if just a nudge. Yeah, it still leaves things a fair bit open-ended, but overall, i'm far more content with the way it ends now rather than the way it was before this year's 413. Can't even put into words why, i just am.
Now, to the elephant in the room. The prince is awake. Your shit is wrecked.
Where do i even begin on this one... Dirk has always been one of my favourite characters, but now he easily solidifed himself as The Character to me. Can't even bring myself to hate him sincerely. Now, he definitely is a terrible person by all accounts, but i can't help but pity him instead. Ultimate Dirk is exactly the person Dirk fought against becoming, but now, after the fact, i definitely see why he came to be this way and how sad as i am to admit, he did definitely fall as a hero. Did he deserve this? Definitely no. Is this version of Dirk entertaining? Yes, for sure; after all, tales of fallen heroes are here to be enjoyed as well, even if only by a certain lot - i am exactly that lot, after all. Still, it isn't exactly spelled out clearly, but with everything we have taken into account i'm fairly confident that Ultimate Dirk isn't even the Dirk proper we knew, but rather a new prime incarnation, of sorts, of a certain british tyrant, especially since the mr. Hulker Skeletal was relegated to being vored off-screen. An incarnation definitely fully influenced and shaped by the fact of being Dirk, but nonetheless. it's only fair considering who some of Dirk's splinters, now neatly rolled into a single jackass, were.
Uh, what else of note was here to me... Roxy thing was okay. As someone with personal stakes in the whole gender debacle, it was just okay. I've seen better takes on the topic in fiction. I've seen worse, but better, too.
Dirk's battle with Altliope (Meat 32) was absolutely stellar and it stuck in my mind, sure to not leave any time soon.
Also, Candy 39 is the most homestucky homestuck that ever homestucked, and that, honestly, is all there is to say on the matter.  |
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Post by Blaperile on May 5, 2019 19:44:24 GMT
My live reactions to page 13 of the Meat Epilogue (page 5 of Epilogue 2) beneath the spoiler tags! Okay, probably back to John and his friends inside the Plot Hole now. I think it's pretty likely we won't be seeing their exit from the Plot Hole just yet, but at least one more page of them inside it. I wonder if they'll consciously experience the banishment to the Furthest Ring with all the action around them suddenly stopping. And further than that, the question is just how much time will truly pass from their perspective before being found by Vriska and her pirate crew. I wonder if the other Kids are going to talk to John about his confession to being depressed, or that we're not going to see that. But if not, I'm not sure what else we could see them talk about, or see John think about. Let's read on. ==> Oh I am so surprised by this. *sarcasm mode* Uh... oh boy. So we're NOT going back to John then??? Oh dear, now I am GENUINELY surprised. Whose perspective are we going to see then? If we're not going straight back to Earth C, are we going to simply see the perspective of one of the other Kids inside the Plot Hole? Or witness the end of the fight between the B2 Kids and Caliborn from one of their perspectives? I doubt we're going to see anyone in the Furthest Ring just yet, until John and his teen friends are released from the Plot Hole. ...Pffffff. What is even the difference between those last 4 ones at this point. xD HOLY FUCKING SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!!!!! I did NOOOOOOOT see that coming! Like I said just before, I didn't think we'd see any of the Furthest Ring characters prior to John being released there after Vriska's usage. And even if we DID see someone yet, I would have expected Terezi. Assuming she's still roaming around the Furthest Ring looking for answers, her confused/unknowing perspective would have been an interesting one to explore first. But NOPE! We're going straight to the most controversial character in Homestuck. And not even just that, we're actually going to BE her? As in, the way we are John but haven't been any of the other characters??? At this point I honestly wasn't expecting we'd get to be anyone other than John anymore. ... Hmm... does it have something to do with how Earth C is outside of canon that we couldn't "be" any of those characters anymore other than John who was on the verge of re-entering canon? Makes me wonder what the Candy path will be like, if we're actually going to "be" John there or not. I do wonder if there are other people we're actually going to be then, here in the Furthest Ring. If so, post-retcon Terezi seems like the most likely candidate to me. But okay, with all that out of the way, this just leaves me with one question: which Vriska are we going to be???????? (8 question marks intended) On one hand the narration seems to imply that we're going to be post-retcon Vriska, what with self-absorbed narration fitting exactly with her character and not anymore with the reformed pre-retcon Vriska. Perhaps that could just be deception though. After all, if we're going to be post-retcon Vriska now, what does that mean? If we continue from the last we saw of her, that means she's using the Plot Hole against Lord English. And it's been heavily implied that at that moment, the B1 Kids will come out. Are we "done" seeing John and the other Kids inside the Plot Hole then, and now skip STRAIGHT to when they are released from it? Is there going to be a psyche that the Plot Hole does NOTHING right now and the Kids have to be released in some other way? Or is all of that a psyche and we're just going to be pre-retcon Vriska right now? Or Briska, just for the lulz. Anyway, whatever it is, this is going to get very, very interesting. OH FUCK, IT'S ON BABY. WE'RE DOING THIS. STRAIGHT BACK TO THE FIGHT AGAINST LORD ENGLISH, OH DAMN. I wonder if we're going to get any Tavros and/or Meenah dialogue soon. And also... is there going to be Lord English dialogue? Oh Vriska. Still the self-absorbed douchebag she's always been. OH FUCK. Right... that door!!!! I all forgot about that. I remember that people used to theorize about that scene in Act 7. Some believed it was indeed a door appearing on the juju right there in the Dreambubbles, while others (including me) thought it was just meant as a transition to the door on the lilypad platform in the B2 session. Guess the door IS really there after all! So what now? Do they have to open the door to let John and the others out? Is that door also visible on the inside? Just for John or also for the others? And how the hell are John and the others going to be like now? Who even knows how much time has passed from their perspective. Ahahaha, it's not