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> LOOK OVER SUBMITTED COMPLAINTS OF CRANIAL IRRITATION

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

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

Uncertainty over elements of the story (Resolved)

Uncertainty over elements of the story (Open)

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

Resolved

  • If you look at the Sburb interface, you see that there is what appears to be a save button, and a load button. These are never used, but I wonder what would happen if they were? (Look in the upper left-hand corner)
    • Presumably used only for buildings, as server players cannot directly interact with clients. However they seem to be cosmetic; they haven't appeared in the comic in years and were probably just a simple Shout-Out to the layout of the Sims' interface.
  • Would someone be kind enough to explain TA's ~ATH code to a troper who doesn't have "leet hacker" creed?
    • It's Basically Java, but the beans can Destroy the universe.
    • More like C++ (including the usage of "~", which in C++ is used to design a destructor). And yes. Apparently it can destroy not only one Universe, but an alternate as well.
    • The most distinctive feature is the presence of a ~ATH construct around "!U2," which in C-inspired languages (which ~ATH seems to be one of) would mean "not U2." Given that the program works immediately, this probably turns "until U2 ends" into "until U2 doesn't end" (i.e. immediately, assuming U2 already exists). Beyond that, the code is pretty much nonsense (you can't interlock code blocks like that in any real programming language) unless we get an explanation from AH at some point.
      • Basically, WE HAVE NO IDEA EITHER BRO.
      • Anyway the name of the language is probably pronounced "TILL DEATH", so it's kinda cool.
    • Okay, essentially, the language is a pun on C++ as mentioned above; Sollux's code calls "bifurcate" (either a primitive or a function he wrote) which splits the universe into two separate entities; it then executes a loop which only runs in full when the universe both ceases to exist and is created at the exact same time. Suffice to say ~ATH is not like our earth human languages.
    • It binds a program to be run to the mutual existence of two items. These items must be recognized by the library and relatively long-lived. Once the loop connecting the two is broken, the program is run.
  • Why is the method of waking up dreamselves so inconsistent? The first few acts made kind of a big deal out of John's psychological problems preventing him from waking up, but he's ultimately woken by convenience to the plot and Jade manhandling him. Sollux is woken up first through Aradia's psychic powers, and second through somebody kissing his corpse. Vriska's and Terezi's awakenings both involved some kind of psychological catharsis, in a similar fashion to John (coming to terms with their guilt and blindness respectively). All of these seem to fit in with Sburb's vague rules and mythology- I guess what really bothers me is that Rose managed to wake up Dave by throwing a ball of wool at his head, with no real explanation given as to why it was so easy.
    • John - Being thrown to the ground would wake you up. Sollux - Dead and revived by Feferi. It wasn't a second awakening. Vriska - Dead, used up a life and as a result became her dreamself.
    • The yarn didn't wake Dave up. In this conversation Rose says that Dave was always awake and just didn't realize it.
      • Have we been given a reason for that yet?
      • Presumably Dave's dream self has been in a half-waking half-sleeping daze because of Dream Cal.
        • Anyway, besides Dave, waking up dreamselves seems to be a unique experience tailored to each player.
        • I thought Terezi's dreamself was first woken during Vriskas Double Psychic Reacharound and Blindness Jamboree...
        • There is (or was) a popular theory among some that since one of their apparent main purposes is to act as extra lives, the dreamselves can only be woken by someone's death--be it the owner's waking self (Vriska, Sollux), Jade's dreamself (he didn't wake up until after she died), or someone who died off camera long before the story started (anyone who was already awake). I guess that doesn't explain Terezi though.
      • Dreamselves are awakened by dealing with death, whether your own or the death of someone else, but anyone on Derse or Prospit already awake can wake you up. It can also happen by personal trauma or overcoming some hang up. In a sense, Future Rose was the "sacrifice" for Rose. Terezi's "sacrifice" may have been Aradia or possibly just her coming close to death as a result of her injuries.
  • Where do trolls get their names? The most obvious would be the parent-figure Lusus, but those can't speak.
    • Where do the trolls get their Trollslum handle names?
    • That's easy, they were named by their creators from the last session. That or by the readers on the forums.
    • They're probably assigned to them by the troll government. Or they pick their own names.
      • Judging from the troll's ancestors, they're possibly descriptive of what kind of person they are. The language simply shifted from English to a bunch of others.
    • According to AH, the first noise that is uttered by a troll's lusus once the troll is hatched is then translated to the closest combination on two 6-letter words.
  • How is prototyping necessary, anyway? Couldn't they just leave all the Kernelsprites empty and breeze through the game and the royals like it was nothing?
    • They wouldn't be able to understand the kernelsprite at all, and as a result probably die due to not having any idea what to do.
    • It's because otherwise Skaia wouldn't be able to evolve into its final form, which is required for it to make the new universe.
      • Post-entry prototyping is still an option, though I have no idea how this affects the session. Maybe Jade will do so. (Thus thwarting every "Jade's going to prototype her kernelsprite with _____ and RUIN THE WORLD WHEN JACK GETS ITS POWERS" theory under the sun.)
        • ...No it's not?
    • The game requires you to prototype the kernelsprite at least once to enter the medium.
      • You won't be prevented from entering if you don't have a prototyped sprite. It could be that, due to predestination, you won't enter without prototyping, but in no scenario can you break your artifact and have the game say "nope, you didn't prototype, no entry for you."
        • We don't know that. We do, however, have the narrator saying that a pre-entry prototyping is necessary.
          • He says "necessary for ultimate success", which implies your entry won't be prevented by not prototyping.
      • And this is supported by how Jade was unable to break the Bechead Pinata and enter the medium without Bec prototyping himself first.
    • Prototyping is necessary to evolve Skaia to it's various forms, as well as providing the player with a guide to the Incipisphere, which is a pretty confusing place! Neither of these are strictly required by the game, but not prototyping prior to entry creates a Nonstandard Game Over. Nevertheless, even those scenarios are still winnable in rare circumstances, as Act 6 is going to demonstrate.
  • What the devil is a fraymotif? We know they're important, they apparently make the player more powerful, and they're themed after the individual players. That's about it, really.
    • Most likely, special abilities/attacks that the players can "learn".
    • Considering that Homestuck is so heavily Earthbound influenced, it's probably something like the beat combos in Mother 3. That or imagine people learning them are like them training with their weapons for a while and learning forms much like learning in martial arts.
      • Actually it probally follows Mother 1 and Earthbound's theme with music (8 Melodies,) since a motif (while other meaning things too), is a recurring theme with music. Fray is a brawl, hence a "music brawl". This is also strengthen by the fact, in John's flash to find his quest bed, you see a store with a sign showing, a music note and a blade where you buy the fraymotif. Also in the same flash, it's mention that the Heir would defeat the thing in the well, "With a song only he could sing."
    • You can find out in this flash that they're special moves you can buy on your own planet using boondollars.
      • Remember Terezi and Karkat's odd attack/dance things in Make Her Pay? Those are probably fraymotifs.
  • Can't the remaining players just use the laserstation to duplicate some more sprite kernels (or some cruxtruders to get some) and revive the dead guardians and trolls like Aradia?
    • To do that, they would have to captchalogue the cruxtruder, which is huge and bolted to the floor.
      • That, and there's already been four kernelsprites used. There were only four tower receptors for the kernelsprites to activate on Derse/Prospit. (And I'd assume there was twelve towers for the troll's session, one for each troll) If a fifth kernelsprite were to be activated, what would happen? Odds are it wouldn't be something good.
  • ~ATH:the loops can overlap in some way. does this make it so that the second thing cant die until the first one does? if so, it seems that it would be fairly easy to write ~AH that prevents someone from dying until the universe does/makes the universe die when they do...
    • ~ATH codes don't actually change reality. They simply reflect what already was going to occur. The worst they've been shown to do is blow up computers, which probably is just an exagerated error for comedic purposes.
  • If the Rulers and people of Derse are opposed to creation, why did they create a kingdom based around it?
    • I think the answer is that they're not specifically against creation, but rather they think that bringing around a new universe destroys their own. Which is technically true. The denizens that the Dersites made ask to be taken to the new universe, so they don't have anything specifically against it, they seem to just be out for survival. Except for Jack, who wants to destroy everything.
      • Only the rulers of Derse and their upper agents are specifically against creation as well. And Derse wasn't so much created by them so much as just spontaneously existing fully formed and having always been that way. Time shit etc.
  • What possible biological reason is there to having variation on blood color within a species? You don't really see blood the way you see skin or hair, so it can't be for camouflage or to reflect/absorb light. The only thing I can think of is whatever makes a troll psionic/not psionic or landweller/seadweller also happens to effect the color of their blood. (Vriska is an exception, obviously.)
    • Troll biology as a whole can't really be explained in a way a human mind can wrap around. You may as well be asking why they need to breed through grubs.
      • At the very least, blood color definitely effects lifespan, stated here. It's also been stated to directly effect BOTH a wiggler's chance of manifesting psychic powers, AND how susceptible they are to having such powers used on them, in both cases inversely related to how high/low on the hemospectrum they are (I.e, for a Troll of Vriska's relatively high caste, it's probably very rare to manifest powers, and also very difficult to effect her with them, whereas for Sollux's color, psychics are probably a dime a dozen, and it was pretty easy for Vriska to mind-control him.)
      • Some also theorize that color effects body temperature in a sliding scale from lowest/warmest to highest/coldest (Making the Condesce a literal Cold Blooded Bitch?), but there's no biological basis for that in our universe, at least. The red color of most Earth vertebrates' blood comes from the iron used to transport oxygen through the body; many invertebrates use a copper compound that causes their blood to be blue-green, but this has nothing to do with the temperature.
        • There are clear globins as well, but they're less efficient than hemoglobin. OTOH, there's nothing to say that oxygen transport in trolls relies on similar metallo-proteins.
    • It's probably vestigial; the genes for blood color varies (sort of like how our skin color varies on what genes we have for it), but everything else is the same.
      • Hussie stated on Formspring that their blood and tears (and later eyes) are both colored by a pigment, the equivalent of melanin for humans. Presumably, the genetic cause of this coloration is also what causes their various psychic powers and tolerances, as well as their lifespans.
    • Trolls are adopted by lusii with the same blood color. Variations in pigment could serve as a signaling mechanism for social bonding since blood color is visible though the bodies of wrigglers.
  • How did Jade go God Tier? Yes, she has a live dreamself in the form of Jadesprite, but Jade herself had already died before she was placed on her Quest Bed. CD killed her with the shaving cream bomb, then Jack... er, Bec Noir carried her dead body to the quest bed. I thought it required you to die on the quest bed to work?
    • When a player with a living dreamself dies not on their Quest Bed, there is a short delay before their dreamself dies. Maybe if you can get someone to their Quest Bed within that time period they still ascend. (Of course, Jadesprite wasn't acting as Jade's dreamself anymore, so we don't know whether or not she would have died too.) Or maybe Jade just wasn't quite dead yet when Jack picked her up.
      • Delay? You must've forgotten Aradia. Pretty sure the dreamself's lifespan doesn't actually need a proper correlation to that of their waking counterparts.
        • Though Aradia didn't even have a dreamself when the game started. When did she get one? When she got into the robot body?
          • Aradia's dreamself always existed, she was just always asleep in the core of Derse. When Noir destroyed it, she died in her Quest Crypt, prompting her to go God Tier, which of course left no soul in the soulbot, causing it to explode. As to Jade, the trigger doesn't seem to be dying on the quest bed as such, more being dead on it while you still have a living dreamself. Normally the dreamself would succumb to the wounds fast enough that it would be hard to get the corpse to the bed in time, but of course dream Jade wasn't taking on those wounds.
      • Furthermore, the circumstances surrounding Jade's ascension are close enough to Vriska's that it wouldn't be much of a leap just to say she was only mostly dead until she got to the bed.
        • This page says otherwise. Every main character who had a "Dead" or "DEAD" tagged page was most definitely dead. The only exception is Kanaya, who was bitten by a rainbow drinker and subsequently revived due to that.
        • It's because her dreamself was revived at Jadesprite. Since Jadesprite was alive, Jade could ascend. Had she died before protyping her dead dream self with the sprite, she'd be unable to.
  • What do trolls have horns for, anyway?
    • Well why do human males have Adam's apples or some people have freckles? Neither of these serve a beneficial biological purpose - one results in a deeper voice and the other is just due to melanin or something - but it doesn't mean we can't have them. In fact, trolls' horns are similar to human eyebrows to me in a way (though eyebrows do have the small purpose or keeping sweat from your eyes). The eyebrow's/horns' main reason for existence is to distinguish appearance. Humans recognize famous faces without eyes better than famous faces without eyebrows, so trolls could probably recognize famous faces without eyes better than famous faces without horns. Or something.
  • Okay, I've had some gripes with this one, but I think they said that in a scratched session, the same players can't play. Logically, that would mean that if the alpha session was reset, it wouldn't mean that the alpha guardians would scratch again and become generally the beta kids again, right? Or does that mean that it switches between ectokids? If the same people can't play a session twice, that means technically that different people besides all eight ectokids would play at one point in a reset session. But then predestination comes up...
    • Apparently, a Beta session is always destined to be Scratch'd. The Alpha version is the proper version, usually guaranteed to win. Of course, not in the case of the Trolls....
      • No, no, what I meant was that if the game were to be scratched multiple times, and the game can not have a person play twice, that would mean that other people besides the ectochildren would have a clear shot at creating a universe, right?
        • Weird Predestination Shit probably means that any universe has exactly the number of ectobiological paradox clones necessary to play the game for however many itinerations of the game that universe produces. So both the Troll and Human universes were always meant to scratch exactly once before coming to an endstate that's either a win or an unsalvagable loss. A universe that produces players that get it right on the first try might not have a guardians/ancestors generation of paradox clones, and a universe that is to be scratched multiple times might produce additional sets of clones to stock the game sessions of the added resets.
  • Wait, do people who aren't important to the game disintegrate during transportation to the Medium or are they weak enough to be killed by whatever monster happens to be there?
    • The Guardians all seem to make it through into the Medium although they do little to directly influence the outcome once inside. As for everyone else, they're on their own for getting inside by playing the game before a meteor crashes. We don't really know what would happen to a house guest though, but one would assume they'd be transported too. All of the above, along with the players, would have to fend for themselves against enemies.
