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astroboots · 10 months

Text

Issue #6

COLLABORATED WITH @THIRSTWORLDPROBLEMSS

Pairing: Miguel O'Hara x female reader

Summary: You and your unfriendly neighborhood Spiderman wind up far from your usual neighborhood and you need to find a way to leave before it's too late.

Word count: 2,600 words.

Series Masterlist | Spiderverse Masterlist | Astroboot’s Masterlist | thirstworldproblemss’ Masterlist

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Your home is gone.

Everything is gone.

All you can see is white. A vast, empty space surrounding you, blank and endless as far as the eye can see.

You suck in a surprised breath, already flinching because you expect a place so white and sterile to smell like sharp stinging disinfectant, but to your surprise it's the opposite. It smells of nothing in here.

“Mierda!”

You turn at the sound of his voice, and find Blue-Spiderman behind you.

“Shit!” he growls out. His hand comes up to his hair, fingers fisting into the poor strands as he starts tugging at them in frustration again. “Shit, shit, shit!”

“Wha– What happened?”

There was a helicopter, you think… darkness... a loud noise... the wall of your apartment exploding into a cloud of dust and rubble.

"Did... did a fucking helicopter just crash into my apartment!?"

He ignores your question, opting to fidget with his wristwatch instead, swearing and muttering to himself, while you try to make sense of what’s happening.

“And… And then…” And then the otherworldly light show. At the time, you thought you were dying, but you’re clearly not dead. You’re just… someplace else. “What is this place?”

“We weren’t supposed to end up here,” he says, ignoring your question once again. He smacks at his watch repeatedly before swearing again and then leaves the poor thing alone.

“Come on.” He unceremoniously grabs your arm and starts marching forward, dragging you along. He seems to have some destination in mind, though you don’t know how he can tell left from right in this expanse of nothingness, let alone where to go.

“Wait, wait,” you protest, “Where are we? What is this place?” Maybe if you repeat yourself enough he’ll finally give you an answer.

“We have to get out of here. We can’t waste time.” There is no pause in his steps, he marches on as if he’s expecting you to calmly accept the situation without further explanation.

"Can you please just stop for a second and tell me what’s going on?!" you say, digging your heels against his strength to try and stop him for even a second.

He takes a deep breath, nostrils flaring with anger and irritation. “We’re in an interdimensional fabric where the interstitial domain emerges. It’s void of any discernible quantum fluctuations or energy-matter manifestations, constituting an absolute absence of existence or spatial-temporal coherency and–”

He’s still talking, throwing out a string of convoluted science terms, one after another in quick succession, but all you hear is an endless stream of jibberish.

His words seem strangely far away, like your ears are plugged or something. You raise a hand to rub at one of them, then at your forehead when that doesn't make the sound go back to normal.

Normal. Ha! Who even knows what "normal" is for this place anyway. Everything since you left your apartment has been so bizarre that you're not surprised your head feels a little wonky.

And there's something weird with your hand too. You pull it back from your forehead and hold it in front of your face, staring at it.

Strange. The tone of it seems off, somehow. Opaque and lighter in shade then you’re used to. Almost like it’s fading.

It's only when he moves to stand in front of you that you realize you can see the red and blue of his suit though your hand. The whole of your palm is turning translucent.

“Shit!” he spits out and steps forward, grabbing and yanking your hand towards him as he inspects your palm.

Whatever he sees clearly doesn’t make him happy. His mouth is at an angle of irritation you had not thought was physically possible before.

"What's your name?" he demands.

"You know my name!" You scowl, tired of keeping up this farce, you know he knows it, and you're not playing this game with him.

His annoyance seems to grow deeper. “Yes, I know your name. I'm asking if you remember it.”

What kind of stupid question is that!? Of course you remember your own name. What a condescending jerk! Does he get off on making everyone around him feel like an idiot?

Your name is… it’s... it's... uhm…

... huh.

The first syllable of your name is on the tip of your tongue. Your lips shape the sound, but nothing comes out because you don't remember what vowel comes next. Or what comes after that.

Your name... Why can't you remember your name?

“I–I don’t...” you hesitate, blinking in confusion. You don’t understand. How did you forget something so simple? “I don’t understand what’s happening. Where are we?”