going to unload itself, is it? xD I think someone's got to open the door first. As always... I feel like just shaking my head as I read Vriska's text. *sigh* Ever since she came back to life I've hoped someone would really put her in her place and shut her the hell up, for once. Maybe we're still going to get that chance in this Epilogue? Tavros showing off with the ghost army was a really great start though. Huh... plainWonder's got good point though. Vriska seems to believe this is HER Tavros. Which is very untrue, because this is the other Vriska's Tavros. The other Tavros should still be on Earth C inside Gcatavrosprite, as far as we know. Pfff, I love how big the difference is between this and John's description of his dream at the start of the Epilogue. Right! I forgot how in Act 7 his eyes seemed to lock on the eight-balls. Looks like that continues to be a thing! Appropriate, what with Vriska's relationship with eight-balls. Yay for dialogue! See what though? See Meenah fight Lord English again? I kind of feel like bringing up that epic quote of Doc Scratch's conversation with Vriska again, about how there ought to be a silver lining to her actions and that it would just be a matter of whether she'd live to see it. She assumes. Which mean she doesn't even bother looking at him. :/ Haven't we only see him do that so far by actually destroying Dreambubbles? 'cause that's not really the ideal situation to happen right now in their fight. xD Welp. Apparently that works too. God how insane is she, really? xD Tavros dialogue, yay! And no, Tavros. She's not okay. But then again, she's never been okay, actually. xD HA. Pretending she's so tough and it doesn't hurt. Big lies from her, as usual. Heh... I sort of wonder if it's going to have any weird effects on her, the fact that she just got hit by a shard of reality. Does being cut by a shard of reality spontaneously cause ultimate self awareness? Oh man... OH MAN. She's going to fall unconscious, isn't she? I made my previous comment as a joke, but honestly I'm kind of starting to wonder if this is going to have any weird side effects. Sort of unrelated, but I just remembered that Davepetasprite^2 should also be somewhere around here. Possibly unconscious as well, after their struggle with Lord English. I wonder when they're gonna come back into action. All these descriptions of Vriska being covered in her blood reminds me of the start of [S] Make her pay, being covered in blood after her eye was blown up. Okay, so she's not going down just yet. xD Oh man... I wonder if perhaps Vriska's going to ask Meenah to use Hero of Life powers to patch her up? OH MY FUCKING GOD. SERIOUSLY. XD I can't believe that's actually working out here in the Dreambubbles. Post-retcon Terezi's finally found her!!! I mean, through Trollian at least. xD The question is, how long has Terezi already been here at this point? Has her last conversation with John, from the Credits, only just taken place? ...Wait a second. WAAAAAAIT A SECOND. I might be entirely off base here. Remember, back in the B2 session when Terezi blasted off from the lilypad platform and headed to LOTAK, just before she did The Mindy Thing, she left a message for Vriska through Trollian! Perhaps that's now finally reaching her? It was some pretty heavy stuff that Terezi confessed there, if I'm not mistaken (it HAS been several years since I last read that after all). I believe she even said that she'd be sort of relieved if Vriska wouldn't ever read it? I wonder IF Vriska's going to read it now, and if so, what she's gonna think of it. Assuming this is indeed THAT message and not a later one, from the Terezi who is right now in the Furthest Ring. Wow... so if Vriska had responded right at this moment, Terezi probably would have received a response right there in the B2 session. And because Vriska didn't, Terezi would spend a few years without any news, and then head off into the Furthest Ring herself. Vriska's right that it might have been a long time from Terezi's perspective, except it might just be because she won't respond to the message immediately. Sigh... Like always, Tavros' help was useful, she just didn't realize it or doesn't want to admit it. Oh god!!! That's not good... is the same thing going to happen to the other ghosts? Perhaps Terezi's going to arrive JUST in time with her dragon wings to catch Terezi and stop her from falling into the black hole? But what does that mean for Tavros and Meenah? D: Unless Aradia and/or Sollux come around, or something... Wow... for the first time ever, she might be starting to realize she might actually fail here. YIKES. That's not good. That's really NOT good! I mean, even if it "kills" her, it probably won't be a Just death, nor Heroic? But like she says in the next line, what would the effect of being sucked up by a Black Hole even be for a living God Tier like her. ...I'm suddenly reminded again of John's dream at the start of the Epilogue, where it seemed like he dreamt of other versions of himself being sucked up by the Black Hole. Oh man... what if... Vriska DOES get sucked up by the Black Hole and is permanently "killed"... but it causes her memories and experiences to transfer to the OTHER Vriska??? I still think it's more likely for Terezi, or someone else, to save Vriska from being sucked into the hole, but what with the dramatic ribcage pierce I'm kind of starting to wonder if she's gonna die for good here and the other Vriska's gonna take back over. It WOULD fit into the whole Ultimate Self thing this Epilogue's been heavily focusing on. Wow... for the first time ever, she's truly not in control and has no idea what to do. OH SNAP. SUDDEN PSYCHE. IT'S HAPPENING!!!!!!!! The moment we've been waiting on for so long, pretty much the only thing we considered "guaranteed" to happen in this Epilogue... Is JOHN going to be the one to save Vriska?? Is... is that the sound of Vriska disappearing for good? Nah... it can't be... right? Is it????? I mean, it WOULD be appropriate for her to exit this way. So self-absorbed, wanting all the attention and all the control and all the rewards... only to see everything fail in front of her eyes, and being sucked into irrelevance and death. But still... I almost find it hard to believe that she's actually... gone? For a second I was confused, until I realized he must be talking about his dreams. Okay, good to see confirmation that it's not just John who came out there. Dang... that's right. His glasses. Looks like they weren't automatically fixed as he came out, nor does it seem like he doesn't need them anymore. How is he gonna fight Lord English like this??? OH FUCK THAT'S THE END OF THE PAGE. THAT'S ONE HELL OF A CLIFFHANGER TO END ON. REALITY JUST SNAPPED IN HALF???? I... can't even BEGIN to think what the consequences could be of this. All I know is... things are getting REALLY exciting up in here! |