      • And it doesn't help much that Bro's and Bec's antics killed basically the rest of the human race trying to save Dave and Jade.
      • What gave you that idea? Non-players are not disintegrated, players are simply transported away. NPCs are simply left to die of the Reckoning.
  • So I understand that Jane's and Jake's 'hands-free' devices are psychic. But what about all the computer glasses (and Rose's headband)? How are they supposed to type with THOSE?
    • Perhaps it goes by some sort of microphone function, ala Dragon: Naturally Speaking. Wherever the microphone is, however, would probably be hidden from view.
    • I think you're overthinking this. Homestuck is ridiculously abstract. Characters are seen directly interacting with the reader's inventory interface. They have the items equipped, therefore they can use them for their intended purpose. The "speech recognition" thing works too, though, if you want a more "realistic" (HAH) explanation.
      • We are given no information on their interface. We do not know they are psychic.
  • Er...the Gift of Gab and the Dialoglogs. John, Jade, Rose, and Dave were specifically gifted with these things but the trolls were not. While I understand that the Gift of Gab enables the user to talk to anyone they want, and therefore if Rose was talking to Kanaya it might grant Kanaya the temporary ability to speak back, but how do characters like Kanaya and Karkat interact when neither of them have a Gift of Gab? Maybe I'm taking a gag too seriously, but if there's a real explanation, I would like to know it.
    • Better yet, how did god!John and Grimdark!Rose talk to each other just before the fight with bec-noir if they couldn't talk untill post-scratch? I guess it could be said that the trolls got it off-screen, but we know for a fact Rose and John didn't have it yet.
      • Gift of Gab specifically refers to characters talking OUTSIDE of interactive sequences. John and Rose first met in an interactive sequence.
        • Also, the Gift of Gab badge only refers to talking to each other while we watch. Of course they talked to each other; it would be quite ridiculous for the Trolls to be sat on the asteroid and not be talking at all, or for Dave and Jade to be frog-hunting in total silence. We can just watch as they talk now.
      • It was a meta-gag, don't read too much into it.
  • What's the point of the Daedric alphabet? When we see troll chat client on their own screens, they're done in the Roman alphabet, just like the humans use. Karkat's posters are also in the Roman alphabet. This might just be a translation convention, but when Karkat gets John's bucket-delivered note, he seems to have no problem reading human script. So then, why does Daedric even exist?
    • Translation Convention seems to be in full effect; everything that is irrelevant to the actual story and is merely world building fluff or a Call Back is always in Daedric, whereas important things of plot relevance are always in the Roman alphabet. In universe, it seems that Trolls and Humans both speak English but write differently. Also Karkat could easily have learned the Roman alphabet from observing John; after all, it's really just a simple alteration of Daedric from his point of view.
  • Where and when is it said that trolls are bisexual? When John explains homosexuality and Karkat responds "HOW IS THAT EVEN A THING", why is this taken to mean that it's not taboo for trolls? Maybe it just doesn't exist for them.
    • It's never outright stated in-comic, but it can be inferred that homosexual couples do exist for trolls by the fact that Karkat even has a caliginous crush on John. Therefore, the fandom just sort of assumed the other option of trolls being bisexual by default. It's also confirmed by Word of God here
    • Canonical same-gender attraction in the comic: Kanaya ♥ towards Vriska, Vriska ♥ temporarily towards Kanaya after getting decked, Gamzee ♥ towards Tavros, Karkat temporarily ♠ towards John, Mindfang attempting ♥ with the Dolorosa, and Equius getting off somehow on authority issues with Karkat and Gamzee, depending on how your read on how sexual it is.
    • Also Nepeta has no problem shipping several same-sex couples on her shipping walls, including Kanaya ♥ Rose and Vriska ♠ Terezi in [S] Equius: Seek the highb100d. And when Karkat declares how much he hates Eridan in a memo after Eridan kills Kanaya & Feferi, past Eridan thinks he's hitting on him.
    • In summary, there is loads of evidence of same-sex attraction between trolls as a default bisexual race both in canon and straight from the author's mouth, in spite of the most prominent couples being opposite gender.
  • If scratching the game essentially messes with the universe, what does breaking the game look like? Or pausing the game? What does saving feel like?
    • Scratching is a metaphor for a hard reset, i.e. wiping the save file and starting from scratch. Those other features don't necessarily have to exist you know!
  • If you were to play the game when you originally not supposed to, would the timeline preserve itself by killing you upon entry or would you doom the game to failure by going through?
    • Not sure what that means but nobody except players destined to play in a certain session can play in it and survive. If you mean a hypothetical session, where for instance instead of Roxy playing, another random child were to attempt it, what seems likely is that that person would die and circumstances would arrange themselves so that Roxy would play. The question isn't very clear, but I hope that answers it.
  • As someone mentioned higher up, there is a Save function in Sburb. If you saved and scratched, would you be able to gain advantages from where you last saved?
    • There's a save feature for buildings. That's completely different. Remember that server players cannot directly interact with clients, so it seems that save feature couldn't apply to the players. Likewise, it hasn't been seen for years in comic, and likely was simply a reference to the layout of the Sims, with no plot import whatsoever.
  • Okay, this has been confusing me. If the Prince class is the one who actively destroys things through his aspect, then why is Gamzee the Bard if he's the one who actually did so? According to UU, he's only supposed to allow things to be destroyed, but when he sobers up, he goes out and actively destroys things, while Eridan just let his aspect to be destroyed by destroying the matriorb and killing Feferi.
    • UU offered several definitions. Eridan is clearly intended to be seen as "One who destroys Hope" and Gamzee as "One who invites destruction through Rage". UU also notes that Bards tend to be rather hard to classify period, but his actions clearly show the partial ruination of the Troll session through his submission to his Rage.
    • He also manipulated Terezi into confronting Vriska by stoking her inflamed sense of justice, provoked Nepeta into a suicidal charge against him, and he caused the cancer to "go terminal" by influencing John's dreams in a way that led to Jack Noir being made to dress up as a clown -- which pushed him over the line. It's also worth noting that all the tensions among the trolls boiled over into violent anger and death within an hour (before and after) of him losing his mind, as he was beginning to sober up.
  • Where do normal people go when they die? Players have dreambubbles, I know that, but that was only because Feferi asked. So on an added note, where did players use to go when they die? did they go to the same place as the normals? Did they have their own afterlife or did they just blip out of existence?
    • Dreambubbles are a transitory afterlife designed so that recently deceased players can help their alive companions, sort of like a limbo of memories and events. Afterwards, they move on to a genuine afterlife, the specifics of which are unknown, though Jadesprite was there and Jade might have some knowledge of it. Presumably normal people go there as well.
      • Was that ever stated? Considering the timebending nature of the Furthest Ring and the fact that other dreamselves have been shown to go to the dreambubbles when they die, isn't it more likely that Jadesprite was merely in the dreambubbles for several years, and that the dreambubbles are the only afterlife?
      • It was implied because Jadesprite's description of the afterlife didn't line up with dreambubbles. All the players in dreambubbles shown are well aware of their mortality and some of them still long to live again. Also it may have been stated as well during Feferi's explanation of dreambubbles, and Vriska does directly state non-players don't go to dreambubbles (though part of Roxy's sleepwalk showed Earth as a wasteland as only WV saw it, but he could simply be an exception because he can physically interact with the bubbles). Dreambubbles are in essence, the Horrorterrors "remembering" the players, and there's actually not much clarification whether a player's actual soul is in dreambubbles or dreambubble selves are simply a preservation of their mind.
      • How so? I only recall Jadesprite talking about it here: http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=005141, and nothing she says would contradict the idea that she went to the dreambubbles. Additionally, you are wrong about people in the dreambubbles remembering their mortality. Beta timeline offshoots of Dave, Aradia, John, and Alpha Sollux have all been shown to not recall how or if they died until someone told them or something in the dreambubbles made them remember.
      • ...Whereupon they immediately start thinking about how they're dead, and at least a few express the desire to live again. Jadesprite's "contradiction" is that dreambubble selves have been shown to be fairly relaxed and well aware of what's going on, in contrast to Jadesprite's near hysterical babbling when she was revived; even the most clueless dead self we've seen, John, only took a little bit of prompting to realize his death. Also as a sprite, Jadesprite would know that dreambubbles can totally be visited by alive players, which doesn't seem to be the case with whatever afterlife she went to. A few other suggestions, like Feferi and Aradia's comments, further reinforce the transitory nature of dreambubbles.
      • Except Jadesprite wasn't sad about being dead. She was sad about being brought back to life and being ripped from the afterlife she was clearly enjoying, back into a situation that seemed hopeless to her. Jadesprite might also not qualify as an 'alive player' considering that she's a sprite, and she would therefore be unable to join them.
      • Jadesprite's inconsolable sobbing (she sobbed for something like 6-12 hours straight, right up until just before Cascade) is seemingly irreconcilable with how very relaxed Dreambubble selves are; Sollux exiting his dreambubble barely even noticed the change. We'll probably get a more conclusive Word of God down the line, but both ideas here are mutually exclusive and so much of it boils down to pure theory that there's no concrete answer to be said.
    • Jadesprite was in dreambubbles. However, non-players can never appear in a dreambubble and it's implied there's either Cessation of Existence or another afterlife.
        • Maybe the Dreambubbles are for everyone. We do not have any proof that narratively irrelevant people don't get dreambubble. I would like to point out that a lot of the above posters use uncited conjecture.
      • We do actually though; Vriska outright tells John that his Dad can't appear in Dreambubbles, and Word of God is that only players are in them. Well, and Andrew Hussie, but that's a joke more than serious. Addressing the original Headscratcher, there are two things. There is known Cessation of Existence for players killed in a Scratch, and it is implied that is the normal death for people. Players have access to Dreambubbles, but it's more of an eternal Limbo than a true afterlife, and they are ultimately at the whims of the Gods as to whether they continue to exist or interact with others. The discussion above was a disagreement on whether Jadesprite's actions were reconcilable with the behavior of people in Dreambubbles, not actually too much conjecture either way. The point does still remain that Jadesprite's reaction was incredibly incongrous with how dreambubble selves have been seen to act, but there's a strong chance we'll see more information about dreambubbles going into the future, meaning that may be explained.
  • So, if this session is incapable of being won as well, what is the point? Just to gather allies for a third Scratch?
    • As Rose points out, not many infertile sessions ended up creating the Green Sun. Just because the session is infertile doesn't mean they can't win! Let Rose finish explaining. Besides, a Scratch isn't an option anymore, there are no new Time players and the Beat Mesa has already been used.
      • And Rose now has confirmed it's not completely null.
  • Rose says "exceedingly few null sessions result in the birth of a massive green star fueled by two dead universes." But didn't Doc Scratch say he has NEVER failed to have the Green Sun created so Lord English can enter the session? Or is the key word here "null" and that just the null sessions don't usually produce a Green Sun?
    • Rose was probably just joking a bit. The implication is that the Beta Session is unique, as given other sources, like Jade, there is only the one Green Sun, and we already know that the chain of Troll and Human sessions and Alpha Session themselves are pretty much unique. English's entry to a Universe and the Green Sun's creation presumably are unrelated; though it was the case with Doc Scratch, we don't know that it's always the case.
      • Doc Scratch explicitly said he never failed to summon Lord English. He never said anything about failing to summon the Green Sun.
  • If most player sessions are null, what is the point of others even playing? They're not going to win. Wouldn't it just be better then for someone to go back in time and kill off the muggle-sessions, leaving only the useful session around?
    • You Can't Fight Fate. Moreover even a successful session will leave lots of doomed universes around. Think of it like this maybe; in a million universes, life might only arise on Earth on 100. In those other universes it didn't occur, for whatever reason, but that's simply how things happened, but life won't stop trying to find a way, because that's what it does.
      • Moreover, people couldn't know it was a null session (or what that even means) until they enter.
        • I interpreted as a living creature sort of thing (which hey the universe is). Basically, each session is reproduction, fertilization of egg by sperm. Each void or null session is an egg left unfertilized, not every egg will go to reproduction and it would be impractical to do so.
  • In Hivebent, when Vriska is trying to get Tavros to climb the stairs she built, she uses her cursor to move his wheelchair back and forth. This doesn't seem like a problem, until you remember: The game prohibits the server player from moving any object that the client player is sitting/standing/laying on, so that the server player can't just carry the client up to the gates. So why could Vriska move Tavros' wheelchair?
    • Servers can jiggle items the client is interacting with, like Rose did with John's bed in Act 2 briefly; Tavros's wheelchair just showed a more noticeable effect. They still can't directly lift people to their gates, and like Nannasprite said, even if there was some loophole that could be found, it wouldn't be in the client's best interest to do so anyways.
  • Why is only Aradia a ghost? Shouldn't the rest of the trolls who die throughout the course of the story be ghosts too?
    • Aradia was a ghost because she still had an alive self, as her dreamself was in a coma. Everyone else who died had no other alternate selfs. Moreover, Aradia had the psychic ability to commune with the dead, and that could have played into it. The important thing really is that Aradia needed to be a ghost to play in the session, whereas the dead trolls have no further purpose to Paradox Space and are dead for real.
  • How does Pesterchum work? Doesn't it need an Internet connection? For that matter, why can't Dave/Rose/rest of trolls communicate with John/Jade through Pesterchum?
    • Early in Act 2, John mentions that the Medium conveys everything a player needs resource wise, like electricity and internet. However, because of time dilation, the two groups can't communicate with each other. John and Jade are in another dimension for 3 nanoseconds or 3 years depending on how you look at it, and while they have a functioning intranet, they don't seem to have a connection to the outside.
  • As a corollary to the earlier question on how trolls get named, how do trolls learn their common language? It seems that most, if not all, varieties of Lusi are incapable of speech, and the adults have all been sent off to conquer other planets. Older troll children are unlikely to want to teach the younger ones anything, especially considering how brutal troll society is.
    • There seems to be some sort of automated education system that nonetheless leaves a lot of flexibility for personal interests. Karkat has ocassionally mentioned getting "schoolfed" in the same context as "schooled" and Fanon has extrapolated that to there being a "Schoolfeed" that is somewhere between online classes and Youtube lessons. In canon however, it's never clarified specifically.

