4/13 Update Discussion Thread - IT'S HERE

-How Jade got the Final Frog? Given it's colors, it explictly has something to do with beta kids/LE, but what?

Didn't Jade find out about it from Echidna and ectobiologize it offscreen before CD bombed her?

At the very least, we know that Caledfwlch can harm Lord English, and that Hussie believed Doc Scratch's gun, which only fires "Magic Cueball Bullets", was his "one weakness". We also know that the Cueball was part of Caliborn's Godtier Clock, and that he, removed it from the Clock, hit the clock with the Juju Breaker afterwards, and did not hit the Cueball with the Juju Breaker.

Edit:
Although, technically speaking, we do not know for sure that the Cueball is a Juju.
Double Edit:
Also, mostly-ninj'd.

Think it can be pretty safely assumed that the cueball IS a weakness. It's the only thing to ever visibly harm an iteration of Lord English (in a freeze frame you can see Jack English with a cut on his torso, other than the obvious beheading) and it's also just... been flat-out said to be a weakness. I'm not sure if there's any relation to the house juju, but the Cueball being a weakness is a very safe bet - there'd be no point to lying about it, especially if it wouldn't be revealed later on.

Here's anew question I want to propse:

Assuming that either the epilogue never comes or that it's really shitty, how do you feel about the comic? Do you hate it now? Love it despite these flaws? Moving forward, what do you think Homestuck will mean to you?

There's no reason to mention it either if it never becomes a factor. There's no way to judge if another sword would've done as much damage to Union Jack as Dave's sword because we never saw anyone try, and we never see the sword used against LE himself either. And if the epilogue doesn't add much, we know now it never will be.

We have not seen Cueballs can harm Lord English, which is my point. 

And the thing of it is, if it is true, it's a really big and confusing waste at this point. 

*cracks knuckles*

OK, in two parts because the editor keeps crashing:

-How did LE die, exactly? IS he even dead?

This is not answered because it is completely irrelevant, is my take.

He's sealed away in the black hole forever. That was inevitable from the moment he was trapped in the collapsing region of paradox space. That is what matters. Any narrative thread that touches on his fate any further is, by virtue of his nature and how the narrative serves him, a possible escape route. The only way to defeat him permanently is never to have that information.

My own belief, for what it is worth, is that the Caliborn-ingesting-clockwork-majjyks scene right at the end of Act 7 means he is immortal enough not to die but be trapped forever, raging and impotent.

-What exactly did the house juju do?

Flipped the house on the lilypad turnwise, so that instead of opening on yet another LE-infected universe (probably the cherub universe) it opens on a new, completely free universe, where the kids can go, safe from LE because they are outside canon and safe from narrative.

-What did Terezi's Mindy Thing do, and why was it never mentioned by her or anyone again?

It got her out of her funk about not being as good as her alt self. We know this because she arrived Collide competent, confident, and up to battle.

It showed her stuff, which we know because that is what it does; we saw that back in the Scratch-termission.

As to what it showed her, the contents of Terezi;Remem8er strike me as a tolerably obvious answer.

It doesn't get mentioned because people have other things on their minds, and... well, I Thought It Was Obvious enough not to need spelling out.

-When exactly did the Masterpiece happen, and what was the fate of the kids apparently left behind at the end of it?

It happened in some alt-timeline somewhere - we know this because masterpiece-Caliborn is surprised by things that artist-Caliborn knows. The kids left behind are alts like any other alt in any other doomed timeline - why would they be anything else?

-What happened to Gamzee, and how did he make it to Universe C earth?

Last we saw of him, he was in a fridge on LoTaK. A chunk of which disappeared including also the crowbar, the cuestaff, and a pair of whirly poolball eyes, and looking like it contained the Denizen, all of which also wind up on Universe C earth. Disappeared into a singularity that looked the same as the one that took things into Caliborn's session.

Like the man says, the story's a puzzle. Some bits of it seem really straightforward to answer, though.

-What was the deal with Condy's curse?

It was revoked, presumably because she betrayed LE. When was the last time we saw clockwork majykk immortality colours around her ? That would probably tell us when.

-Why did Union Jack's head explode into a black hole? Is this just a thing LE's power can do?

It's a cherub power thing. We know this from Aranea's story about black holes as part of the natural life cycle of cherubs, and from AltCallie making one on-screen at the start of Act 7. So yeah, LE can totally do it.

-Who appearified the final frog Jade needed to finish her breeding of the Genesis Frog? What even WAS the final frog? Why did Bec kill it?

..ok, this question seems to be starting from assumptions I don't share.

What that looks like to me is: nobody appearifies the frog. The text just says "-ify". Jade in the future paradoxifies it, getting slime. Bec then kills it to give it a fixed point in its destiny immediately after so that future Jade will be able to paradoxify it rather than just appearifying it. Just like we saw with WV when that mechanic was first set up, and again with Jade and Kanaya explaining frog breeding just before kanaya returns to the core.

(Either that or Bec, as a dog, likes killing frogs. That works too.)

-What is the origin of the Lollipop Jujus? How did Gamzee acquire such powerful artifacts?

Likewise on unshared assumptions here.

Calliope and Caliborn think everything they grew up with that they can't immediately find a rational explanation for is a juju. Even in cases like Lil Cal that later turn out to have a totally rational, if screamingly complex, explanation.

I don't think the lollipops are massively powerful, I think they are glitches that allows players to lose inhibitions and normal limits, but that the power is within them all along. (Like Grimdark Rose, as was made fairly clear in her conversation with Scratch shortly before Seer:descend.)

Making them with alchemy seems on the same sort of scale as making all the Zilly weapons; entirely plausible to me.

-Why did/do the sprites^2 even exist?

As a warning to the beta kids same way trickster mode was to the alpha kids - Rose certainly is getting the warning from Rosesprite about wish-fulfilment not being good.  Also as a rather direct way of rapping them and us upside the head about the significance of every alt as part of one's overall self - in case readers managed not to get it despite Dave with time-travel duplicates, Dirk with splinters, Karkat with past and future selves, Jade with Jadesprite, and everyone with their cross-scratch versions.

-What's to prevent Can Civilization from being blasted to bits when Sburb comes around again?

That Sburb can't come around again because the new universe (if the new universe turns out to have Can Civilisation, and damn but I now want Sid Meier to write that game) is outside that causal chain.

-What's to prevent an earlier iteration of Lord English from manifesting in this universe and fucking everything up again? (TIME TRAVELING demon, remember?)

See also, outside causal chain.  Outside narrative.

-What's to prevent this universe from being swallowed by the encroaching destruction of Paradox Space caused by that massive black hole?

Because it's only the bits of Paradox Space LE damaged that are being swallowed.

And this is just plot questions. I could go on for DAYS about abandoned character arcs and dropped foreshadowing.

You could, but it would strike me that I could answer some of it and much of it would be beside the point as I see it, because it would be critiquing the story for not doing something it's not actually trying to do, and is in fact explicitly rejecting.

We've seen they can harm Jack English. We haven't seen anything else harm him. He's pretty closely related to Lord English, having his souls and all.

Either way, it's very reasonable to assume Lord English's weakness is cueballs, as said in-story. It's not hard fact in case some epilogue revelation contradicts it, but it makes sense from what we've seen, and is implied.

We don't see anything else hurt him because no other weapon lands such a blow. For all we know, Dirk's sword could've done the same amount of damage. 

Here's anew question I want to propse:

Assuming that either the epilogue never comes or that it's really shitty, how do you feel about the comic? Do you hate it now? Love it despite these flaws? Moving forward, what do you think Homestuck will mean to you?