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Post by plainWonder on May 5, 2019 19:46:32 GMT
Meat Page 13 I suppose it is time for John's therapy session. It'd be interesting seeing Rose do real one, not one stuffed with jabs and such. Though, it would hardly be a private conversation on account of all the jelling involved. Sad to say that there is no way out of there for them, apart from the preordained timeline, it seems. It'd be nice if they could stick it to Paradox Space one more time. But the house seems to be more isolated from canon in such an extreme manner, in barring even retcon powers from being used. If John started talking about his feelings and how he came by it, though, in a way that would mirror the first hours he had those retcon powers. Adrift on his personal timeline (though it also included other people's), steerless. Also, I hope from their subjective viewpoint, it isn't quadrillions years before the four of them resurface, obviously. In fact, I hope it's mere hours. And that John may fix his glasses, or realize he doesn't need them any more, like Spider-Man. "> Be John again. It seems as if you’re attempting to be John again, with the expectation that we might spend a little more quality time with him in his cubicle of misery and self-loathing. You guessed we might really start to unpack his depression issues. Get to the bottom of all that. Well, nice try." ... Pfff, what, is the house barred from us viewing it? Why then did we see the start of their captivity? ... Is it because they weren't yet banished to the Furthest Ring? Well, the good news is that if that's the case, we're in for a time skip. The bad news is that we're once again skipping a salacious bit of plot, but well, it's the epilogues, not the everything-logues. (And Homestuck was already not that keen on showcasing every little tidbit of conversation & interaction, anyway. Leave some for the fan artists, ey?) "John can’t be here right now, because he’s stuck somewhere in the harrowing nexus between canon, post-canon, non-canon, outside canon, and fanon." Pfffff, ah, so he's so very unstuck his state has started following the uncertainty principle. "He also can’t be here right now because, for the time being, we’re done wasting our breath on such a sad loser." yeah right. "It’s well overdue for the true hero of this tale to take center stage. > Be Vriska."PFFFF XD WHAT. No way. Vriska??? She's taking the POV?? Well, I hadn't expected that. Guess we're being post-retcon Vriska, since that's the Vriska still intent on relevance at all cost. Also, apparently it's a Vriska that would hold John in disdain now, if the narration is to believed. Guess it is because he's been slacking off for seven years. I suppose we'll be her some time right before she went to confront Lord English? Or, you know, it could be we're being her as she's stuck in a stalemate with him, as the Furthest Ring is sucked into the Black Hole around them. Just before the house spits out the kids. If they're really in a stalemate, that'd be a nice mirror to how Aradia was stuck holding Bec Noir back for a while, in the troll session after her ascension. Though I wonder about the things the humans can do once they're out. They're not any more equipped to handle an adult Caliborn than before, eggsword not withstanding. Unless their stay in the house juju gave them all retcon powers or other. I can see them whisking away Vriska & Davepetasprite^2 & Aradia (if they're near), to regroup and create a new plan of attack. Even though it'd be nice if they're already capable of handling LE, just imagine Vriska's reaction to her ultimate weapon failing. So, ready for self-indulgent, self-agrandizing megalomaniac monologuing? I guess we are. "Lord English stands before you in all his time-eating, universe-ending glory."IT IS TIME. TIME TO SEE HOW THIS SCENE CONTINUED. I'm psyched. I suppose there won't be any dialogue with LE, he's pretty much refrained from talking to anyone except the Handmaid. Though a "GIRL. YOU THERE. GIRL." wouldn't be out of place right about now. "now you’re presiding over a whole host of ghosts ready to throw themselves once more into the maw of this final battle." Ah, right. The army wasn't entirely evaporated by LE, it stands to reason almost every ghost joined the army, so the ones sucked into the Black Hole were probably ex-members. "You know that this isn’t your battle to win, but you are definitely the sign of the tide turning." Well, what do you know, for once she doesn't see herself as the main girl. Guess she thinks of the house juju then as the real 'winner'? Not Alternate Calliope? "you deployed the white, house-shaped juju from the red chest. It grew to an enormous size, slammed down on whatever was passing for the floor in this esoteric battle environment, and a door materialized on its surface."OH RIIIIIIGHT. The door! I remember now. So that's gotta be the way out for the four, right? I suppose there's going to be some magic bullshit involved, where every kid sees a door inside their own separate room appearing, it leading out to the same exit location, namely right there in the dreambubbles. So, wait, I'm confused, didn't the door like face LE? Guess we'll just put it on Vriska "stealing" a peek of that viewpoint while being safely on the other side, using Thief of Light powers. "You now stand off to the side looking especially pleased with yourself, waiting for the legendary weapon to unload itself toward the hulking tyrant." ... Ah. She thought she could just sit back and let whatever's inside do the dirty work for her. Guess she's about to be enormously let down. Also, confused at adult John. "You’ve now got two bitches of either gender at your side: your main girl Meenah, who you stole from that embarrassing past version of yourself that you owned so hard you bet she’s probably /still/ crying. And Tavros. Not just any random ghost copy of Tavros, of which there appear to be thousands. Your Tavros, specifically, who’s been pathetically trailing after you like a lost barkbeast since you showed up." Ah yes. This is really the Vriska way of thinking about the world. For one, it isn't actually /her/ Tavros, since this is his pre-retcon ghost, the one that was once part of Tavrisprite. So, like, it's (Tavros). For another, Meenah wasn't stolen, she came willingly, nor did (Vriska) in the end remain crying. ... Hmm, so if Vriska assumed this Tavros to be hers, did she think she killed Tavros again? On account of creating GCATavrosprite, who was very unstable last she knew? "It looks to you like the complete obliteration of space and time, the end of all things, the disintegration of literally thousands of ghosts." So... Yeah, they're sitting this one out and letting the ghosts keep