Open

Possible plot holes

Resolved

  • So the majority of the female trolls have black lips, and the general consensus seems to be that it's makeup of some sort. The main problem I have with this is that Little-Blind-Terezi also appears to have that, which kind of raises the question of how, as I sort of doubt that Karkat puts lipstick on her every morning.
    • The answer, of course is that all trolls have naturally black lips.
      • ..I have no idea how I missed that.
        • But then, how can The Handmaid have red lips and eyelashes when she was still just a grub ?
          • Maybe it's like the 'blonde hair' thing. Maybe sometimes trolls have eyelashes or lips that are naturally the same color as their blood.
  • How can Rose possibly afford all the stuff she just created? If the bandwidth for receiving from the Grist Gutter is the same as for leeching, she would only have to have napped for a little over 2 hours, but the real problem is her cache limit. It would have to be at least 7100 -- almost as high as John's -- and she had only fought one enemy, which she didn't kill!
    1. Can she spend directly from John's cache, since he's in her world? His affluence is making a nonsense of the regulations!
    2. Did her future-self Fusion Dance give her her future echeladder progress? ...Actually, her riding the Lime Ogre like a mechanical bull would suddenly make a lot more sense...
    • The grist collected by Maplehoof predominantly went into Rose's grist cache, although much more was redistributed to the other players. Also, Rose fought plenty of imps before fighting the ogre.
    • Plus, in theory, she could have been fighting monsters between alchemizations. They swarm all over, so she wouldn't even have to walk.
      • It seems fairly obvious that the cache limits in place almost certainly increase as the game goes on and players level up. John himself wouldn't have even remotely been able to make half the crap he's made if his levels were still the same as when he started. It seems more or less obvious that Rose has leveled up enough from fighting (we haven't seen her doing much fighting, but it's absolutely implied to be taking place off-camera) to have much larger cache limit.
        • Think of expanding grist cache as a "balance" feature for low level starting players, and it makes sense that grist torrent "bandwidth" could also be subject to rising caps as the players level up.
    • You're all missing the part where Rose STARTS higher on her echeladder than John. A lot higher. Hence the ogre getting stomped hardcore. Dave is probably quite a bit higher too; John is just terrible at everything.
      • Maybe because the "Heir" class means he starts at the absolute bottom and works his way to the top. God Tiers.
    • Seemingly every player starts with a slightly higher cache, and some players innately have higher caches.
  • If Tavros' horns can't fit through his bed, why doesn't he get a new one or make a hole to fit through?
    • His horns are implied to be something of a disability, so I think the inference we're supposed to make is, "He cant grow a new sleep cocoon."
    • Also, it may have been that they've only recently gotten too big, and he never bothered getting a new one before he became injured.
      • Probably the most likely option given that we see Troll horns do grow with them; compare Grub!Tavros to the Summoner for one.
    • Trolls have help when they first build their hive, but from then on it's just the troll and his/her lusus. Vriska mentions in her most recent conversation with John that she didn't really like her hive, but she was stuck with what she thought was cool when she was a grub. Essentially, Tavros can't get a new cocoon for cultural reasons. Exactly like all of his other problems.
  • WHY can't Dave just go back in time before the game started with several betas? Not only would they get more time to save Skaia, but they could make sure they don't make any of their horrible mistakes, what with their future knowledge.
    • It's already been established that you can't make copies of the Beta. Rose tried to send John the code for the server disk, but it had no capcha code.
      • He could still take the copies they have back in time. That's what happened to Dave's copy to get it to Jade.
      • But how would he get it to her? There's no way to do that without traveling back further than is strictly practical-- at which point this ceases to be the simplest solution.
      • He could probably conjure up some future gear to help travel the world in a timely manner then take that to the past with him. And anything is better than their current "no-win" scenario.
      • It probably isn't even possible to travel back to "before" you enter the Medium-- because there is no "before" when dealing with The Medium <-> Earth. You would just wind up on your Land at a point in time before you entered. But even if you could magically teleport yourself out of the Medium using only time travel, there could be a million reasons why it would be a bad idea-- time travel tends to be a lot more complicated than people give it credit for. Oh, and most importantly... Future Dave didn't even know about this no-win scenario because it did not happen in his timeline.
      • ...Oh, and that's not to mention "use time travel to fix everything so that nothing bad happens ever" is not how you write a good story.
      • There's also the little fact that he really doesn't want to use non-stable-loop time travel at all if he can avoid it, because every time he uses it a copy of him dies. Worse, the person who dies is the one who decides he wants to go back in time, so it's not even like you have a 50/50 chance of not being that copy.
      • They have that lasery captcha-reading machine and an item-duplicating camera now, so they could. But yeah, it's likely due to how lame it would be if all the awesome things that have happened so far were undone just like that.
      • He'd likely die before he'd have a chance to get to them, because paradox space removes time duplicates and that would have broken the game in two.
      • Doing so would have simply created a doomed timeline. If you like, you can assume Dave DID try to do something and we just don't see it because it's not relevant to the alpha timeline; that would require Dave to be monumentally stupid for a second though.
  • Why is the Troll Romance represented by a red heart called the "Flushed" Quadrant? Based on this page, (and this one), Trolls flush their blood color, which is usually not red.
    • Troll terminology sure is weird!
    • "Flush" doesn't refer solely to blushing. It also means a strong, sudden flow, and a rush of emotion in particular (such as when someone is flushed with anger or flushed with elation). It works especially well in the context of romance. "Flushed" is a good word to suggest the heady feelings of true (pity) love.
      • Probably unintentional, but the word also goes well with all the other card-related imagery going on in there.
    • Still doesn't explain why it's red though. That might be partially out of association with Karkat's ancestor.
      • None of the four colors of romance are normal blood colors -- red, black, white, and brown. Karkat's blood is a mutant color that doesn't fit in the normal spectrum of society. It's possible that the colors were picked specifically to avoid picking a normal blood color.
    • It's probably not all that complicated. It's just another card motif. In cards, diamonds and hearts are red, and clubs and spades are black. Because moirallegiance is a more platonic form of matespritship, it's a lighter shade of red, and because auspisticism has to do with nullifying potential kismesitudes, it's a lighter shade of black.
      • That still doesn't explain why red and black. Trolls don't have cards the same way we do; the brief mention given to it was that it was a lot more sexual. However out of verse, that explanation makes perfect sense.
  • According to this page, Dream Tavros' legs still work, and Dream Vriska still has her eye(s?) (and presumably also her arm). So why is Dream Terezi blind?
    • We haven't seen her Dreamself yet so we don't even know if she is blind, for all we know she is just wearing sunglasses. Alternatively the Dreamself is what you see yourself as. Terezi used her disability so far to her advantage she may not be able to think of herself any other way.
    • Pretty much confirmed now: she is blind there because while Vriska's and Tavros's injuries are a constant source of pain for them, Terezi has adapted to hers so much that she identifies with it and prefers her alternate senses to vision (mostly because of how it helped her bond with her Lusus and woke her dream self--though that does raise questions since she surely hadn't adapted to it yet).
      • But it's possible that Vriska somehow shut down the vision centers of Terezi's brain, which might affect her ability to see in the dream world; or the shock of losing her sight could have made it difficult to accept the possibility that she could see in the dream world if she tried.
      • In the latest flash update, the reason is Vriska, through a PSYCHIC DOUBLE REACHAROUND, manipulates Terezi into opening her eyes while she's asleep, staring at the sun (Skaia for Dream!Terezi), simultaneously blinding her in both real life and in her dreams.
      • Skaia didn't blind her. She already explained that her dream self was blind for psychological reasons-- and if looking into Skaia could blind you, then nobody on the planet in its center would be able to see.
      • Maybe...If (and possibly a large if) a player's dreamself works more or less like their physical body, anything that would affect one adversely would also affect the other, in theory. If most trolls can't physically withstand staring into the sun, perhaps the same is reflected in their dreams, since Skaia is more or less the "sun" of that realm?
      • Yes, I know that this is the rationale behind that assumption. I just don't think it's very likely. Word Of God is ambivalent on the issue [dead link] , but based on his wording ("and like she explained to Karkat,") he seems to be placing favor on the psychological explanation. So, she was blinded by the sun and either at that moment or as she identifies as blind, her dreamself becomes blind as well. Debateable which it was, not enough evidence.
      • Word of God is indeed that she identifies so much as blind that her dreamself is incapable of seeing. She's not handicapped in her opinion and she prefers not seeing. However, her dreamself's eyes do technically still work.
  • How does Karkat chat, or do basically anything else plot-relevant, after his computer explodes? (I'm sure this is explained somewhere.)
  • In the Midnight Crew intermission, the Die that was killed was from an alternate timeline, come when Itchy decided to cheat--yet, Spades Slick treated him (and crossed him off) like he was the original Die. Along the same lines, the Snowman (Snowmen?) that appeared in the Intermission was in order, 1: From a timeline where Crowbar was still alive, 2: The original timeline (who apparently just hung around on the window, chillin'), 3: From the highly-unfavorable timeline where everything (except her, apparently) died. So, essentially...what happened to the original versions of those two? Are they still around? Did they decide to pursue a highly successful sitcom series now that their rivals/comrades were out of the way?
    • It's pretty strongly hinted that Snowman is somehow unaffected by time shenanigans. Note that in the least favourable timeline, she's still missing the cigarette holder that she lost in the timeline from which Slick kidnapped Crowbar.
      • I don't think that's so much a hint as it is a coincidence. It's likely that unfavorable!Snowman just dropped hers. Since everything's destroyed and all, that could include personal comfort items.
    • Snowman warps wherever she wants, she is probably not affected by time shenanigans at all.
  • If both heterosexual and homosexual troll couplings can produce the genetic material needed to fill the filial buckets, why do trolls have two genders in the first place?
    • Troll sexes are most likely vestigial.
      • Most likely, but that doesn't explain why they don't have word for those things. Wouldn't they presumably still have an instinctive preference?
      • It looks like they don't!
      • It was technically said that the pairings don't necessarily produce a child, just that they make the genetic material stronger. It's possible that the incestous slurry only gives strong-pairing-supported male and female gametes a chance to mingle. Alternately, if the genders are redundant, A Wizard Did It, where "a wizard" is "the Mother Grub involved in the process".
        • I think the buckets hold lots and lots of fluids. Don't worry about pairs.
    • Hussie says it's so readers can identify a little better. In-universe, they're probably just vestigial.
    • I've had a theory that the trolls do have sex preference when it comes to matespritship, they just assume they don't because none of the other quadrants have sex preference. But Kanaya's not the only one to have same-sex matespritships, so that's probably Jossed.
    • There's a theory about this in the Fridge Logic section. Doc scratch has indicated that the first guardians are responsible for the changes to a scratched session, in this case making Troll-kind violent and ruthless enough to produce more aggressive players. The theory is that he did this by somehow setting up the mother grub system (also in keeping with his creepy, pedo image) so that trolls would have to rely on culling and violence to rid the species of it's weaker mutations from their continual inbreeding. The troll's gender is a remnant of the pre-scratched session.
    • I just figured that troll genders were like hair colours. Wouldn't make a bit of difference to reproduction, it just creates some variety.
  • Isn't Sollux supposed to be dead?
    • No.
      • That's his dream self. I'm talking about real world Sollux
    • And apparently, Sollux did get into the Medium before the Glub. So how did he die? The glub didn't as he got into the medium before it went off. What the hell?
      • ...No... he didn't? Sollux was the last one in. And why are you linking that? It happened WAY after Sollux entered. I'm not understanding your thought process at all.