“I just told you where we are,” he bursts out impatiently.

You wince at his words. God, he did explain, didn't he? You just... can't remember what he said. You know he used a lot of science-y words… Is that why you can't remember what he told you?

“Look, it’s been a rough day. Can you explain it to me again, please, but like you’re talking to a 5 year old?”

In front of you, his expression softens ever so slightly, and he takes another deep breath before continuing more calmly.

“We’re in a space between worlds,” he explains, this time in plain speech, thank god. “It’s a void. Nothing exists here. If we stay too long, we won’t either.”

“Okay, but what am I supposed to–”

“Think happy thoughts,” he orders with a testy bite, which is not at all very helpful in making you think of happy thoughts.

“What, like think of a joke or…?”

He scowls at your question, as if it wasn’t a perfectly reasonable question to ask in the circumstances.

“No. Close your eyes and think of a happy memory. Something important. And personal. It’ll keep you tethered to your physical body,” he says, and despite the terse snappiness that remains in this rude man’s voice, you don’t put up a protest.

You close your eyes, trading out white for the black behind your eyelids. You try to form a memory—any memory—but nothing comes to you.

“I can’t think of anything,” you say, as worry starts creeping into your chest. You don’t understand why something that should be simple is so hard to do all of a sudden.

Then you hear his voice in the darkness.

“Think of someone you love. A day you spent together, or if you can’t think of something, then just think of their smile, or the color of their eyes,” he continues, and with each quality he lists out to you, there's a warmth that leaks through the hardness of his voice.

In your mind’s eye, a memory unfolds pixel by pixel. One of your favorite childhood memories of going camping upstate with your family. You’re wearing a pink ball cap, and your parents are standing by the tent, watching as the family dog runs up to you with a soggy tennis ball in her mouth.

Your mom is smiling at you as she waves from afar, gentle and patient. Her eyes are squinting against the bright sunlight, but you can’t remember the color of them.

Gray hazy mist invades the edges of the memory, eating into the vivid colors, the picture distorts until the smiles of your parents morphs into a faceless blob.

Your eyes snap open, and you can’t keep the panic out of your voice. “What’s happening to me!?”

You don’t remember… You don’t remember what they look like. Who they were, you can’t–

“Hey, hey” his voice snaps you out of the fog, His warm palms come up to cup the apple of your cheeks, face mere inches from yours.

“Stay with me.”

And you're trying, you really are, but the panic is already here. Eating through your veins and crawling under your skin with an itch that won't go away.

“I– I can’t– I don’t–”

You can’t feel his hand anymore. Can’t feel your cheeks either. Can’t feel the clattering of your teeth from your trembling or the hard beating of your heart in your chest.

“I don’t remember her eyes.” Your fingers clutch onto his arms, but no matter how hard you dig in with your nails, it sinks into nothingness, “I don’t– My mom. I– I don’t remember her name, her face, her–”

Your feet seem to have fused to the spot you are standing on. They feel heavy and weightless at the same time. You try to move, but can't. Your body is no longer listening to you, and you’ve forgotten what it’s like to coordinate your feet, for the right foot to take a step forward and have the left one follow.

“Lyla,” he tells you, thumb smoothing over the apple of your cheeks, and you can feel the rasp of the rough calluses on it. “Your mom’s name was Lyla.”

The panic subsides at the familiar name.

Lyla.

Your mom's face comes flooding back, the way her eyes would crinkle at the corner when she laughed, the proud smile she wore at your high school graduation, the soft sound of her voice singing you quiet lullabies as you drifted off to sleep.

“She used to make the most disgusting mac ‘n’ cheese, and whenever you’re sad, it’s all you want to eat,” he reminds you and your mouth tingles at the memory of the thick layer of dripping cheap cheese, scalding hot on your tongue.

You adjust your grip on him, and you can feel the texture of his suit under your fingertips now. Your fingers aren’t as numb anymore, neither is your face.

“Food worked, huh?” The corner of his mouth tugs into a half smile, eyes soft as he gazes down at you. “Figures.”