LE at bay until the house juju finishes unloading. "And no doubt your admirers out there would love it if you described it all in painstaking detail, but you’re not an executionist. You just call it like you see it, and what you’re seeing right now is pretty awesome." Sorry admirers! Vriska's not an executionist. An executioner, sometimes, but not the other thing. "Kind of an overworked character design, you think to yourself. If someone showed you a drawing like this on their FLARP sheet you’d probably be obligated to immediately kick their ass." I'd like to have seen that, though. Vriska talking some sense into Caliborn about his OC. "There’s a lot going on, from his vein-popping muscles to his eight-ball eyes to his pirate leg and his ostentatiously bright, gold pimp cane." Oh, right, the eyes were stuck in 8-ball mode! We assumed it had to do with him having become vulnerable, but that remains to be seen. And, uh, didn't Spades Slick have his cane last we knew? ... Hmm. Weird. Then again, during Collide we saw the weapon getting duplicated through Terezi and Dave's fraymotif, let's say it glitched something else too. "MEENAH: im goin back fin MEENAH: you comin vris VRISKA: Of course!!!!!!!! VRISKA: But give me a minute. VRISKA: I want to SEE." Ah, okay, they were catching their breath, is more like it. So, is Vriska waiting to see the house unload, or is it like Blaperile thinks, she wants to see Meenah in action? If the latter, we'd get some insight into what she sees in the mini Condesce. Also, whether it has any foundations for a stable relationship at all. Gotta say, I don't think we saw Vriska & Meenah use a fraymotif together yet. Maybe now would have been appropriate. "This is what you always felt you were destined for, somehow. Standing at the end of the universe and seeing how it all goes down." I thought that was what Aradia always wanted though. She'd hate that, the thought of having that in common with Megido. "Tavros is clinging to your arm like a little crybaby, while crying, you assume" Meanwhile, (Tavros) is probably thinking he's bonding, or something. :/ "You crane back your neck and: > Watch Lord English put a crack in reality." Hmm, I think he might be trying to crack this part of the Furthest Ring same as before, though. Wait, yeah, if he does that, that's the cue for his circle being completed, and then the Black Hole will come through! "You thought maybe he’d do something stupid, like punch the sky with his gross, throbbing muscle arm? But all it takes for him to shatter the roof of existence is a single, ear-splitting roar." Yeah, LE roars to crack through dimensions, it's Superboy that throws punches. "Get smashed in the head? It was so fast and dark you didn’t see it—the shard of space-time that split off from above and hurtled toward you. Your body rocks back, whiplash fast, and you nearly keel over. You’re still standing though, and laughing." Guess it's a good thing she's so high up on her god tiers, I suppose. "That’s what you were doing when Lord English put a split in the fabric of reality. You were /laughing/, not crying. It doesn’t hurt at all." Pffff, okay then. It would've been a humane gesture, but she doesn't acknowledge she's capable of it so neither will I. "TAVROS: vRISKA,,, aRE YOU OKAY?" Well, I don't think getting knocked in the head could've made her any MORE unhinged. "Your eyes spin. All eight of them." ... Right, her eight pupils. That must be a freaky field of vision she has. "It’s not a big deal though. Just a scratch. It’s fine fine F8NE." Well, a confrontation with the limits of her own immortality has been long overdue, after all see how long it took (Vriska) to come to terms with it! Leave it to Vriska to engage full Black Knight mode when she's injured. "It's just a flesh wound!" "Why is broken space-time so sharp? Like splintered obsidian. Feels like it barely grazed you, and yet..." I don't suppose this could be weaponized AGAINST LE some how, right? Just saying, we already have Space & Time player in the backstage, waiting to go. And a fraymotif that perhaps failed to kill Bec Noir but might still be able to do something on a Time player. "Everything around you begins to spin, and you’re not sure if... you can’t /quite/..." Wow. She's going to pass out and miss the house unloading? Didn't see that coming! "the broken-glass sound of the ceiling of space splitting into hundreds of shards of potentiality." So the Furthest Ring is an inherent well of potential, like Skaia? Guess that it's due to all the aspects being interlocked out there. "You wipe your bloody hand on the leg of your jeans and sneer with rage. You won’t go down so easily." Psyche! Guess she's just mad now. The gloves might be coming off. Will she try to steal his luck first? "VRISKA: You’re so intolera8le! I... I need to........ VRISKA: Tavros, g-go. Find... f8nd Meen8h." This. I like seeing that moment when Vriska falters, and learning about all the ways she reacts to it. "you’re distracted by something in the corner of your glasses. Your Trollian alert is blinking. There’s a message from Terezi." Pffffffff, wait what?? Talk about interrupting an important moment to check your mail! Wait, but, this is probably Terezi post-victory, right? 2 years into Vriska's subjective future? Oh wait, right, Terezi also sent her a message right before her Mindy thing, I almost forgot. If my theory is correct, then Terezi forced her ultimate self from coming together in that instant. I wonder if afterwards, she has some words for Vriska. Words of advice, or words of the heart, now she knows all about the Game Over timeline. They were supposed to have become moirails, but it didn't seem like either was doing too good of a job of it, before. "You suddenly wonder if it’s been years from her perspective, waiting for you to respond, given how time moves differently out here. Were you too preoccupied with your incredible heroic exploits to notice?" Well, at least it provokes some reflection into Vriska, thinking about Terezi. I'm kind of reminded of someone checking their Gmail after not having logged in for years, only to find messages of old friends that were never answered. That's a special kind of embarassment, even if you are technically blameless for not responding in time. "keep both feet planted firmly... whoops." Did the cracks reach her underfooting? "You try to regain your footing, but you realize you aren’t in danger of falling over." Well, she CAN fly, as a god tier. "You understand what’s happening. It’s the black hole."DUN DUN DUNNNN. Can't escape such a paranatural cataclysm on fairy wings. There's suddenly something more dangerous than the time mobster on the battlefield! "Your hand goes wide and your fingers close around empty space as you reach impotently toward the glowing symbol of everything you ever