    • Sollux and Feferi were the only ones left on Alternia, and Feferi was immune (which is part of the reason why her lusus chose her in the first place). Glub goes off>Gl'bgolyb dies>Sollux is hit by the Glub and starts dying>Sollux gets Feferi in>Karkat gets Sollux in>Sollux succumbs to glub and dies. Feferi woke up his Dersite dream self, which then replaced his real self.
    • He changed his clothes! You can see his dreamself wearing his living duds during Make Her Pay, as well.
  • Did I miss something? How does Dave know what Terezi looks like?
    • We all missed a large number of conversations between the two. It's quite likely that she sent Dave a picture of herself in the (subjective) three days we missed.
    • Doesn't the comics she do feature her? At least the one we saw last does.
      • It seems that in the comics she does, she makes her horns more yellow, but Dave makes her horns closer to what they actually look like. Then again, Dave's drawing isn't quite that accurate either, and I guess it could be a coincidence.
    • Well, John knew that the trolls looked like, so presumably it's something to do with the viewport feature.
      • John knew what Terezi looked like because she included a picture of herself in the tags on her Google LOWAS map.
      • The jump back to before that comic's creation is showing, if nothing else, that Terezi gave him the glasses and the shirt icon as image-gags like the ones she's been doing of Dave himself.
  • Why can't John spell his own Pesterchum handle?
    • He can spell it. But he's not typing in that convo. Conversations with sprites are spoken, not typed. He's having trouble pronouncing it.
    • It's not his handle, it's his current echeladder rung, Ectobiolobabysitter. Difficulty spelling that is entirely understandable.
      • Difficulty saying it without mishap is also entirely understandable.
  • I'd like to know how Dave found the "Miracles" music video. The comic is supposedly still on April 13, 2009, but the album the song is from didn't come out until nearly five months later, and the video didn't come out until nearly a year after the comic takes place. And don't pin it on Dave's time travel, since the comic's still going on.
    • It was a miracle.
    • Shenanigans.
      • He alchemized together a harlequin figurine and boxbot to create the world's most terrible harlequins. Obviously.
    • The album and video came out earlier in the Homestuck universe.
    • As Karkat once said to John, with respect to the Medium our universe's timeline is meaningless. (Which... doesn't necessarily appear to be universally the case, but it should be true.)
      • Although in a future wasteland it'd be pretty hard to record a song about miracles.
    • Youtube flashes copied the current format instead of the 2009 format, so we can chalk it up to Andrew playing loose with what happened prior to 4/13/2009 instead of being a stickler for details.
    • The answer has finally been revealed to us: It was Betty Crocker.
  • How can Vriska be contacted by Snowman to exile the Crew if she was killed fairly early in her session, and dead players can't be seen by exiles?
    • Snowman first talked to Vriska when Tavros went through his second gate into her house, and Snowman was also talking to Terezi.
      • Troll exiles can contact dreamselves, much like CD did. Either that or since her real self was dying, the terminal defaulted to Vriska's prospit self. Another common explanation is that there's some console command to show the God Tiered players; WV's just not smart enough to figure it out.
  • If trolls don't have families and all come from a giant incestuous slurry, why do they have last names?
    • Historically speaking, a lot of surnames have come from places other than "Dad's last name". Names like Smith and Schumacher are a leftover from when surnames denoted professions. There are plenty of possible sources for Troll surnames.
    • The Troll Ancestors shed light on this. For adult trolls, apparently their first name is their title and their second name is their actual given name. Marquise Mindfang, Orphaner Dualscar, Neophyte Redglare... It's possible young trolls are simply given temporary names by their lusii and then get to choose their own name once they become adults and have an established position in society.
      • I thought her full name/title was Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, so she has both a first name and a title. Though it may be possible that Vriska made "Spinneret" up for herself. It's also possible that Redglare has a first name that we haven't learned yet, though "the Orphaner" does seem to be Dualscar's title or at least nickname. Regardless, it's a good point that surnames don't have to be family names.
      • Trolls make up their names as whatever they want to be. They just culturally prefer 2. The first is more informal but the second is more formal. There are some instances of trolls calling each other things like Vantas and Pyrope and they come off as more taunting, as if making a mockery of formal procedures.
  • If trolls are naturally bisexual and gender is a vestigial remnant, why the hell do they have gendered clothing? Kanaya, Aradia and Feferi wear skirts, but none of the male trolls. Aradia and Feferi don't even have the excuse that they're interested in fashion, like Kanaya is specifically stated to be, because she's highlighted as the exception that proves the rule. Surely they should be wearing more functional clothes, particularly if they're engaged in activities like spelunking and swimming.
    • Chalk it up to Andrew designing the characters before the canon. Alternatively, Feferi and Aradia simply choose to dress like that out of preference. Aradia's clothes are also the simplest shown in canon, and Feferi's are a semi-complex layered skirt, showing one is a peasant and the other royalty at a glance. In essence there's only so much you can do with pants. Besides Nepeta, Terezi, and Vriska all wear pants.
    • Don't forget that before relatively recent times, men and women both wore skirts. Maybe on Alternia, clothes never really became gendered. Also you have to consider that even though it's a Fantasy Counterpart Culture, Hussie is only human and our society slips in naturally.
  • This memo does awful things to the timeline. Point by point:
    • At 6:12, Prospit is destroyed. Terezi witnesses this. She then opens a memo to inform people.
    • At 4:13, Derse is destroyed. Aradiabot explodes. Nepeta wakes up, while Feferi remains asleep.
    • Around an hour later - I'd put it pretty close to 3:00, but that's just a guess - Eridan KOs Sollux, kills Feferi, destroys the Matriorb, and kills Kanaya.
      • Whoops, a reread has revealed to me that the flash starts at 3:14. Not that it makes a huge difference to the JMB.
    • About 2:58, the problems begin. Tavros, Vriska, Equius, and Nepeta respond to that memo. Nepeta mentions that Derse "was just destroyed too". She also claims that Feferi was sleeping, and now will not wake up.
      • An hour isn't extremely long, and Nepeta could have left after she saw Feferi wasn't waking up.
    • Sometime after 2:42, Equius mentions to Nepeta that he believes they were just discussing his feelings in the roboti% pile for at least an hour.
    • So, did Equius and Nepeta reply while they were in the middle of discussing feelings? Does Nepeta have weird lapses of memory? Is Vriska, despite the impossibility, manipulating an invisible Aradia to mess with the others' perceptions/timestamps?
      • Remember that Nepeta and Equius weren't in the room when they were all killed. Nepeta may have left before Feferi woke up and, since no word had reached her otherwise, assumed that she was still asleep. They didn't know anyone was killed until Karkat contacted them. As for the feelings jam thing, I wouldn't be surprised if they left a little after 4:13, went going for an hour, and then just hung out or something. "Just" doesn't have to refer to things that happened a few minutes ago. It can also mean something that simply happened recently.
  • In this terrifying update, how is Gamzee making the honking noises? Both of his hands are occupied.
    • I think it's more like a drama-enhancing thematic/visual thing than an actual literal sound he's making. Honking noises have been popping up in all sorts of impossible places ever since the Gamzee reveal.
      • Okay, that makes sense. Good thing too -- I didn't want to think about how else he could be making those noises.
    • Or he could be saying it. He has kinda snapped...
    • Or maybe he has squeaky clown shoes.
  • If every class had a plethora of insignias and each insignia was unique to that class, then couldn't the others have find out what Karkat's blood color was just by looking at his sign and figuring out which blood class it belonged to?
    • I always figured that nobody other than people like Equius or Eridan, who really buy into the caste system, actually bother memorizing many of the supposedly huge library of symbols, but even they wouldn't be able to find anything about his because mentions of it are forbidden. Though that would mean they probably also think that isn't his real sign, just something he made up to keep his anonymity.
    • It's also possible that the symbols had their meaning lost or changed throughout the years.
    • Karkat's mutant blood isn't on the hemospectrum, so it has no symbols the other trolls would recognize. Karkat's lusus and the Heretical Sym69ls as a sign were given to him by the remnants of the Sufferer's uprising.
  • Wasn't it stated that Sollux hated the kids too much to troll them or something, or just outright refused to speak to them? So... how did he end up in Jade's trollslum and bring her troll-count up to 12?
    • It was either a Retcon, as the Trollslum was all about hinting at the 12 trolls, or someone else used his computer.
  • When Kanaya read Rose's walkthrough, why did she imagine Rose as a troll? I mean, Rose provided pictures of John fooling around...
    • The links were probably dead; the content of Rose's walkthrough was ripped as a text file and placed on the server alone. The human internet however was more or less gone by the time Rose ripped it, which is in fact why she did that.
      • As someone else originally pointed out here (before it was deleted), they had access to YouTube by making use of Trollian's ability to view things in the past. Terezi also used it to browse the web for pictures of coolkids.
        • Now, the counter to that is that Kanaya accessed Rose's walkthrough long before Trollian could be used to do that. Rose's FAQ was served from a timeless server in the Furthest Ring, not from the human internet, and that didn't necessarily include the pics. Until Terezi was forwarded 413 boonbonds and until Sollux traced back the connection, they didn't have the ability to see the human universe.
        • Karkat refers to Trollian as being a new client by the time of the session, so it seems the first explanation is correct. In light of there being no way for Kanaya to follow the links, she assumed Rose was a troll. Also it's probably good to keep in mind that she first read the walkthrough when she was quite young, and probably didn't have entirely rational thoughts about the writer not being a troll.
  • When Bec gets prototyped, how come the kernelsprite immediately hatches even though Jade hasn't entered the Medium yet? Is it just part of his powers as a First Guardian?
    • Yes. Bec isn't the only one; remember the Frogsprite and Jaspersprite? Hussie said a while ago on Formspring that First Guardians and frogs have special properties in that regard, and that they may not be the only things; it looks like doubly-Prototyped Sprites do too.
      • Out of verse though, it's a clear mistake, and Andrew's changing of it was basically a Retcon.
  • How can DD be clocked into next week when the universe ends before then?
    • Because we don't know exactly when the intermission takes places, it could take place maybe a month or more before the universe ends.
    • The Intermission takes place in a split timeline. Compared to the actual events of the end of the Troll Universe, it seemingly takes place in the past or a couple weeks in the future. Hard to say one way or the other.
  • Back at the Hussie Hunt event, in-verse Andrew's presence turned Doc Scratch into a doll, "like a reverse Calvin and Hobbes" as was noted. Now, in the End of March - Beginning of April updates, in-verse Hussie's fighting Lord English. Since Lord English is part of Doc Scratch, shouldn't he turn into a doll as well?
    • Doc Scratch is a puppet. Lord English isn't. Doc Scratch didn't bleed for one! Doc and Hussie are also both rival narrators, while LE shows no inclination to narrate and is simply the Bigger Bad. In-universe, Doc might simply have been playing dead because of predestination shit.
  • Why does Dirk call Post-Scratch Dave 'Bro'? If both Post-Scratch Dave and Post-Scratch Rose are actually the ancestors of Dirk and Roxy, wouldn't it make more sense for Dirk to call Dave 'father' like Roxy calls Rose 'mother'?
    • In Dirk's own words:
      "GT: Right. So then he was never actually your bro?
      TT: No, that's just kind of how I view him.
      TT: Lalonde took a more maternal view of her ancestor."
      *** As for the reason behind it, Dirk may have for whatever reasons seen Strider to be more of his older equal instead of someone above him. He is pretty open to critique Strider's work for example.
  • HIC's plan has been shown to be that she wants to ressurrect the troll race. To do so, she had to breed an whole heap of Lusus. For a lusus to raise a troll, they need to have the same blood colour. Crabdads have been shown to have candy-red blood; a colour not on the hemospectrum. Why did she breed these?
    • The Condesce has not been tied to the Lusi on Jake's Island at all, especially since it's known they were there before Grandma English died. Besides, she determined early on that ressurrecting the Trolls was impossible, and the lusi were needed for humans instead (which turned out terribly). As for the Lusi, they could be naturally native to the island, and Grandpa Harley simply hunted them to extinction on Jade's Island. Alternatively, they could be a product of Grandma English's Skaianet, in a fashion that has yet to be seen.

Open

"Why did Andrew do X?"