He leans down, hunching over until his forehead rests against yours. “You know that pizza place down on Downing street that you always go to the day before payday? With the gross doughy crust and kimchi topping that you love so much? Think of that.”

You can picture it clearly. The brick brownhouses, the familiar waft of oven-baked dough, and hint of coal burning, and slowly but surely, your stomach warms at the thought of it.

“Think of those ugly pink fur slippers you wear constantly at home when it gets cold,” he says, and you do, gradually become aware of the soles of your feet and the weight of your own body being held up by them.

He goes on like that, listing off things about you. The way he talks about them is almost insulting, but there’s an undertone of fondness hidden underneath that you can’t make sense of. He describes your favorite cozy sweater, calling it “ratty”; your favorite corner of central park that he thinks reeks of piss; your favorite episode of Grey’s anatomy, the one where Cristina has to get cut out of her wedding dress, which you always watch when you need a good cry.

The sound of his voice seems to shiver through you, the warmth of it settling low in your belly.

The more he talks, the more you remember, memories bleeding back into your consciousness. The simplest things come first... The sensation of running your fingers through soft fabric. Stepping barefoot into grass on a summer day. What it feels like to want someone.

And, as he continues to talk, awareness of your body comes trickling back until you're acutely conscious of his forehead pressing against yours; his hands, big and gentle where they're wrapped around your upper arms; the heat radiating off his big body inches from yours as his deep voice lists off all sorts of intimate things about your life, things he has no business knowing.

Control of your body is returning to you. You can blink now, even if it requires conscious effort, and you blink up at him as he pulls back to look down at you.

“You back with me?” he asks softly, one big, warm hand rising to cup the back of your neck in a way that makes you lightheaded.

You tip your head ever so slightly until you catch sight of your hands, now totally opaque instead of that eerily ghostly sheen, and you nod back at him.

“I– I think so.”

“Good.”

You’re still a little bit frazzled. Disorientated by the whole experience that it takes you a while longer to gather your thoughts together.

You still don’t know where you are. You don’t know what the hell just happened. Or what this place is supposed to be. Calling it a ‘void’ doesn’t really explain as much as he seems to think it does. How on earth did you just lose control over your body like that? Why did your body literally start to disappear, fading into the nothingness?

A chill trickles down your spine as you recall the lack of sensation, and you grip his arm underneath your fingers just a little bit tighter to remind yourself that, yeah, he’s still here.

It makes you feel just the tiniest bit safer.

With one arm still wrapped around your shoulders, he brings his other wrist to his mouth and speaks into the watch. “Lyla, have you got a lock down?”

Huh? Lyla? What is he– You don’t understand. Wait, is he talking to your mom? What does he mean he’s locking down your mom!?

There’s a crackle of static in your ears, and the endless white gives way to a burst of color as reality reforms around the two of you. A wall of masonry appears brick by brick before you, nothing but blue clear skies above. There’s a crunch of gravel on the concrete tiles beneath your feet, and when you look down to your right, you see the New York skyline below you. The bird’s eye view of the city is familiar. It’s one you’ve seen many, many times before.

You’re on top of the Chrysler building.

For a second you panic at the height. You clutch onto the man who has once again saved your life, and he lets you, holding you steady, with one big palm resting on the small of your back.

“You’re okay,” he says, shushing you until you relax in his arms. “You’re okay.”

You stay like that for some time, held in the safety of his arms, until your heartbeat slows, until the pulse racing in your throat is no longer in a clustered lump and you feel like you can breathe and think again.

And now that you can think again, your brain is racing a mile a minute. All the things that have happened… All the things that this man said to you to bring you back to yourself.

Things that no one except for you would know about. It’s too personal and intimate. Even if he had somehow been stalking you, he wouldn’t know these things unless he has been stalking you from childhood. The things he knows about you only comes through years of being with a person. Your habits. Your likes. Your dislikes. The things that upset you. The things that make it better when everything else has gone wrong. He knows all these things about you that he really only should know if he’s known you for a lifetime.

"Who are you?" you ask him again, pulling back slightly to stare up into those blood red eyes inches away from your own, "Who are you really?"

"My name is Miguel O'Hara,” he says, holding your gaze, “and I’m Spiderman from another dimension."