believed you were meant for." Eeesh, could it be she's actually going to get sucked in before anyone can get to her?? It seems the kids are supposed to be LET out, they can't exit themselves. It reminds of how Karkat was reaching for the door just as Bec Noir entered their session, just a moment too slow. "Another black shard of space-time hurtling through the void. It collides with your chest, right at the place where your ribcage connects, and sends you spiraling ever faster toward the deep, dark maw of infinity." ... She's been hit right about were her Light symbol is, isn't she? Where in the Game Over timeline, Terezi stabbed through her back out her chest. Guess you can't run from some circumstances in Paradox Space. I wonder though, if this could be the end for post-retcon Vriska? Wouldn't have thought it possible before, but she's in dire straights. But then, what? Game Over Vriska finding a way to access her memories, having another go in her stead? She's dead though, somehow I think ghosts are exempt from reaching ultimate self awareness, no matter how much they have been seen changing outwards and inwards from when they were alive. ... Well, to be fair, John still has that ring on him, that he's bound to be giving to someone, it could just as well be (Vriska)! "A black hole is something not even a god tier player can survive, you suspect. And even if one could, you highly doubt there’d be any clawing your way out of its event horizon and back into relevance. Not this time." ... That WOULD be a highly efficient way to get rid of Lord English, if we can be certain he can't blast his way out. "finally you lose all sense of composure. You flail, spin, and flip in helpless little circles like a bloody rag doll, and you begin to scream." Wow. "> JOHN: Emerge from the juju." Uhmm. They're going to be just too late, right? Guess Vriska and John never really got their synchronization in order, it was just the same way for their planned d8. But, if Vriska wouldn't be around, how would they even know the slightest bit of what's going on here from first sight. Can't see Meenah or Tavros sharing valuable tactical information. Maybe John will go zap her out of need first. ANYHOW. Guess we're finally doing this! "The first thing you hear is a tiny scream getting sucked into oblivion. The voice is familiar" ... Wow. That's. A harsh way to go for anyone. Guess Vriska managed to put all the pieces in place, though At the Price of Oblivion. Unless it's a dreambubble ghost he hears instead, this is Exit Vriska. I do wonder if even her memories can be saved from the black hole. "It’s not just a crack in your ears. This crack goes all the way down your spine. You almost don’t react to it because it’s so familiar. Around you, a cacophony rises up like steam." Oh boy, are they under attack, or is the crack just the previous one LE started, further moving underneath their current footing? "DAVE: oh shit DAVE: its really popping off out here" Well, that's one way to put it. Guess it might be time to, uh, "drop it like it's hot while the pimp's in the crib", Dave. Okay, and maybe John just has crack-fatigueness from having heard it in his dreams so many times before. "You can’t see anything but big, bright smears all along the horizon. You fish the two halves of your broken glasses out of your pocket and hold them up to your face." This is so unheroic, and yet I feel for John in this moment. Needing glasses really sucks on occasion. "You can feel it now. The moment reality yawns too wide and snaps in half." Le moment supreme is nearing. Though, to be fair John, your reality has already split, into Meat and Candy. Now, as for Vriska. I don't suppose her death, if she dies from the experience, would have her see resurrected elsewhere in the dreambubbles? I mean, okay, I guess it wouldn't really count as heroic, since it's more like a death from natural causes, no matter how unnatural they are in actuality. So that would mean she just gets resurrected over, and over, and over... Eesh. Is it bad that I have 'Remember Me' from Disney's Coco stuck in my head now? Cause it's basically all Vriska ever wanted, to be remembered for her greatness. |
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Post by Blaperile on May 6, 2019 21:14:35 GMT
My live reactions to page 14 of the Meat Epilogue (page 1 of Epilogue 3) beneath the Spoiler tags! Oh man, we're in a very exciting position for almost all characters right now. In the Dreambubbles there is the final struggle with Lord English and the incredible cliffhanger on whether or not Vriska is permanently dead now, and on Earth C there's Jade about to talk to Roxy and Calliope, Jane about to talk with Jake, Rose about to talk with Dirk, and last but not least the awkard situation with Dave and Karkat who really need to talk. All would be very exciting to return to now. Which means it's probably about time to see what Kanaya is up to. ==> Aha! Makes sense, what with the cliffhanger we just had. Which also confirms these Epilogues aren't all going to be 8 pages. Whoops, there goes my theory of 8 Epilogues of 8 pages. Alright, back to the Jane/Jake situation it is. Oh man, I'm really worried about what Jane's going to say to him and how she's going to try and use him for her campaign. Hopefully she changes her mind and realizes she doesn't want to do this to him? Alternatively, if she does do it, hopefully Jake realizes what she's up to. I'm very curious how this conversation will go. Oh my freaking god Jake, why didn't you just use the main entrance of the building. xD Good to see Jane agrees with me. What pumpkin front door? Jake sees no front door. Ha, nice, a blue ladies reference again. That's been a long time. And heh, we'd already heard of New Dersetown, and now here's New Prospit, curiously without the town suffix. Oh my god, Jake's becoming just like Grandpa now and his ridiculous collection of stuff spread out both over his and Jade's home, and Joey and Jude's home. Now if Dirk starts an online Smuppet business, Roxy starts working as a scientist for Jake, and Jane decides to open a book shop next to leading this company and running for president, then we're there. Not ominous at all. :s Just goes to show that the Condesce's mindcontrol just brought out something that was already there inside of her. YES. HELL YES. HELL FUCKING YES. Best way this could go. xD Hopefully Jane starts behaving more normally now and actually just states what she wants with him. Ahahaha, sorry Jane, that privilege is for a different blue lady. xD Pffff, I'd love it if Jake now just refers to Dave and that he would be a much better suited candidate for talking about the economy. Ahahaha, that works too. Dave would definitely like to have a word with them. If Kanaya was here: "Phrasing"! Oh jeez, she's still gonna try it this