Resolved

  • Why does Hussie insist on providing exposition through the trolls? While I understand that this world is far deeper and more developed than that of Problem Sleuth, there must be another way to relate this to us without long, rambling, half-incoherent chat logs. Show don't tell, Mr. Hussie!
    • It's partially to add atmosphere, I think. Give him some space.
    • Plenty of atmosphere can be easily given without forcing it into long winded text logs. They were fun when they were a suppliment, but not when they're the main stay. Its basically a still picture where John is handed a heaping silver platter of information, not by his own merit, but because theres some guy who knows everything that expobabbles at his whims.
    • What alternatives are there? It's difficult to explain things with out using words. Just be glad that they're funny.
      • How did we learn that meteors were actually showering the entire planet? Because Rose discovered the hub herself, actually showing us the true scope of a disturbing scenario. How did we discover the information about Prospit, about the alternates of Jade and John? Because Jade frequents there, and could visually present to us her awe-inspiring world. How did John figure out how to alchemize all his sweet loot? By going and alchemizing that sweet loot and presenting his findings to us, leading to some funny text as well as images. Having trolls regurgitate information does not hold near the impact of running into the events themselves, really finding what you're up against. Did finding out about Denizen through text have near the impact of looking up at that first meteor crashing towards John? Does it hold that same kind of danger? What if he stumbled onto the beast itself, wouldnt that have conveyed so much more?
      • We would know very little about the Denizens in the first place without the benefit of the trolls' exposition. It's probably going to be a while before the battles with the Denizens come to the forefront at all, since they're meant to take place during the final leg of the kids' quests. In the meantime, we're learning bits and pieces about them and what the kids are in for via the trolls, Consorts, sprites, Future Dave and Rose's experience, etcetera, which in turn heightens the suspense leading up to the eventual reveal. John just stumbling into his Denizen would be a shock, sure, but it's not going to make as much of an impact as a confrontation with a tense, solid build up leading into it. And we know that John stumbling into his Denizen too soon is hazardous to his health, anyway.
      • At this point, it looks as if one or more of the kids may skip their Denizens entirely. They are fucking up their game to an unprecedented degree - and because the audience isn't any more clear on how the game is supposed to go than the kids are, we need the trolls to tell us what the kids are doing wrong. Sure, finding out about the denizen through a pesterlog was less dramatic than the meteor - because the stakes have been raised to the point that the denizen is less dramatic. John has bigger fish to fry. We needed the context of what he's probably going to end up skipping or going around to make the reveal of other things that much more epic. I mean, John can't beat his Disc One Final Boss at this point, and he's already having to worry about someone who's taken out the NPCs that were supposed to be the final boss?
    • It should be fairly obvious that the kids aren't going to be following the path prescribed to them by Sburb. It looks like the trolls did, though. The things they tell the kids (and us) amount basically to the way the game should have been played; the things that we aren't going to see.
      • This is the best explanation. If we didn't have the troll explanations of how everything works, we would have had no idea of how badly the green package falling into Jack's hands messed everything up. There's also the point that any conversation with them is hilarious, so I'm having trouble understanding why more troll is a problem.
    • There's a very good reason, story-wise, to leave the trolls' input as just Expospeak - to leave open the possibility that they are lying. I mean we already know that gC was feeding John bullshit, but we don't know about the rest.
    • The "rambling incoherency" of the chat logs is probably just emulating reality.
      • The explanation above about it being indicative of a flawed session is the most correct answer; ordinarily the player's sprites and consorts would have told the players stuff and they would've figured out the rest. However the Kids are Sequence Breaking the fuck out of their game
  • Is it just me or has Act 5 become painfully self-aware? It started innocuously enough here, which wasn't so bad because it was a decent joke. This update, however, seems almost to be mocking the readers. I realize Mr. Hussie wants to get through this act quickly, but isn't it better to simply dispose of the the expected order of the game rather than bring everything up only to subvert it for the sake of being snarkily self-aware? Maybe I'm the only one who finds it annoying, but I do.
    • Well, it's an act about the Trolls, so maybe it's deliberate trolling.
    • Act 5 is reading like a bad crib on Hussie's own writing style for me. Its not just that its self aware, its just kindve a sloppy and unnecessary hash.
      • Indeed, a recent development was oddly spoiled and then lampshaded in the panel with an "onomatopoeia" of "UNSURPRISING DEVELOPMENT". It does sound as if the narrator is just skimming over the past story, and it doesn't help that we now have no less than 12 characters to keep track of.
    • It's not so much a speed thing, as Andrew playing with the formula. To be honest, the Troll's storyline, were it to be told in a normal fashion, would be EXTREMELY similar to Act One, which is fairly dull. Andrew is doing all of this in order to provide the most character development, while keeping the story fun and engaging. The whole [??? S] thing was due to a change in the use of Flash from the beginning of the story. Originally, it was planned to complement the story via minigames and the like, but it has since moved to a largely cinematic role, used to provide climatic scenes with added depth. Andrew is pretty adamant about NOT doing another Strife interactive battle, simply because it eats ridiculous amounts of time that could be spent on a better flash or more static pages.
  • It may just be me, but the entirety of Act 5 bugs the hell out of me. The characters are mildly interesting at best and I find no connection with any of them. I could give a shit that Tavros is a paraplegic or that Aradia is dead. Also, Hussie seems to be trying harder than usual to use the most obscure vocabulary he can think of and its really annoying to have to look up twelve different words every five minutes.
    • I felt the same way about the Midnight Crew intermission. You can comfort yourself with the fact that Andrew updates so quickly that it will be over with soon, and you can read it all in one swoop.
    • Andrew said that this was meant to be a very fast intermission, probably half for that reason. But like Midnight Crew became important, the trolls' backstories are going to become important as they mingle more and more with the kids. Not everyone finds the trolls uninteresting because its filling in the gaps of what little we already got about them from the pesterlogs. Also, the obscure vocabulary is part of the 'atmosphere', I guess, that Andrew has set up for the trolls. They're different from humans, but their society is ridiculously convoluted and difficult. It's meant to be humorous - it's not the author's fault if you personally don't find it that amusing.

The deeper I've gone into involving the trolls in the story, the more it seems to me they were never an element I could really just shrug off in favor of focusing on "the real story". The process of going through their story has had an effect in showing the nature of the game that could never have been achieved without going down that road. Without it, I'd have to resort to a more mundane expository means of revealing the game's purpose. The Felt intermission, which certainly seemed tangential (and surely was) still served an important purpose by helping us invest in the villainous nature of Jack Noir. Without that, his future actions would have much less meaning. Similarly, the troll arc has served to more thoroughly "characterize" the entire purpose of the game, and give it much more meaning going forward. Furthermore, the troll story is inextricably entwined with the kids. Actions of the kids had influence over the way the troll adventure unfolded, and therefore the way their own universe was created (Rose's gamefaqs, the scratch they create, just to name what we know of). The kids' adventure is obviously heavily influenced by the trolls through direct communication, and therefore the trolls have a hand in causing the kids to do whatever it was they did to impact the troll's adventure, and so on. Willingly or not, they're all working toward the same outcome, toward creating our universe, and the universe the kids are trying to create, and whatever trouble puts all that in jeopardy. Remember that both the kids' and the trolls' chum handles are needed to make the full set of ACGT combinations. They are not two unrelated groups of players as they first appeared, nor are their universes unrelated. Sollux's shades, the ~ATH code, etc help illustrate this, that they are bifurcated, interwoven realities.

    • Um...what vocabulary issues have ever existed in Homestuck? I can't recall Hussie's choice of diction ever being awkward or even notably outside of the vernacular. Examples please?

CG: YOUR HATE'S TOO DULL FOR A PROPER KISMESIS, IN MY OPINION.
CG: AND I DON'T SEE ANYONE CHOMPING AT THE BIT TO BE YOUR MOIRAIL HONESTLY, UNLESS THERE'S SOMEONE OUT THERE WHO WOULD ACTUALLY BOTHER PITYING YOU.
CG: AND LANDING A MATESPRIT? HAHAHAHA!
CG: SERIOUSLY, LIKE THAT WOULD EVEN INTEREST YOU.
CG: BASICALLY ANY FEATURE OF YOUR EMOTIONAL PROFILE THAT USUALLY MAKES SOMEONE VIABLE IN THE REDROM DEPARTMENT MUST BE TOTALLY FRIED.
CG: YOUR BLACKROM POTENTIAL'S PROBABLY TOAST TOO.