~ Next

Dedication & Credits: To my sister clown in arms @thirstworldproblemss thank you for putting up with me since this series started, I have been bugging his poor woman every second of her waking day. Please give her all the love because I couldn't do this without her or even if I did, I wouldn't have 1/100000000000000000 of the fun I have now with her.

#miguel o'hara fic #miguel o'hara x reader #miguel o'hara x you #miguel o'hara #miguel o'hara fanfic #miguel o'hara fanfiction #spiderverse #across the spiderverse #oscar isaac #spider man: across the spider verse #marvel #miguel ohara x reader #spiderverse fanfiction #across the spiderverse fanfiction #miguel ohara #miguel ohara x you

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caligvlasaqvarivm · 16 days

Note

ik you mentioned interest in writing out how you'd prefer homestuck ended (though obviously time and money makes that impossible lol), and you touched on it in your big eridan essay at the end, but would you ever consider maybe a more detailed outline? i really enjoy your thoughts on the characters and the abandoned plotlines, i'd love to get a little more of an in depth look at how you wish it went down.

Yeah sure!

For those who aren't sure what the hell I'm talking 'bout, please check out my blog and the various essays I've been writing.

Some of it is contingent on stuff I kind of still need to reread so I'm really sorry to the alpha kid likers but I'm still not totally 100% sure where I want to take them. I'm also going to include quite a few personal preference ships; I'm not interested in arguing what other people should ship or about arguing about the course of action for my dumb fanfic in general. I also tend to discover the plot I want while I'm writing it, which I don't have the luxury of here, so... some of it is going to be kind of sloppy. I'm also a big troll stan so unfortunately the kids are a little bit neglected (sorry!!!!). That said.

So the changes would take place directly after GAME OVER, which is personally the point at which I think the truncation/turning on the fanbase really starts - ships start to get turbo-sped at that point. I'm not even saying I dislike JohnRoxy or JohnRezi, but they just feel oddly rushed the way they're handled in the comic itself. IMO, anyway.

There's not too much I would rearrange during this interstitial segment; I think it's important for Jade to have the experience of loneliness, for Terezi to kick off the retcons by only feeling comfortable fixing her own mistakes. Moreover, there's no reason why other characters can't use her mind beacon abilities to ask John to rearrange the timeline, though their attempts, because they aren't backed by Seer of Mind abilities, are a lot sloppier and come with a lot more unforseen consequences.

But something I would change is that Roxy's deal with Nyx is not to just kind of... sit back and chill in non-space while John does all the work; instead, like Rose in Davesprite's timeline, Nyx puts her to sleep, and when the timeline ceases to be, GameOver!Roxy's memories get transferred to Past!Roxy via her dreamself (which wakes up early), fulfilling a "stealing from void for others" aspect of her abilities, and leads to some important interactions later on down the line.

Also, this timeline's ARquiussprite and Gamzee's corpse (heretofore referred to as (ARquiussprite) and (Gamzee)) need to come along for the ride somehow. Maybe they fall through the sky after LOLAR crashes into LOFAF.

This kicks off a series of retcons, as each troll that gets brought back successively asks for another troll/set of trolls to be brought back. This absolutely RIDDLES Act 5 with password pages, can't go two steps without running into a password page, there are password pages within password pages (which IMO is very funny and very Homestuck).

Meanwhile, a couple other plots are running concurrently - the GameOver!crew (heretofore referred to as (Name)) are now in the dream bubbles, completing their character arcs and preparing to defeat LE. Because time and space are weird in the Furthest Ring, every successive meteor trip that occurs as a result of John's retcons is the first time from the point of view of the meteor, but is a repeating event from the point of view of the people in the bubbles - eg those dead god tier Eridan and Feferi wind up healing the Mayor like seven times from their perspective.

(Aradia) is fluttering her ASS off to make sure everyone is in the right "place" at the right "time" for this, lmfao.

Roxy gaining future memories also means that the Alpha kids get to complete their arcs in a way they weren't able to prior to Game Over. Because what John's retcons are doing are functionally whiting out and redrawing the past, the Alpha kids are also only seeing a single linear timeline.

