4/13 Update Discussion Thread - IT'S HERE

...so, uh

What's going to happen in this new universe, exactly?

I mean, most everyone on tumblr seems to be going on about how great it is that the kids finally got a happy ending, but...

Unless I'm missing something, isn't SBURB going to be seeded in this new universe as well, blasting the happy little Can Civilization to smithereens in a few decades or centuries?

What happens to all these cute endgame ships like Rosemary and Davekat when the trolls presumably die of old age in a few decades while the kids remain immortal? ("Old Age" doesn't qualify as Just or Heroic, I think)

What about Lord English? He is a time-traveling demon, after all, and linear time means nothing between universes anyway. What's to stop him from manifesting in this new universe, with circumstantial immortality to boot, since he's destined to die in another time and in another universe?

Am I just dense? How is this not just riddled with grim implications if you look past the surface?

The more I watch Act 7 again, the more I find it satisfying at levels of resolution that are not immediately obvious, and satisfying to me in some ways that seem to have been actively unsatisfying to others. 

For one thing, we already know that the cherubs can't have been raised in the post-all-the-retcons timeline, because Caliborn has talked to Jake about Erisolsprite who does not exist in that timeline.  So not getting any more on what happens to Gamzee is not an additional continuity problem.  I'm happy to be sold on the notion that the black hole that erupts from Lord Jack's head swallows the fridge with Gamzee in it, along with the crowbar Slick was carrying, the cuestaff Lord Jack was carrying, and Lord Jack's pool ball eyes, and is how they all get to where they need to be in the cherub universe, similar to how Caliborn entered his session, but I am equally happy with the post-all-the-retcons timeline leading somewhere else entirely and Gamzee being trapped in a fridge in a black hole forever.  It mildly bemuses me that not giving further character development to someone who has been explicitly and literally fridged is either a surprise or a problem.

Vriska not getting some scales of closure also did not strike me as a problem.  It struck me as justice on the narrative's own terms.  Ever since the retcon, it's been clear that Vriska left to her own devices is just as unpleasant and narcissistic as she ever was and has no intent or likelihood of becoming a better person.  Andrew stopping her from being active in Collide, and then the scale we see her in Act 7, is just right, to my mind, for giving the perpetually attention-seeking spotlight thief the ending she deserves; we get what we need from it informationwise, she does not get to be the dramatic centre of attention.

Aradia gets to see "what happens when this whole place breaks apart".  That's the resolution she's wanted all along.

Tavros has had his moment of resolution lampshaded about as heavily as humanly possible, with multiple different dance moves.  I don't think his arc needs any further closure.   (Personally, I'd have been somewhat happier if him escaping Vriska's baleful influence and toxic notions of what's important back on page 007943 had been his resolution.)

Sollux' metaphysical state has been an unresolvable mass of WTF since before Cascade.  That's always struck me as kind of the point.  Anything more definite there would actively weaken that, in the same way Andrew's talked about how giving Equius a more dignified or meaningful death would have weakened his characterisation.

I had kind of been hoping to see more GO!Vriska after retcon-Vriska berated her, but I am absolutely convinced that the fade-to-white end of Terezi:Remem8er is GO!Vriska and Terezi (at least) double-dying as paradox space collapses under the influence of Lord English mouth lasers, so I was already resigned on that front.

The sprites-squared don't need resolutions.  The sprites-squared are resolutions; ultimate forms of what those particular teenagers might wish to be, predictably embarrassing to Rose's real self, and not at all what actual growing up looks like.  They're wish-fulfilment figures.  There's inherently nowhere further for them to go.

The business with the house juju and the Lord English battle seems as resolved as it needs to be at the fundamental levels.  Caliborn's use of the house juju in the masterpiece traps the kids (it works for me for that to be in the cherub universe timeline rather than the Act 7 one, and I am happy to think of that as the timeline following on from John retrieving the ring before Aranea can); Vriska's second use of it frees them, by flipping the door into the new universe turnways.  That's what matters there.  The remainder of that fight occurs in a doomed and disintegrating space collapsing into the Alt!Calliope black hole never to be seen again, sfaict.  The details before that point seem to have very little relevance to anything.

With regard to much of the mechanical stuff that came in during Act 6 (jujus, class and aspect stuff and so on) I never really saw the point of expecting large-scale resolution, because it never struck me as solidly established as real to begin with; an awful lot comes from Calliope speculating, in ways that feel like friendly ribbing of the theory-crafting side of the fandom, and Aranea, and both of them love telling stories that seem to make sense of things but neither of them are necessarily reliable narrators, in terms of getting carried away with enthusiasm and not necessarily being great at fact-checking.

Plotwise, the scales on which Act 7 leaves things open to drawing one's own conclusions fits with the thematic direction of everything since Game Over, at least; new versions of characters post-retcon, the sprites-squared and what Davepeta had to say to Jade about whole selves across multiple variants, and one could argue that that's in a through line with Dave and Dirk and Karkat and Jade's various multi- and alt-self issues all the way back.  Free of the narrative, they get to become all those alternates now.

There are things I had been kind of hoping to see and didn't; I was really wishing the Mituna Method would pan out because every other A1 troll has had their plot relevance (except Cronus, who does not deserve any, and maybe Kankri).  Also, I'd like some closer handle on why exactly Terezi isn't in the new universe visions; I could buy either "stayed to look for Vriska" or "the new universe is explicitly rejecting characters with a history of proactive multiple murder".  But on the whole, I found Act 7 extremely satisfying.  I particularly liked getting the views of the new universe and the happy ending and then cutting back to opening the door, because a simple happy ending, however satisfying, would have locked these characters into one particular fate, and ending on that moment gives us something far rarer (and hard as hell to write); a hopeful ending of infinite potential.

On a meta-level, I am perhaps uncharitably amused that, after so much criticism of Act 6 for having more and more  new elements and suggestions that Andrew might have lost control of his story, there now seems to be a wave of disappointment aimed at him delivering a nice tight ending to the core of what his story is about without focusing much on all those new elements.  I am also not quite seeing how the notion that there might be new information to come in an epilogue/Hiveswap/Homestuck 2.0/The Rapture/whatever is in some way disappointing in ways that that same information would not be if it were nominally contained in Homestuck.