      • "Kismesis" is implied to be the other member of a "black romance," or two people truly hating each other. "Moirallegiance," a term used earlier in the conversation, is implied to be a mysterious step beyond "mating fondness" (i.e. sex.) Thus, "moirail" may be assumed to be the sexual partner, romantically-inclined or not. A "matesprit" may be the other member of a "red romance," which is a confusing term given that trolls lack the capacity for love: only hate and pity (a toned-down version of hate.) This, I believe, is a brilliant example of the obfuscating nature of troll lingo AND culture that cements its status as "bafflingly unhuman."
        • Incorrect. "Matesprit" is the more sexual version; it even has its purpose (reproduction) right in the name. "Moirallegiance" is more platonic, though in some ways, it's a stronger bond.
        • Additionally, considering it's source, I'd take the whole "Troll's being incapable of love, only hate and pity" thing with a grain of salt; in all likelihood, Karkat was just being Karkat.
        • Alternatively, just sit back and wait, Andrew's working on explaining it. They ARE aliens after all.
  • Troll Intermission. I love the trolls, I love Alternia, I love Hivebent. But it's not why I read Homestuck. I read Homestuck, for HOMESTUCK, not three months of increasingly confusing romances, snarky references to how the plot "could've gone", not for oblique and confusing references to the Troll's true intentions and their planning, and (at current progression) three months without a sound update. I guess my problem is that it's different, not that it's a bad thing, but it's a different style from Homestuck, which is what I'm here to read.
    • The intermission is there to give us a better insight into the Trolls (since before all we really got was them being assholes to the main cast, as fun as that was) and will probably reveal some detail about the game. Most importantly, it will probably reveal where everything went wrong and why, which could have ramifications in the main story.
    • It's not an intermission. It's part of Act 5.
    • Word of God has stated, in response to a rather childish rant about Act 5 "ruining" Homestuck, that this is not a different story, it's the same universe, it's all canon, it's all background, and it's all important. You came to read Homestuck, okay. You ARE READING HOMESTUCK. You're just not reading about the kids right now. And you know what? I'm not in any hurry to get back to them. This change of perspective was good; it keeps the kids from getting stale and lets us return on a blank slate-- which is really good, because as of the EOA 4, everything is going to change.
  • Andrew has a way of revealing important information in the least descriptive way. The death of the Black Queen? How do you know she's dead? There was no corpse. Jack used that bunny thing? How did Sollux die? Oh, we are told in one sentence something that is never referred to again. Just all sorts of information that is brushed through far to fast.
    • There was no corpse? Judging from the explosion mark on the floor surrounded by chunks of clothing and blood...seems clear enough to me, killed with extreme prejudice and lots of firepower. It wasn't too important HOW she died, since the present had to continue being a secret a while longer. More important was that she had and Jack was getting her ring...
    • Sollux was killed by the Vast Glub, which was introduced a few dozen pages beforehand and plays a fairly critical role in Hivebent's plot. Without it, the off-planet trolls would presumably have resettled Alternia, making the Intermission impossible unless Slick and the other exiles somehow fought off every troll in the galaxy.
      • Technically they would have lost the Mother Grub in the meteor apocalpyse, meaning they would've been unable to reproduce anyway.
    • Important things will be foreshadowed and elaborated on. If it isn't than, it's not important despite what you may think.
      • Exactly, the BQ's death and Sollux's were relatively unimportant.
  • Why won't Vriska just go away already? She's not funny, she's not making me angry, she's just... annoying. Go away, Vriska.
    • Because that's the point of her character.
    • Being an annoying Mary Sue is her character. Andrew's writing her this way at this point partially to deliberately get a rise out of people and remind them that it's just a comic.
    • Some just find Vriska tired and worn out as a character, especially since [S] Wake shows how little character development she's had since her introduction. Luckily, the 2/9/11 update adds some much needed inner thoughts.
    • You got your wish. I hope you're happy.
      • Yes, very. Thanks for asking.
  • The killing of characters at such a huge degree. This is far beyond Anyone Can Die. The deaths of characters tend and should be considered meaningful and with purpose, not to promote shock value by their death and subsequent removal. We are supposed to feel for them, and yet they are stabbed and killed with little-if at all-focus or depth. So why is Hussie doing it? Is it to try and prove that in this instance we subvert the bad writing and reemphasize that Tropes Are Not Bad, when it has been shown that killing characters like this does in fact cause great backlash and lack of fufillment? Is it supposed to be indicative of the chaotic nature of the storyline, which I would more happily buy? Is it just to piss the readers off? That isn't a good way to keep us engaged, especially when death for shock value is wildly considered in poor taste.
    • I always thought about it as more realistic personally. People die, and they don't always die in some heroic or fulfilling way.
      • It's also about thinning the Cast Herd and providing more concentrated impact of story elements. It was also preplanned, and Hussie isn't done yet, so throwing around bad writing is kind of silly. Moreover most of the DEAD characters are still in the story! The only characters that have been killed off for real with no counterparts or ghosts hanging around can be counted on one hand. Bec, AR, Doc Scratch, Snowman, HB, and that's about it, excepting the rest of the Felt given they were pretty much personality-less mooks.
      • Yeah, I'm counting Tavros, Feferi, Equius, Nepeta and Vriska to that list. Dream Bubbles are the afterlife of the dead; they can't effect the original setting except in Sollux's case, which is extreme. They show multiple settings as to how, and why, things could have been different but didn't turn out that way because they still died. This wasn't an issue in Problem Sleuth, where death was a well-established joke and was Played for Laughs and actually a major component to the main plot because of it. Here, characters are dying left and right when we've developed emotional connections in order to strike a fierce blow to our psyche. It was done in Cry for Justice, it was done in Game of Thrones and its being done here, with the levity of a gentler series with sparks of darker subtext. Not to say that the level of dedication isn't high and I don't respect Hussie for it, but the writing really does seem to be on the wall.
      • But they're still in the story, ie, not dead and gone, which was specifically mentioned as "ghosts" above. Moreover a few of them at least, like Tavros and Vriska, seem happier in dreambubbles than they ever were in their sessions, and they're absolutely still relevant to the story, in a Spirit Advisor sense. And most of them were minor characters to begin with; Nepeta in particular had about only 6 appearances to her name before she was killed off, and Eridan, Feferi, and Equius were similar. Keep in mind too that most of those characters were introduced less than a year before their deaths and never had a huge impact on the story besides helping advance the plot. Just because you had a strong emotional connection to them and are upset by their deaths doesn't mean the writing of the series is bad either, especially when their deaths were preplanned (Word of God says that they were planned to die from their introduction, particularly Vriska) and calculated to showcase the stakes of Sburb.
  • Wow, and to be honest, I was very concerned about how John was going to stack up compared the God Tiered allies of his own former session, and I still am in terms of his basic power compared to theirs....but Jake's situation blows the others straight out of the water...and Roxy's. and Jane's. Dirk has just completely changed everything with a simple act on Derse. They now have an inborn threat which has just killed one of their earliest sub-bosses..without even entering the session yet! The others don't even come anywhere near that level of capability, or ever will. If this is just some way to show that homosexual Badass can exist, Hussie proved his point. And that Jake's capabilities amount to less than nothing. That doesn't settle right with me.
    • We already knew Kanaya was a badass, so it's not just Positive Discrimination. Think of it more like this; Jake and the others are certainly badass, but Dirk is simply the most badass. It seems to be a bit of a trait of Princes, as Eridan too was by far the most combat capable of the Trolls before entering. Also, the Brobot does some things that Dirk naturally won't be able to, like flight or summoning multiple arms. Dirk's machinations on Derse though are just his particular manifestation of badass, and don't forget Jade was just as active on Prospit!
      • Yeah, I hear you. I'm just thinking that we might be dealing with either a character bias like with Tavros' death due to Fan Backlash like before, only in reverse; Dirk is so good and so capable that the others will always fall short by comparison. Lets be fair; Guardian Dirk cleaved a COMET the size of a small city. In half. The best Guardian Roxy and Jake did was kill high-level monsters in single blows. Also that because of their lack of skill compared-while still having it, I don't deny that-that their presence might be questioned in terms of overall importance. Remember, unlike any other player, Dirk CAN be in two places at once.
      • The fandom isn't so shallow minded that they'll throw a fit when one character is stronger than others, or at least the vast majority won't. There's always the Unpleasable Fanbase elements but they're not the majority. Besides, we already know Roxy and Jane have been up to their own forms of badass actions. Look at it this way perhaps; Dirk as an active class is a more martially gifted Badass. But that doesn't mean that his teammates are any less badass, just a different flavor of it. Sure Dirk might be able to cleave a meteor, but can he stop time? Black out a session? Organize his friends as a leader and yet still be a good friend to them? Probably not!
      • If Dirk is anything like Dave, he'll have awesome martial prowess but end up falling victim to his own insecurities and self doubt. How the original four kids balanced each other out is a great part of Homestuck and hopefully that'll be continued into the next four. Dirk is like the Fighter in the An Adventurer Is You trope; strong in his own right, but lacking the skills to meet all the challenges that will befall him.
  • I'm more than a little confused about Aranea and what Hussie is trying to say here; is he trying to justify all the killing and all the good people or redeeming people-with all their actions or inaction as part of a larger whole greater than themselves because the ends justify the means in playing this game-that everyone is used as a tool or method to reach the overall goal? That's incredibly terse and disrespectful to those that have died for nothing and did nothing. Many of those who are now killed mattered just the same. In their universe, they were more than just children we saw through the picture or narrative constructs used to bring about shock value. They were young trolls and humans that mattered to the other humans and the other trolls.
    • It's more along these lines. While people can genuinely have free will and chose to be good or redeem themselves, the Alpha Timeline needs them to be assholes and for them to die. They can exhibit all the free will and choices they want, but it simply isn't what their fate is. Just for example, could Vriska redeem herself, become a genuine hero, and be happy? Yes she could have. But she needed to die because then otherwise the Trolls would never have made it to the Green Sun, where Dave and Rose needed a ride, because they're needed in the Alpha Session, etc. Everyone is not a "tool", because there's no greater power orchestrating these events with a sense of emotions; individuals are more akin to cells in you, or cogs in a clock. Events have to unfold the way they do for reality to continue. Of course the individuals have significance, but just as you are not cognizant of the deaths of individual cells in your body, neither are the deaths of a handful of trolls all that important to Paradox Space.
      • Ah, that makes sense-making troll and human death a part of the grand scheme. Still, there is a small, niggling concern: How are they significant if they die for no purpose? Tavros was killed and didn't do anything, as did Nepeta. One of the biggest victims of this is Feferi because of the shock value of her death in-and-out of the narrative. Also, those who did die were those of a strong moral stance and gentleness in both trolls and humans. Is that to say that a caring and good person-like John, who has died twice, three times if we're considering known doomed timelines yet our of luck still manages to survive-has no place except as a means to pump the blood, as it were? Is that to say that those who murder indiscriminately in amoral reasons are more deserving as those who keep the blood flowing? I imagine many people want to see Gamzee dead for what he's done, and he's still alive.
      • Again, morality doesn't enter into it. They simply were fated to die. We as individuals can feel strongly for them, but to mangle a idiom, Paradox Space works in mysterious ways. If Nepeta, Tavros, and Feferi, three kindly trolls, had to die so that billions of trolls could exist in the future, is that right? Paradox Space sees the big picture. Gamzee however isn't exactly getting off scot-free. Kanaya wants to kill him and only Karkat is defending him. Moreover people aren't simply defined by the fact that Paradox Space uses them and decides their fates. They still have emotions, are their own individuals, and their actions and words matter; even Aranea busy being a fatalist points out the importance of Terezi getting closure with Vriska. They're just on a scheduled path through life. Out of verse though, Paradox Space might simply be a lampshading of the fact that as a fictional story, the characters naturally have no free will, beyond little unexpected variations that spontaneously spring up, major plot events are fixed.
      • Keep in mind too that the exposition Aranea gave should be taken with a grain of salt, as it's flavored with her own opinion. It's highly possible that Hussie decided to have the theme finally directly, heavily addressed in comic because the characters are outright going to defy it and break free from Paradox Space. You Can't Fight Fate has been a theme of the comic since Act 3 at least, though up until Aranea it had never been directly addressed beyond a few loose comments of Rose's, so it may become a major theme of the comic after having bubbled under the surface for years.
      • The big point of this comes down to a possible loopholed excuse for characters being Stuffed in The Fridge or allowing the death for shock value that Hussie has allowed to be glossed over by the fans. Even if there is a reason for their death and they mean to die because it has to work this way, you're still killing someone to enhance another person's plot or to get a rise out of the audience.
      • Some characters are just plain unimportant to the plot despite being an Ensemble Darkhorse, and all of the Trolls who died (excepting Vriska) were basically static characters with little Character Development. That's not bad writing though, even if you disagree with it.
      • Yeah, and they didn't have to be. Hussie specifically chose to make them that way. Enhancing another character's plot by death and removal of other characters when they are supposed to matter on some level is when they are Stuffed in The Fridge. Hussie just found a loophole to get out of experiencing the normal flak for it.
      • Tropes Are Not Bad. Hussie didn't find a "loophole" to avoid "the normal flak"; Stuffed in The Fridge's Trope Namer had some backlash to it but the trope itself has been used for ages, and he clearly didn't escape any sort of fandom complaints, as people threw massive fits when these characters died. Most people have simply calmed down since the characters died over a year ago (save Vriska and the handful of characters that have died since) and are still in the comic as ghosts anyways.
  • So, Lord English is unkillable. Yeah, he's an opponent who can be defeated, but not killed and prevented from causing further death and harm. So theoretically, there's no way to stop him ever. Yeah, time to turn the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism back towards the right, first...there we go. Now, he is the ultimate evil and he can't die. Heroes can't really win now, can they? Destroying him permanently was the ultimate objective in all this and allow for universes to be birthed afterwards. Defeating him sounds like a lost cause when it just means he's still around, so why?
    • You're misunderstanding things. Universes are still birthed, but he's summoned into them in order to doom them. Our heroes are going to be the first ones ever to DEFEAT him, and keep him from consuming their universe, and he effectively only has one shot per universe since he's summoned at the end of that universe's timeline. Not only does this mean they won't have to deal with him a second time, but it will also demonstrate that he is DEFEATABLE, and that the POSSIBILITY to destroy him exists. Other heroes may beat him down the line, but it's not the job of our heroes.
    • LE is also still very nebulous, and very well could be necessary. After all, the story is a Coming of Age Story and what better way to reinforce maturity than by accepting death as necessary? LE also is probably not the final antagonist; as Vriska, Rose, and Aranea have subtly been hinting at the final antagonist is probably going to be Paradox Space (ie, Fate) itself.
      • Assuming LE isn't some sort of personification for Fate, which is highly likely.
        • Yeah, you realize how much how much demonstration matters, right? Next to nothing if he isn't killed in the process and allows the universe to be created. He has to be stopped in order to be defeated. Arenea is essentially saying that the players don't matter because while even though they are fated to quote-on-quote 'stop' Lord English, they aren't fated to succeed. Heroes should succeed..and they shouldn't be made to nothing like so many before them. Apparently Jake isn't going to kill him, which means the threat is still there. Hell, Meenah started this whole thing and killed all of them. If anything, she's a main antagonist who should be wiped from existence.
          • You're seriously babbling on in such a way that you're using your own hypothesises to back up further points. It's incoherent and unconvincing. The fact of the matter is that the heroes are going to succeed, and they're going to stop Lord English enough as to foil his plans for their universe, giving hope to future Sessions. You know how much demonstration has mattered? A LOT, thanks to Rose's GameFAQs walkthrough. As for Meenah, she's not an antagonist. She did what she did to preserve the consciousnesses of her and her friends. Otherwise they'd of been erased utterly. They couldn't succeed, so between being ghosts and not being ANYTHING AT ALL, she opted for the better option.
          • And again; Lord English as we understand him seems to be integral to the process of Sburb anyways. Judging how the story is going to turn out at this stage with such a nebulous and mysterious character as Lord English is a bit hasty. Let's just calm down and see where it goes.
  • We already know what the Handmaid looked like as a kid, so why did Hussie leave her pre-Scratch incarnation silhouetted in these updates? Apart from her horns and her outfit, there is no potential surprise to spoil.
    • Because she could look different, pre-Scratch.
    • There's not much of a reason why she should look different. She's still biologically the same person in both incarnations, and Grandpa/Jake and Nanna/Jane have already set a precedent for consistent appearances across the Scratch.
    • Her outfit however is likely completely different!