One last arc, which is running concurrent to the retconned!trolls and their new meteor trips, is that bringing back each successive character allows them ALL to grow a little more. So it is NOT like they bring back Vriska, and now everyone's problem are fixed and everything is fine; Vriska's still kind of awful, but she gets better after Tavros gets brought back and they have to character develop alongside each other, and same when Aradia and Sollux get brought back, so on and so on. Because it's about BEING FRIENDS and BEING A TEAM. They're all still having interpersonal problems right up until ALL of them get brought back.

But as a side effect of this and the questing done by the GameOver!crew, the Dancestors get more fully utilized as foils, and get their problems addressed. As the retcon!team goes through their character development, they start to tear the Dancestors apart, because the Dancestors represent shitty parents who force their kids to clean up after their messes, and refuting them works both literally and symbolically as rejecting their irresponsible way of being in lieu of responsibility, accountability, empathy, and compassion.

So here's the series of retcons, and the absolute bullshit that accompanies each decision:

Terezi asks John to save Vriska, and prevent herself from getting too spades with Gamzee, as these are her two greatest regrets.

Pretty much just what her canon iteration asked for; I don't see any problems with the actions she asks John to do for her.

HOWEVER, we'd get more than just a montage of Vriska's time on the meteor, because in this version of events, we're taking our time and letting plot points breathe. Neither does she magically fix everything just by being around when she's very much herself still going thru it by the time the Meteor trip pops off. In any case, she brings with her some new complications:

Karkat still winds up having to play moirail and keep Gamzee calm. This still ends up breaking down by the halfway point of the comic, because they're kind of just not good for each other, but Karkat's personal shitty relationships are going to become A Theme, so it's important to make note of it here.

Vriska and Terezi don't fully make up on this iteration of the trip, since from Terezi's point of view, she was still actively about to kill Vriska before John intervened; however, we get more hints, now that they have to spend three years together, that not only does Vriska really miss Terezi (which is pretty well-established, given how she can't seem to leave Terezi alone), but Terezi actually misses Vriska, too - she's just really bad at separating her own feelings and desires from her instinctive grasp of karma and justice, a very Mind player-type problem to have.

At least with Vriska around, Terezi's able to nip her Gamzee habit in the bud, but this kind of leads to Gamzee feeling worse and more alone.

Something Really Messy happens between Vriska, Rose, and Kanaya when Rose starts her drinking habit, and it's pretty toxic for all involved, and Karkat is kind of stuck playing auspice. Vriska already expresses not liking Rose much and develops some flushed feelings for Kanaya after being watching her murder Eridan, so "It's Really Messy" is kind of all I can say on the matter. The girls are fightiiinnnnggggg

Dave and Terezi get close again, but given the weirdo vibes he notices between her and Vriska, and the fact that he's really not down with quadrants (YET.), means they still end up not getting together.

Sorry DaveKat likers but I am not one. They do not ever get together, so if you are hoping for that, I am sorry and you don't have to keep reading if you don't want to, it's OK.

On a note about Vriska and Terezi - personally, I do think their moirallegiance is endgame; Vriska clearly misses her terribly, constantly trying to bug her into making the Scourge Sisters a Thing again, and she even expresses feeling really bad about the Team Charge Debacle to Terezi explicitly, before directly foreshadowing how awful Terezi will feel after killing Vriska:

AG: Cause even though you got all these highfalutin morals and fancy reserv8tions, you know as well as me that a killer is a killer is a killer! AG: There 8n't no ch8nging your ways for good, and one d8y you're going to flail that silly l8ttle cane of yours and not find n8thin to 8ump into, and fall f8ce first into the shit ag8in. AG: And you're going to do something t8rri8le to some8ody and wish you could t8ke it 8ack 8ut you c8n't!!!!!!!! AG: And then you'll work hard to win 8ack their trust, and you'll try and try and tr8, and you'll see how hard it is! AG: You'll seeeeeeee!

We know that she starts using 8's where they don't make sense phonetically when she gets really agitated, so it's pretty safe to say that she's displaying genuine emotional distress here. When combined with the way she tells John about feeling absolutely horri8le about killing Tavros, it's pretty clear she's genuine about feeling really bad about the Team Charge debacle, and sincere about wanting to somehow make amends and get back into Terezi's good graces, at times trying rivalry, at times trying to prove that she's trying to fix her mistakes.