way, isn't she. ...Okay, so she does genuinely mean that part then. Good thing we have the narration to tell the difference. You know, uptil very late in Homestuck I used to ship Jane and Jake together, but I think that ship's long gone by now, and I'd honestly be very surprised at this point to see it rise back up in a genuine way. Though of course, this is Hussie. Anything is possible. N'aww, good thing to see her address this. It's really sad to see how everyone's basically been forming closed circles of groups, no longer seeming to come into contact anymore with many of their old friends. John seemed to be an extreme example with how isolated he lived, but I wonder if something similar might be true for Jane? If she's just been diving so hard in her work, that she's barely been interacting with others anymore? D'awww. It's good to see that Jake's just let her talk as well, that he didn't interrupt to spin the conversation to himself. Oh god... is this happening? Is this genuinely happening? Holy shit. A part of me is still screaming though: is Jane really being totally genuine here? I'm still not sure and it's driving me crazy. IT'S HAPPENING. IT'S ACTUALLY HAPPENING OH MY DEAR FUCKING GOD. JUST 10 MINUTES AGO I WAS STILL 100% SURE THIS SHIP WAS UTTERLY DEAD AND NOW HERE WE ARE. I was so on board for this ship for so long, and ironically right now I'm not entirely on board again what with Jane's behaviour from earlier that's still making me doubt her a bit. Hopefully that will change soon. BUT HOLY SHIIIIIIIIIT. Jake... Jake oh my god. Jake no. Dear god... Dirk was right that when he made his move on Jake all those years ago that he did it in such a dramatic way, this guy wouldn't have it any other way than consider it like a movie with him as the protagonist. xD ...Jake sure is comparing a lot with what it was like to Dirk. Is this all just going to lead into him realizing that he still has feelings for Dirk? HERE WE ARE. Yeah, this is probably the moment he realizes this is not the right thing to do. It kind of reminds me of what Aranea tried doing with him back in the prison cell on Derse, and how Jake protested. Pfffff, oh Jake, poor guy. xD I'm very curious to see what Jane's reaction will be to this. Wait, why did he grab the scotch? He hated it, right? That's Jake English for ya. xD Kitchen cabinet? xD Wait a second, one man... is her Dad her own personal chef and is she gonna ask him to bake her a cake, to distract herself? Wait what, it's Dirk? I DEFINITELY didn't expect that. Why is he her kitchen cabinet? xD Pfff, how ironic that it's Dirk that she's calling, because that's exactly the person Jake had in mind and caused this situation to happen. Wait... Dirk KNEW Jane was going to do this? Oh my fucking god, you have got to be kidding me. What game are these two even playing. Or... perhaps Dirk didn't know about the romantic part, only the part of Jane trying to get Jake behind their campaign? Wait. He also told Rose he didn't have time to talk to her yet. What the hell is this guy up to? Oh boy. What the hell is Dirk gonna do. And the question is, will Dave still have a chance to get to Jake and change his mind to vote for Karkat instead? D'aww, it's good to see that she does want to talk to Dirk for the emotional support too. On the other hand, I'm also a bit sad, because all those years ago that's kind of what she had with Roxy. They don't seem to be so close friends anymore, sadly. Oooohhh! Yeah, he still needs to talk with Rose. That's probably what it's about. But if he's not gonna talk to Jane for the emotional support, then who will she turn to? Is he going to turn to Roxy after all? Oh hell yes, she's here! I'm very curious what this conversation's gonna be like next time we see them, it ought to be a good one. |
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Post by plainWonder on May 6, 2019 21:15:26 GMT
Meat page 14 So. I'm just going to put my thoughts under the cut due to the important events last time. --- Vriska: perma-death or not? I wouldn't count on it, but I wouldn't be surprised either if her getting sucked into the Black Hole would be retconned. It could be said that John's retcons create seperate timelines, so that'd mean at least one version of Vriska is cursed to that ill fate. It would seem not even Light can escape a black hole. Science: 1, magical fairy dust: 0 Guess it remains to be seen whether LE will even get sucked in as well. If not, Alternate Calliope's swansong had only the effect of ending the Green Sun, removing one of the ways LE was invincible but nothing more. Though I guess she did manage to pocket that other character associated with 8-balls, huh? Maybe in that sense the black hole can count as a red herring, even! It didn't kill LE, just like how Dave didn't kill him with his eggsword in the victory timeline, but an expy, Lord Noir. Perhaps it's part of why LE's eyes have stopped on the 8-balls, they're the only remaining balls to pocket, or some such. Anyway, I presume it's back to Earth C now. I'd like to see Jane go see Roxy & Calliope, but I wouldn't mind picking up any of the other plot threads either. --- "Jake yawns" Pfff, that continues from the previous page - John felt the moment approaching where reality yawns too hard and snaps in half. That could be taken literally, but I also think it could be that his dream may have ended right about here each time as well, meaning 'reality' ended and was replaced by the actual real world. "and knocks on the window to Jane’s office again." So... Guess fake date night has already arrived. I'm guessing Jake flew over, though it could have been on his own power, he may have taken a plane. "he’s been hovering here for way too long" Pfff, okay I took that to be in a descriptive way, but it's probably literal, Blaperile points out. I thought the window he knocked on was for her office door. "The sunset has turned the head offices of Crockercorp into a shimmering glass monolith—a beacon, if you will, of the future, visible for miles in every direction. Jane probably likes to think about it that way at least." Oooh, does Jake have any ideas to the contrary? That would be interesting, that he thinks it's more ominously looking. "venetian blind" Right, her office still has that private-eye vibe going on, with the sun falling in between the shades. "he responds with his specialty: incomprehension." ... Never mind, the narration is providing us with more detail than Jake can personally pick up on. "The exasperated hand motions Jane tries next work better. JAKE: Oh! The front door, of course!" Guess she can't open the window from the inside. Seems like a health or safety hazard, if you ask me. "He whistles a quaint little ditty to himself while he waits for the elevator to go up to the top floor." Making his own elevator music