Open


Fandom

Resolved

  • Why does everyone assume Tavros is unpopular with his peers? From the trolls we've seen interact with him so far, he and Gamzee appear to be good friends, pre-accident Aradia liked him, Nepeta still does, gA is protective of him, Karkat's had a single angry outburst at him (so like with everyone else, so it's too early to tell), and even cT, while showing some disdain for his class, is ultimately willing to help get him new legs. The only troll to actually react negatively to him so far is arachnidsGrip. So far he's coming out as the most universally beloved troll ever.
    • That's confused me too. Okay, Karkat's response to his report on the accident that paralyzed him was nasty even for Karkat, but when I read that page I assumed Karkat didn't even realize Tavros was serious, and probably thought he was giving him an unwanted update on his roleplaying character. I'd do the same thing (with a less jerkassy response) if a friend sent me a message like that.
      • Karkat later explains that some of the Trolls look down on Tavros because he's more or less incapable of hate. Even towards Vriska, he only really has dislike. Some of the trolls don't care about this, like Gamzee, but to the others he is more like a child than anything else.
  • I really hate how the whole fandom is now just spamming aG hate everywhere to a ludicrous degree. Even on this very wiki, even in places where it doesn't fit; the Homestuck WMG page has pretty quickly turned into a forum for fantasizing about the mutiliation of a fictional 13 year old girl. Good ol' Jackspers murders an army and an entire planet, with a main character's dream self as collateral damage, and he gets a shrug. She pushes one dork who believes in fairies off a cliff and suddenly she's the worst Complete Monster who ever lived. I'm just saying, it's pretty crazy. Let's not forget that she has all the levels. All of them. Yeah!!!!!!!!
    • Essentially: Jack is the new Big Bad. He's doing what's expected of him. Vriska attacked someone who considers her a friend during a friendly game, in an incredibly mean and disturbing way. It tends to elicit anger. But look at it this way: if Andrew Hussie manages to make her sympathetic, it'll be just another demonstration of his skills.
      • And he does appear to be doing that. Turns out she is being manipulated as much as she manipulates others...
    • Part of it is probably also the uncertainty. Both Jack Noir and Vriska Serket are Complete Monsters who will have to die at some point. But Jack being the Big Bad, that basically tells us how it's gonna go down with him; a heroic figure will strike him down. Heroically. Or else he'll inflict some sort of Karmic Death on himself, which if the trolls were telling the truth about the kids losing (as it's been mentioned they might not be) is the more likely option. It's hard to be all that upset about this, because you know he's going to die and you know it's going to be satisfying to SEE him die. Vriska, meanwhile, is sort of a Designated Hero, and in some respects even a bit of a Woobie. She did things that in some ways were far more repulsive than Jack's deeds, but on a much, much smaller scale. We don't know what her ultimate comeuppance will be or whether or not we'll enjoy it when it happens, so we mostly just hope she dies horribly and it's fun to watch.
      • She did. It was. (And she happens to be this troper's favorite character.)
    • She's a Base Breaker, which makes it pretty much par for the course that her Hatedom is going to be more vocal than the people who enjoy her or sympathize with her as a character. Also, I apologize for my WMG predicting how she was going to loose her eyes and limb in that it came off more nasty than I intended. I can't speak for the others, but I really don't fantasize about the mutilation of fictional thirteen-year-olds and believe she needs love before hate.
      • And to be fair, it seems to be dying down a bit. It's still up to the fan to judge whether or not Vriska enjoys her actions or is only trying to keep herself alive, but given Andrew's skill in characterization, just wait. The same fans who called for her death will be cheering support for her.
        • She chose to manipulate her way through fate so she could become the one responsible for bestowing Jack's latest powers onto him, just to dramatize Jack's death which she believes will be in her hands. So yeah, I'm guessing she does enjoy it at least to some degree.
          • And I'm not even mentioning how she also manipulated Tavros into the last fight he'll ever have for no survival-related reasons. At this point, its entirely reasonable to take her as the most Jerkass Complete Monster ever.
          • As always....YMMV. The whole part where she was begging Tavros to kill her so she wouldn't painfully bleed to death could almost be taken as an apology to Tavros. And that black-quadranted tinted olive branch STILL didn't take due to his complete lack of hate. So, along with the harsh rejection of her red leanings towards him, he pretty much broke her heart in no less than 2 quadrants. I consider Tavros and Vriska to be EQUALLY screwed up and equally at fault, as far as troll emotions go. Heck, they even had a mirrored moments of "I feel angry now" and "I feel regret now" where they both took a slight step back from their extremes.
      • As of the future she's not really that bad, and she's more of a flawed character with a lot of problems than someone who can be hated blatantly.
  • How is it that so many people seem to be under the impression this series is called "Homestruck"? The characters are stuck at home. That means they are homestuck. No one is being hit with their house. No homestriking occurs. No one is homestruck. How?
    • Well, the homes are struck by meteors... but, really, isn't misreading a reason good enough?
      • And on a similar note, it's NOT "GhostlyTrickster". It's "GhostyTrickster". No "l".
    • One of the more plausible explanations is that some of the people making those mistakes are either reading too fast or not paying attention. This editor, for one, only got to spelling Karkat's name properly about a month ago, among other errors.
    • Same reason people keep referring to Xyklon and Hayley.
  • "TG: rose is crazy jades crazier". Why do people take this line to mean they both literally went insane? It's just Dave being Dave as usual.
    • In retrospect, how would you have reacted to Cthulhu watching you in your dreams? Add to the fact Jade's narcoleptic, and thus can't really control her sleeping, and you see why people would have thought that. Not to mention, most people think tat Rose's Thorns of Oglogoth aren't helping her in the sanity department.
      • They've gone through worse and reacted even less, plus the amount of pages it took for Jade to recover can be counted on one hand. No one is going to go insane because HS is not nearly as dark and edgy as people like to think.
        • Think again. Not only is Homestuck ripe with a twisted, Squiddles-incorporating version of Nightmare Fuel, but Word of God claims to have deliberately changed Rose's recent behaviour to reflect her regular interactions with the Noble Circle.
          • Accidental?
    • I'm not certain that any of the players in either session ever really qualified as sane in the first place, and both human girls are now likely to be getting regular doses of horrorterror exposure - Rose intentionally seeks them out for advice, and unless Jade's narcolepsy clears up really quickly, she won't be able to control her exposure to Things Man Was Not Meant to Know. Sure, she's shaken off her first nightmare, but there's probably going to be more in the future. Even if she doesn't go "blowing things up for no reason" crazy like Rose seems to be, how long is she going to stay functional?

"[Vriska] brags about the ways she has manipulated events on their timeline so far, by practicing her abilities on Jade repeatedly, causing her to fall asleep frequently."

      • Dave was just being Dave, but yes both of the girls are mentally unstable. Of course, Dave is actually just as if not more mentally unstable from the death of his Bro.
  • Why does everyone assume there's no reason that Hussie wore Kanaya's shirt and only remark it was "a troll girl's shirt"? Hussie outright stated on Formspring that his astrological sign is Virgo, thus the reason for wearing Kanaya's shirt - her symbol is Virgo.
    • It's Homestuck. Looking for symbols and signs everywhere has become par for the course. It makes Lost look like Barney and Friends.
  • How come so many people are asking all these questions in here which they can learn in the Wiki? I don't mind being helpful, but it seems pretty self-impeding to me.
    • The Wiki isn't really that good.
  • If trolls are all bisexual, why is Kanaya considered by the fanbase to be homosexual? Vriskasexual, maybe, but given that this is the same fanbase that regularly writes Slashfic about trolls who've only had opposite sex matesprits, why doesn't it go the other way? And why are people assuming Kanaya's death is saying something about homosexuality when all of the trolls are bi? Or am I just looking to hard into the usual fandom double-standards?
    • Basically, while most trolls are bisexual, being attracted to both genders (or at least open to romantic relationships with other trolls of the same gender), Kanaya is homosexual because she is exclusively attracted other females, and because, quite frankly, Hussie said it flat out on his forumspring.
      • There's a subset of the fandom now that considers Kanaya bisexual because Andrew has never made anything backing up that Word of God in canon, and numerous Formspring answers have been misleading and/or direct falsehoods.
    • Hasn't it been hinted that she has a crush on Rose, too?
      • Not really. There's been Ship Tease but Kanaya also cares about a lot of people platonically in the same fashion that she does for Rose, so it's hard to say one way or the other. Regardless, in canon it seems that even if Kanaya does have a crush on her, Rose does not reciprocate, given that she has a tendency to be rather sharp and chiding to Kanaya. Or they could just be friends.
    • Word of God is that Kanaya prefers girls, but in troll society, that's the same as preferring blondes is for humans. When bisexuality is the norm, homosexuality becomes a narrowing of preferences and not an alternative to the "norm," so its the kind of thing that doesn't really have term attached, just like we don't have "blondesexuals."
  • This is more towards the fandom, but still. Why is it that fanart of Gamzee (in both sopor and sober mode) almost always features him with dark gray skin and white make-up? In canon (give or take a few panels) his skin tone (judging by his arms) is the same as the other trolls, it's just that his face is entirely covered in two different shades of make-up.
    • Mostly because of the scene where he shot Equius, where his skin was black.
  • In connection with the above, why is it that fanart of Aradia often (at first I assumed it was just a fetish for a select few artists, but now it seems to be cropping up even in group pictures) portrays her as fat or at least overweight? Her canon form looks pretty thin, maybe not Vriska-thin, but normal thin anyway.
    • Just a couple of shot-in-the-dark guesses, from someone who draws her as skinny as any of the other trolls - desire to make her appear more vital, in comparison to those early pages of angular ghost Aradia? Subconscious association of low social class with inferior diet, which in modern western society means lots of fats and sugars and often leads to weight gain?
      • Hm, I think the second theory (while true) is a bit too complex for so many artists to have simultaneously used, but the first idea makes sense to me, thanks!
    • This is more of a weird fan-art thing more than anything from what I've seen, as several characters have lots of fanart that depicts them as overweight/fat. Vriska gets the treatment quite a bit (probably due to a Running Gag started on Hussie's old Formspring) and so does Feferi. So chalk it up to Weird Fandom Shit, I guess.
    • Partially also because her robotic body has some curves to it, as much as a hunk of metal can. She, like Feferi, is also more feminine than some of the other trolls.
    • It's not a fetish thing; some people just wish there was more variation in body types in the comic. Aradia's just a popular candidate for whatever reason.
  • Does anybody but me have a really hard time accepting that BRO MUST BE AT LEAST THIRTY-ONE?!
    • You know, assuming he still has to legally be at least 18 to adopt Dave.
      • You're assuming that he legally adopted Dave at all. Or that he didn't find some way to forge adoption papers. Either way, people of age thirty+ can still be pretty fit, all things considered.
      • He most likely never adopted Dave legally, considering how illegal most of his parenting seemed to be.
      • He does have full sideburns by the time he finds Dave, so at the barest reasonable minimum he had to be 14 or 15. There's not really that much of a difference between 27 and 31 anyways.
      • Theory: All of the adults were the original bearers and masters of the kids' elements. Dad used his Breath powers to imitate having super strength. Bec can teleport. Bro looks young because he uses his Time powers to never age. Only Mom hasn't expressed any Light powers, possibly because she has resorted to using alcohol to suppress the visions of horrorterrors that Rose is currently dealing with. This also explains Bro's persistence with viewing 90s things to be cool--his view of what's cool is several years outdated.
        • I like the theory, except Dad and Bec aren't related to the kids. Nanna and Grandpa Harley would have to have the wind and teleport powers.
          • The theory breaks down upon the revelation that the post-scratch kids have completely different elements.
          • They don't have to LITERALLY be related, just to be their guardians, as the guardians clearly have a large role and correspond to the kids in some way.
          • Add to that, Dad is related to John (and Jade); he is their half-brother.
            • This is probably untrue of the kid's session how ever it is exactly the case of the troll session.
            • It is untrue. If anything Bro would display minor Heart powers.
    • No. I mean why? 'Cause he wears a t-shirt, cap, and glasses?
      • It's because people legally need to be 18 to adopt, and even then that's in extreme cases. He does have full sideburns too, so he's at least in his late twenties, and could be as much as into his early forties
  • A bit more of a fanfiction gripe than anything, but I take issue with the use of the word "cull." In looking up the definitions, most involve selecting something, and occasionally selecting and then removing something inferior (from a herd for instance), and one of the definitions I found involved killing said selected members. It makes sense in the context of the comic in which it's used, but why is it that fanfiction authors treat it as a synonym for "kill," removing the selective context entirely?
    • It's overused, but Trolls could possibly use it as a euphemism for other kinds of death/killing.
    • It's specifically used in the context of trolls to describe the Empress or other leaders killing off trolls, so chalk it up to bad fanfic writers.