Terezi also vehemently denies them having a kismesistude and directly mirrors Vriska's hesitance about all the murder:

GC: W3 4R3 SUPPOS3D TO R3V3L 1N BLOODSH3D 4S W3 GROW UP GC: 4ND SH3 S33MS TO B3 3MBR4C1NG H3R R1T3 OF P4SS4G3 W1TH R3CKL3SS 4B4NDON, 4S 1 WOULD 3XP3CT GC: GR4BB1NG TH3 BULL BY TH3 HORNS, SO TO SP34K GC: 1TS 4 L1TTL3 1NT1M1D4T1NG GC: B3C4US3 1M NOT SUR3 1F 1M R34DY FOR TH4T

AG: On my world, I would 8e completely vindic8ed for killing him! He is far lower on the hemospectrum than me. He managed to disrespect me time and time again, 8ut I kept letting him live! In fact, the amount of slack I cut him would 8e considered scandalous 8y those in my class. AG: I had every reason to kill him. And yet... AG: I feel 8ad a8out it like a lame weak fudge8lood, just like he was. AG: And the fact that I feel 8ad is why I'm sort of freaking out right now!

They're basically two toxic girls who CANNOT be honest with their real feelings, and wind up hurting each other. They need therapy badly, but given the fact that they also mirror each other positively - Terezi feels grateful to Vriska for blinding her, and Vriska mentions she ought to thank Terezi for killing her, which set her up on a date with the dead John Terezi also killed - I think they have a lot of potential to be genuinely kind to each other once they work through their individual issues.

Anyway. We're keeping the Roxy stuff under wraps for now - last we saw of her, she went to go see her denizen, and her planet exploded, and John was really bummed about it. HOWEVER, we are going to check in with our GameOver!crew, although only lightly for now:

Meenah and (Vriska) have fully disappeared, and (Tavros), (Nepeta), and (Feferi) are looking for them because they've got the FUCKING TREASURE???

Everyone else from the Game Over timeline has landed in the afterlife, to varying degrees.

Shortly after entering the afterlife, (Eridan) fucked off somewhere to be alone. Last anyone heard from him was (ghost!Sollux) and him being Erisolsprite, but neither (ghost!Sollux) nor (alive!Sollux) have seen him since Erisolsprite died in Game Over.

(Karkat) is also brooding off on his own, feeling really shitty and sorry for himself. He's always felt personally responsible for everything going wrong for his team, and now that his team is basically entirely dead, he feels extra shitty.

Mostly just setting up that these guys are still relevant to the story, despite now being (irrelevant).

That brings us to the second retcon. Vriska obviously had great regrets about killing Tavros, both pre- and post-retcon, so she asks for his death to be prevented.

Tavros is back.

Vriska's requested fix is a very simple one - after all, Karkat makes mention about how Vriska's always had a competitive streak with Terezi, admiring/being jealous of her ability to manipul8 people; I think an ultimate culmination of that is her insisting that insisting to John that he do a retcon to stop her from killing Tavros - which, as covered above, she regrets greatly - but to do a much sloppier job of it, simply having John pop into [S] Wake and knock Tavros the fuck out.

Vriska herself doesn't believe this will have any unintended side effects, because her opinion of Tavros is still really low despite her genuine desire to make amends, and she's wrong.

Tavros's stay on the meteor has a major effect on Gamzee. I'm not entirely sure how it would pan out exactly, but I think Gamzee would step in between Dave and Tavros, into a situation none of them are happy with. This starts Tavros on a path of realizing that his inability to stand up for himself not only hurts him, but people he cares about (Gamzee, whom he ghosted).

Vriska is mostly uninterested in Tavros now, as the moment has kind of passed, and Terezi keeps getting on her ass about going after him (which brings the two of them closer).

Previous Messy romantic situations are still active. Karkat is going thru it.

Dave feels bad about tormenting Tavros but he kind of can't help himself, especially because Tavros keeps going up to him for some reason. The fact that he gets trapped in an auspice with Tavros and Gamzee kind of reinforces that he does NOT vibe with troll quadrants. Dave becomes MORE xenophobic.