then? Elevatorstuck, or the Girl from Whatsit? "The whole place is candlelit, and Jane is reclining on her desk, sprawled out like a lounge singer on a grand piano." ... Laying it on a big thick, I see. Well, so much for making it a very public date. Guess Jane is going to try and charm him first, to presumably hilarious effect. "Specifically: a blue lounge singer, on a blue piano" I'd say this might have worked better on Grandpa, given who he married (re: Hiveswap). "New Prospit" So, those are both places in the Carapacian Kingdom, eh? Maybe New Derse-y's the dingy suburb to New Prospit's sprawling metropolis. "Like all of his impulsive purchases, the tacky thing is gathering dust in a pile somewhere in one of the hundreds of spare rooms in his mansion, which now primarily functions as a very expensive warehouse for his atrocious hoarding habits." ... Well then! Guess he's really starting to fall into the same habits as Grandpa then! Could we take this to mean that some of his purchases which we derived his interests from were just things he picked up in a spur of the moment purchase? "JANE: Come have a glass of scotch with me Jake. We have so much to discuss." So Jane is really giving off mixed signals here - on purpose? His favorite attire on a girl, but his least favorite drink. Or she wants his attention, but none of the affection he might be more inclined to give out when tipsy. "She’s really bad at this, she thinks. “This” being seduction. She’s so bad at it, in fact, that Jake immediately recognizes her ruse for what it is. ... Jane is lashed both by the scotch in her face and how quickly her plan has fallen apart." I'm actually less convinced Jake has read her intentions than I am convinced Jane might be misreading him just as much as he is misreading her. Jake could've gulped the drink down to posture, not knowing how to handle her comment. But hey, we'll see. "She is staring at the ceiling like she hopes it will split open and suck her into a supermassive black hole so she doesn’t have to deal with anything that is going on right now." Sorry, Jane, you're the wrong blue lady. "JANE: Oh, no, of course not. I just wanted to... JANE: To... talk about the economy." Next up Jake is like: "May I refer you to our mutual friend, then? He'd be better at this." "JAKE: By jove the economy! Jane my dear friend please tell me all about the economy! Jake doesn’t care about the economy. But he’s an ardent supporter of changing the subject." Jake may have a taste for adventure, but he'll flee from any battlefield of emotions gladly. "JANE: Ah, it’s doing quite well right now actually. JAKE: I should hope so!" Pwa-pwa-pwaaaaaah. So much for changing the subject. "JANE: But it might not continue to do so in the future, which you can guess is of great concern to me, being that I am a pioneering entrepreneur." Ah yes, she'll try to prevent the economy from crashing, but in doing so, she just might make it crash, if Dave's to believed. "adequately explain to me this conundrum which i admit i am not up to dick on. JANE: You..." Dave and Jake are masters of ironic and innocuous innuendo, respectively. "Jane laughs quite sincerely as he ruffles his jacket through her hair. JANE: Oh, Jake, you really have no idea what’s going on, do you? JAKE: Wait is this... JAKE: Is this about the election muckup? Because i— Jane puts a finger to Jake’s lip and shushes him. It’s a very smooth move." This is what Dirk must've gone through, actually, trying to get it through that thick skull that flirting was what was going on here. "an awful lot of thinking as of late. ... this new universe. JANE: You must admit that it’s a lot to grasp, and I’m not certain we’ve all taken the time to truly contemplate our place in it." Well, true, but here's the part where you lead all that thinking to a wrong conclusion, I presume. "Who are they now? The same Jake and Jane who passed like particularly dysfunctional ships in the night a decade ago? Or is Jane wiser, and Jake kinder? Are they better versions of themselves?" Oooh, Jane has actually been thinking about some valid issues there. Well, especially valid to us, as long-time readers who now visit these same characters again after all these years have passed for us and them. Still, it's something I could see John struggling with as well. "JANE: Haven’t we really just been... drifting these last seven years? JANE: Drifting, both in the sense of failing to fulfill our personal potentials, JANE: And in the sense of... well, drifting apart?" Well, the only one who completed his planet's prophecy, that we know for sure, is John, and the guy has been falling into a depression. So... yeah, everything hasn't been hunky dory for a long time. But some of them take better to drifting than others, Dave is a fine example of the former, in the sense that's his more like his natural state, though it isn't a real good one admittedly. "The years go by so fast. And... JANE: I miss you." Aww. But I fear she might be missing the memories more than the man in the flesh. We'll see. "The moment goes from calculated to genuine in an instant." Oh Jane, really? I thought a little better of you. At least the moment's changing. "Jake can’t stop himself from ..." ... Wow, Jake is really putting the moves on her, go figure! Guess the boy had practice. "So he kisses her." Well! Guess they finally got this past them! *reads further* Ah-hoh-hum! Well, Jane's probably surprised by a) his kissing, good or not, and b) that she might actually be feeling something again for him. "The inevitable consummation of a whirlwind romance fit for the big screen." ... Jake. Jake this is a real thing happening to you, not some movie script. Boy. "Jane’s baby-soft palm, unmarred by the calluses of deft swordsmanship" Hah, that's the second reference to Dirk and Jake's (former???) relationship, first the kissing Dirk criticized him on, now this. Also, heh, guess it's a long while since Jane did extensive baking herself, then, if her skin's that smooth. "Those rare, intimate moments that Jake was allowed to slip off Dirk’s shades and look upon his face, unobstructed, stand out more clearly in his mind than almost any other in his life." A Strider without his shades is a very rare moment indeed. It's their facade, their mask. *reading on* Jake, being with one lover while comparing them mentally to your former one? That's not going to end well for any party involved. And here Jane might have hoped to leave that love triangle behind. "But his hair is so much softer than it looks. His heart too. When a heart like that opens up to you, it opens up the whole world as well. A world of increased appreciation for combat, philosophy, life, love... JAKE: Yelp!!!" *mental facepalm* Oh Jakey boy, you sure thought yourself into shooting your own foot there. "JAKE: I JAKE: I JAKE: Ihavetogorightnowsorry." Pffff, he's going to fly straight back to throw himself into Dirk's arms now, right? The poor man won't know what hit him. Or maybe he will. ... In any case, this could screw up Dirk's plan to back Jane for presidency, if she realizes what this was all about and takes it personal. She didn't before, but that's not to say she'll only blame Jake this time around. "grabs the bottle of near-untouched scotch" Oh boy, maybe Jake actually wants to get hungover before assessing what he just felt. "before kicking open the latch to one of Jane’s giant windows and letting himself out." Hey what do you know, she COULD have let him in! "she closes the window, sits in her CEO chair and speed-dials the number for her one-man Kitchen Cabinet." ... Depending on how I interpret this, she's either calling her Dad (unlikely given her current state)... or ... her personal hitman/bodyguard? ... Wait, is the fact she employed/enslaved Jack Noir canon for the epilogues? "DIRK: Yo, what up? JANE: Not Jake, apparently." ... Ah. Well, the only way I associate Dirk with the kitchen is with a refrigerator stuffed with swords, so you can forgive me. The fact that Kitchen Cabinet's acronym is KC (Green) is probably not important. Oh, right, the cabinet of a politician, maybe? "DIRK: Wow. Going straight for the double entendre, huh? DIRK: How much of that scotch did you have?" Dirk... was in on this. Dirk... knew. Dirk... cold. Cold hearted. But well, glad to see his gears within gears still don't run as smoothly as he'd wish. "DIRK: Were you nice to him? JANE: Well, I... DIRK: I told you, you can’t be nice to Jake. JANE: ..." So he says that, and yet what turned the situation around was Jake thinking about all the times Dirk WAS being nice to him. "Jane squeezes her eyes shut and, very softly and quietly, bumps her head against the edge of her desk. JANE: Why do I feel as if we’ve had this exact conversation, almost word for word, before? DIRK: Because we have. Many times." So, it's of course similar to when Jane and Dirk talked about their misgivens about Jake in the session, it must also remind her of when Jake talked to her about his feelings for Dirk... And yet I think Dirk might be saying the truth, in that there might be a multitude of alternate Janes, even some post-victory, and alternate Dirks, who have memories of an identical conversation between the two of them, which he's slowly accumulating. "Dirk doesn't wait. There’s a shadow cast in his doorway that is much more important than the election. Rose is braced against the doorframe" Cool. At least his biological daughter is more important to him than scheming. Though scheming might be involved in his dealing with his daughter's illness. Scheming's never not on the table with Dirk. "She has her head tipped just so, her pale hair falling across in her face at an angle that bisects her perfectly neutral expression. Dirk sets down his phone and acknowledges her with a nod. ROSE: Well, ROSE: Go on." Hah, I had a feeling he might have been wrapping the conversation up quickly as he sensed her approaching. But Rose must've heard pieces, and picked up on something, migraine or not. It's going to be a pleasure to see them talk in person. |
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The One Guy
Rust Maid
Posts: 1,148
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by The One Guy on May 7, 2019 20:48:13 GMT
Ok, I had a much needed relaxing weekend where I choose not to continue reading, followed by a very busy Monday where I didn't have a time to read more, but I'm finally getting back to things. Let's see, where did I leave off... Meat Page 31:
That does NOT seem healthy. I mean, I know she's starving, but that's just goning to kill her anyway. Then again, so would the shaving cream, probably, and we don't know what troll biology can handle.
Heh, that reminds me of how John's been feeling in the candy route.
This seems to be evidence that Terezi did all her communicating with Candy John before meeting this John. It also does not bode well for John and Roxy's relationship in the Candy route. Heck, given the various parallels between the routes and the recent Candy events, I wouldn't be surprised if the breakup happens this "epilogue."
Aaand ok, Terezi and John are getting sexual with each other. I can't say I didn't see this relationship coming, but I certainly didn't predict how it would reach this point...
Candy Page 25:
Ok, so the show doesn't actually execute the loser, but this isn't much better.
Meat Page 32:
You know it's interesting how different "narrators" do things differently. Up until Calliope took over, every page would focus on one perspective, but Calliope is not afraid to describe what's happening to multiple people in different places within the same page. Essentially third person omniscient rather than first person and third person limited (Edit: I meant second person and third person limited, though I suppose Dirk and Calliope talking as themselves adds first person to the mix too). I wonder if they actually had different writers write for the different narrators and that's why there's three authors.
Thank you Roxy. I mean, it's gotten better than when it started, but it's still the least interesting part of the epilogues for me for whatever reason.
Ooh, I got to admit, that was rather clever, Dirk. Even misdirecting his intentions making it look like he was going after Jake. On one hand, it's much better than what I was fearing, but on the other, this grants him a form of control over Jake anyway, so it kind of isn't? Also, Dave just made a fool of himself at the rally preparing for an assassination that never happened.
Candy Page 26:
Well, that was not what I had expected would happen to the car, though to be fair, I'm not sure what I did expect. But Terezi and John aren't inside, and John never actually contacted Terezi, which not only fails to provide any evidence for where she is in the timeline, but also leaves it completely unknown whether they arrived with the car. ...Actually, now that I think of it, the car arrived in the same way the ghosts did, which means it probably went into the black hole, which means Meat John and Terezi probably just abandoned and sent it flying into the hole. We'll probably find out soon in the meat route.
Oh, and I'm completely ignoring the emotional gravitas of the page, but that's mainly because I don't have anything to say about it.
And with the "Epilogue Five"s done, that makes foe a good stopping point for today; "Epilogue Six"s coming (probably) tomorrow. |
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Or at least a big brother.
and 
feelings for Karkat and him doing the same thing with them, possibly with something extra between Dave and Jade going on.
What part of the body is the 'plam', exactly?