  • The whole emphasis on how Troll Romance is completely totally 100% different from human relationships and puny humans cannot understand its true depths, baffles me a little, considering that humans already have equivalents to everything:
    • Matesprit = True Love
    • Moirail = Friends whose excesses cancel each other's out, leading to a balanced whole. (Red Oni, Blue Oni)
    • Auspitice = Mediator between two antagonistic parties. (If you've ever tried to keep two of your friends from fighting, you're an Auspitice!)
    • Kismesis = Foe Yay
      • It's meant to be an extreme. Foe Yay is not Kismesis, that's just the closest concept we have to it. To them it's literally romance on par with human love, for us that's something that's usually pretty messed up and unhealthy. Likewise; nobody would consider Moirails or Auspitices in human romance to be on par with love. And your concepts for them are off still too; moirail specificially and only means Morality Chain, while Asupitices only apply to keeping two other trolls out of Kismesisitude (which of course doesn't exist for humans). Naturally humans have equivalents; Homestuck is written by a human, of course human sexuality is in there. But again, it's meant to be a comedic extreme and you shouldn't read too much into it.
    • Yes, these things are like troll romance, but consider a few things:
      • These are committed, romantic relationships. Imagine you're with your flushed lover and s/he has a mental breakdown. A human would just calm them down, but a troll who's flushed with the other troll calming that person down probably just made them cheat on their moirail... if your flushed partner doesn't freak out that you just knocked you both out of the flushed quadrant. (A human would think nothing of "switching back" even if it's not considered cheating, but would a troll really do so?) Remember that Feferi hinted that you can only be in one quadrant with someone (you probably CAN be in more than one quadrant with someone, it's probably considered "wrong" the way a lot of monogamous people take monogamy for granted), otherwise she wouldn't have worried about Eridan invalidating her flushed relationship with Sollux by being forced to mediate between the two.
      • Likewise, when a human mediates between two bickering friends, it's not a committed relationship, it's annoying and you probably fight with the two people telling them to get a grip. If a troll told their auspits (sp?) to get a grip and they actually listened, they probably just sabotaged their own relationship with them, or may even be considered to have just dumped them. Not to mention, again, it's a committed relationship - what happens if they break into a brawl when you're not around, miraculously don't become kismets (sp? Not sure of the right nouns involved here), and someone *else* steps in to mediate? Are they considered to be cheating on you too?
      • This is sort of a headscratcher of my own as well as another point: the comic said that some pairs bounce between Matesprit and Kismesis. What happens if your relationship with your Matesprit is stable, can you also have a Kismesis? Is that considered cheating? What happens if you have a Kismesis, you're in an Auspitice with another two people, and you start fighting with yet another person? Are you considered a troll slut if you do so? If someone's Moirail dies, is it as inappropriate to a troll to calm them down as it is for us to sleep with someone who's mourning their partner who died yesterday? Remember, humans take these things platonically, but for trolls these are *romances*.
      • Presumably, when a matesprite romance flips to a kismesis one, the opposite romance flips too, or those trolls wait until they're older and more mature to have more stable relationships.
      • As I understand it "having a fight" isn't necessarily Kismesitude, since trolls are an angry race and get into arguments with each other all the time. The main point of Auspiticeship is to prevent lesser fueds becoming "black infidelity". Which might suggest that the concilitory relationships aren't considered "exclusive", although the concupiscent ones are. And yes, when a relationship keeps flipping from matespriteship to kismesistude, this results in "both red and black infidelities".
    • The introduction to troll romance specifically says:

There are many parallels between human relationships and the various facets of troll romance. Humans have words to describe relationships of a negative nature, or of a platonic nature. The difference is, for humans, those relationships would never be conceptually grouped with romance. Establishing those sort of relationships for humans is not driven by the same primal forces that drive our tendency to couple romantically. But for trolls, those primal forces involve themselves in the full palette of these relationships, red or black, torrid or friendly. Trolls typically feel strongly compelled to find balance in each quadrant, and seek gratifying relationships that each describes.

  • A bit of a shipping issue, I guess, but what's the deal with the Double Standard surrounding changing/playing with Kanaya and John's sexuality? I've seen the Double Standard in both directions. Either someone complains that it's not right to ship Kanaya with guys but then goes off and ships John with guys, or someone complains it's not right to ship John with guys and then goes off and ships Kanaya with guys. I'm personally for shipping Kanaya and John with anybody you want. Kanaya/girl, Kanaya/guy, John/girl, John/guy. But isn't it blatant hypocrisy when people think it's fine to ship one of them with a guy but it's an absolute no-no to ship the other with a guy?
    • Not exactly. John is a guy yes, but Kanaya is a girl, therefore would be hypocrisy if someone ships John with another guy if they don't allow the possibility of Kanaya being shipped with another girl, or vice versa. However, the Double Standard also is played with in the fandom with the same reasoning, if John can be shipped with another guy, why can't Kanaya be shipped with a girl.
    • It's more a case of Unfortunate Implications. Trying to make gay people straight is not only psychologically harmful, but something that still happens with alarming regularity in Real Life. Any attempt to justify or perpetuate that, even if just in fanfic, is often seen as a threat to queer people's right to their sexuality on a broader social scale because that is exactly how it's been used. Lesbians especially have had a hard time getting their orientation to be seen as legitimate and not a performance for men. Straight people on the other hand, especially straight guys, have not had this problem. In fact, gay panic is still seen in some courts as a justifiable reason to murder gay and transgender people. Writing a straight character as queer doesn't have quite the same social baggage given the prevalence of gay people who stay in the closet or try to pass for straight, and the prevailing attitude of straight as the default - or straight until proven guilty.
      • That does not mean straight people's orientations should not be respected of course, but simply that it's not as widespread and a social issue. In a perfect world yes, shipping either with a guy would be seen as equally wrong, but people have hang ups and cultural interpretations that play into sexuality heavily.
      • As a counterpoint however; shipping Kanaya with a guy isn't really queer erasure, since her lesbianism caries about as much weight as a preference for blondes in humans, and there's no real indication that she wouldn't make exceptions for the right troll, or that her preferences might change when she gets older. Point ultimately is that applying human hangups to trolls doesn't really work. In a manner of speaking, Kanaya really isn't even a lesbian, because Trolls don't even have terms for monosexuality and it's basically meaningless in their society. It's debatable whether Kanaya's sexuality deserves respect and treatment equal to that of a human's, or if because of Troll Culture it is simply a minor thing that isn't that important. What doesn't help is that there is no indication in canon that she is a lesbian; the only confirmation is from Word of God, and Andrew is a Teasing Creator. However we can all agree that pairing John with a guy does disrepect his chosen sexuality, but again there's no indication that he might not change his preferences, and it's frustrating to canon purists and somewhat resonate of Unfortunate Implications, but is ultimately mostly harmless.
        • The problem that comes now though, is that Dirk is going to be treated in the exact same way. Already at the beginning being a Badass Gay (and of course, being the younger Bro Strider, outstripping every other character simply by his existance which is unfair, by the way), everyone is going to go nuts over him and completely ignore the strong and consistent heterosexual relationships which are present. Such as and inculding John/Rose which is already hitting quite the canon as is, John/Vriska which only really works because John honestly believes she's a good person without taking any real objectivity into what happened to him, and Jade/Dave, which is really strong since they don't seem to have that strong a connection with trolls outside a friendly or familial relationship. Personally being someone who thinks John identification as straight should be respected, Dirk and the Fan Dumb are going to have a field day, and I'm not going to enjoy it.
      • One point I'll have to say; it's rare to find a 13-year-old who is that clear-cut about their sexuality. Hell, I'm older than that and even I haven't figured myself out yet.
  • Why do people say that an Ophiuchus troll would have to be a blue-blood, because it's between Scorpio (Vriska) and Sagittarius (Equius)? By that logic, Karkat's blood color would have to be some shade of green-yellow because Cancer is between Gemini (Sollux) and Leo (Nepeta).
    • Related, in bloodswaps, why do some people think "if you swap the blood color, you have to swap the sign too"? You're already saying, "In this universe, Equius has yellow blood!" or whatever, is it that much of a stretch to also say "In this universe, Sagittarius is a sign for yellow-bloods!"?
    • Chalk it up to A Us being odd. Also we don't even know that UU is a troll.
    • Also: Hussie has said Karkat's blood in place of the normal heirarchy would be lime, but he hid it because it was actually red.
  • Why does the fandom think that the Alpha children and the Beta Guardians have the same personalities and lifestyles? Yes, they were made from the same genetic slime, but it doesn't mean they lead the exact same lives. I'm pretty sure Nanna did not inherit the empire like Jane did or Bro knew Grandpa like Dirk knew Jake. I mean, they were raised in different environments, so it kind of confused me how they would remain exactly the same after the Scratch.
    • Fandom can be pretty dumb. The way to look at it is the Beta Guardians were what the Alpha Kids could have been, had they grown up in the same situation. Of course they're similar, but no they're not identical. Such a blanket statement about the fandom though isn't exactly true. That might be a thing in some subsets, but probably not universal.
    • From what we've seen, the older iterations of each character show the same interests and proclivities as their younger selves. Dirk with puppets, irony, & weird porn. Roxy with alcohol, science, cats, and pink things. Jane with baking and jokes. Jake with action movie heroics. Dave with Sweet Bro & Hella Jeff. John with comedy and pranks. Rose with wizards and dark occultism. Jade with weird science & quasi-survivalist advice for Jake. Obviously, there are differences, but Homestuck is a story of strong character motifs and one of predestination. Certainly, other than Jane's & Nanna's differing exposure to the Batterwitch and differing tech/wealth levels, nothing else has shown any solid inconsistency between younger and older counterparts. I mean, even with two completely different sets of biological parents, Jane & John's Dads are almost the same, differing only by their respective kids' interests.
    • To be fair, the way in which they're all related and were generated might not really allow for much genetic variation... Or there might also be something stranger going on. It might be a product of how the game operates and how a scratch works, it's specifically said that all the same people live in the rebooted universe, only perhaps under different influences and circumstances, it's just the guardians and the kids switch places in history.
  • On the character page, Sollux is said to only use two-letter nicknames for his friends that have duplicate letters in their names. In the fandom, it's always treated as something that applies to everyone. Which one is more right?
    • The first. Eridan is the one who nicknames everyone regardless of name. What could Sollux even call John or Nepeta? JJ and NN?
      • The way a lot of fanfic does it, Nepeta at least would be NP. John - or any other human - I'm not too sure about.
    • Having gone back through Sollux's pesterlogs, he only ever gives one two-letter nickname that isn't double letters, to terezi early on (TZ). This has seemingly been changed since then (though not retconned) by having her refer to her as terezii from then on. Note that this happened before the quirk was cemented, and he had also later referred to karkat as karkat instead of kk.
      • Along those lines, Gamzee's quirk changed from his earliest pesterlogs to later ones, as iNiTiAlLy It Di Sr Eg Ar De D sPaCeS in deciding whether soemthing was capitalized or not, however, lAtEr oN iT dOeS
  • Why does everyone think that their patron troll must be the one who's sign corresponds with their own? That wasn't the case for the pre-scratch kids. All four of them were born in December with the Exception of John who was born in April. By fandom logic, their patron trolls should be Equius and Aradia.
    • Simple inertia more than anything else. It was a simple and easy to understand method (if misguided) initially and not doing it now is more odd than clever. Besides the comic would have had to do some clever things anyways, but in real life people are born in all 12 signs.

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Misc.

Resolved

  • Where the hell does Hussie find time to sleep? He updates more often than anyone in the history of webcomics. That’s some damn dedication.
    • Most of the time he stays up late and sleeps during the day, and goes out in the evening if/when he does.
  • As the opening song for Alternia Bound (Arisen Anew) is linked to Vocaloid, could someone tell me which vocaloid? The voice that did the Doctor Who quote might've been a clip from the Who series.
    • Pretty sure the Vocaloid singing in Arisen Anew is Luka Megurine. The clip from Dr. Who is a straight rip from the episode yep.
  • Why use "Savior of the Dreaming Dead" for Jade's ascension? It's a remix of "Doctor" via "Savior of the Waking World" which is John's theme. Unless "Doctor" is going straight into Bootstrapped Theme territory...
    • I think "Savior of the Waking World" was Awesome enough to merit a redefinition of what the "Doctor" theme meant, changing it from being a motif for LOWAS to being a motif for god tier. It's the same explanation I'd give for "Terezi Owns". That said, I did find the theme's use jarring the first time I listened to it. You're right to call it bootstrapped.
  • Gamzee often says Motherfucking. What would that even mean to a troll?
    • Either Translation Convention, he picked it up while trolling our universe, or something to do with the way they mix genetic material prior to putting it in the pail.
    • Could be a troll that tries to have sex with the Mother Grub directly.
      • It's probably just Translation Convention. "Motherfucking" is rarely used in the context of actually fucking a mother, and is more often used as just a stronger version of the word fucking.
  • Okay so... What is up with John and Jade's last names? All of the human kids besides them have four letters in their first names and seven letters in their last names. All of the trolls have six letters in both their first and last names. John and Jade, however, have four letters in their first name and six letters in their second name. Seriously, what is up with this? It seems too deliberate to be a coincidence.
    • Andrew has said multiple times that it is in fact coincidence. John was simply the first named, long before Andrew thought to keep up any sort of pattern. When Rose and Dave's names differed, he took care to make sure Jade's name had 6 letters as well, in line with John's. After that, he's kept to the 4/7 pattern, and the troll names were a reflection of that in part.
    • Also, each of the kids' names are 4 letters. Their last names are 7 and 6 letters. 7 + 6 = ?
    • Homestuck Beta was posted on April 10. 4 letters in John's first name, 10 overall.
  • Why does the Recipe Modus display different Grist costs for a given item's various alchemization formulas? The alchemiter ultimately determines the item's identity from a unique 8-character string, which should be the same for the given item no matter how it was derived. It seems highly unlikely that items can have multiple codes.
    • Think of it as using several different processes to achieve the same result. One process can naturally be more expensive than another yet still give the same result.
    • The question could have been worded better. The problem is that the alchemiter can only detect the final code, not the recipe used to create it. Assuming each item only has one code, the alchemiter shouldn't know which Grist cost to require. Paradox Space feels too much like a Hand Wave to be a viable theory.
      • In that case items could have multiple codes. For instance maybe the final place indicates cost (IE, 00000001 and 00000002 both yield the same item but 00000002 costs more grist). In the range of trillions of possible combinations, it's not unlikely that an item may have 3 or 4 codes. Paradox Space wouldn't apply anyways. The additional cost could also be due to the recipe modus itself, being a "tax" for using it.
      • It could use something other than the alchemiter. Or perhaps we are wrong about how the alchemiter works, if it only appears to work the way we think it does but actually works in a different way that involves time shenanigans and predestination (like everything else in sburb) then it would make sense for different recipes to produce the same item with a different cost.

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