On a note regarding Gamzee and Tavros: while I generally try to avoid relying on Hussie's commentary too much, as he likes to play his cards close to his chest, his note about Gamzee in the Act 5 book is actually significant enough to me to include:

The best explanation for why Gamzee says he's scared of Vriska, in my opinion, is this: he's flat-out lying. It's a good way for him to maintain his cover as 'Soft Gamzee.' It also provides some ammunition for those who, against all sense of good taste and judgment, want to continue to believe and assert that Gamzee is a decent guy with sensitive emotions and vulnerabilities before he undergoes his Muderstuck awakening. He was none of those things, ever.

Hussie likes to play coy, and you can't really trust anything he says after Act 6 because he's fed up with the fandom, but I think this comment comes early enough, and is made assertively enough, that it can be taken at face value. I know that "Soft Gamzee" is actually extremely popular in the fandom, so this may be controversial, but I do think there's more evidence for him being kind of nasty and manipulative than not, and having that always be a part of him brings more cohesiveness to his character. For example, he seems to have a pale crush on Karkat, trying to assert that Karkat is his best friend and changing the topic when Sollux gets brought up and he recognizes Karkat is closer to Sollux than him, and if you read his first log with Terezi as if he's hiding being nasty under a soft veneer, then his comments do read as pretty passive-aggressive.

TC: yOu KnOw HoW iT iS wItH fAmIlY. GC: NO, NOT R34LLY! GC: 4DURRRR DURR DURP TC: Oh YeAh... ... TC: I sPaCeD oUt, DiD yOu KnOw HoW bEaTuFuL tHe SoUnD oF tHe OcEaN iS? TC: hAvE yOu EvEr EvEn SeEn ThE oCeAn? TC: oR i MeAn SmElLeD iT... TC: SoRrY. GC: >:[

Maybe most damningly, his narration calls dealing with Eridan's genuine emotional distress "indulge emotional theatrics," an implication of his true feelings. Karkat and Eridan are heavily foreshadowed to be moirails, and Gamzee seems to have a pale crush on Karkat. What does Gamzee do in this conversation? He chases Eridan away from comforting Karkat - using the same excuse as he uses to avoid dealing with Vriska.

CA: put kar on TC: UuUuH, i cAn't rEaLlY ThInK AbOuT InTeRvEnInG, tHe bLaCk fRoWnInG MoThErFuCkEr kInDa sCaReS Me

Moreover, he does NOT seem to like Jack comforting Karkat instead, either.

THIS IS NOT TO SAY I DON'T THINK GAMZEE ALSO DESERVES A SHOT AT KINDNESS AND REDEMPTION. Gamzee is clearly a very troubled youth, between his absentee lusus, his indoctrination into a fundie doomsday cult, and his sopor usage. The fact that having his faith shattered by Dave makes him snap implies that, one, he was already unstable and teetering on the edge, and having his faith fucked with was the last straw, and two, that until he lost that last shred of hope, he was still pretending to be nicer than he was for a reason, and given that his LE worship doesn't start up until after the snappage, I think it can be extrapolated that that reason is that he genuinely wants to get along with his friends.

Given that Gamzee's issues largely stem from his neglectful lusus, it's not a stretch to say that Gamzee does not take well to abandonment and isolation. So here's kind of where Tavros comes in:

Gamzee mentions that he feels "So aT ChIlL WiTh yOu" while talking to Tavros, and Tavros reciprocates the friendship and also - interestingly - acknowledges Gamzee's religion, calling it beautiful even if he doesn't necessarily believe in it. I call it interesting because Karkat's inability to do so is explicitly one of the reasons their moirallegiance broke down. Moreover, in their first conversation together, Gamzee explicitly praises Tavros for his "gumption" for stealing his clown nose, when Tavros's avoidance of his problems is one of his biggest personal issues. So yeah, personally, I'm all for moirallegiance.

But Tavros started ghosting him after Gamzee offered to make out a little, another symptom of his avoidance issues. I'm sure that, even in this meteor trip, the fact that Gamzee killed Equius and Nepeta really scares him. In his conversation with Terezi, Terezi outright says "NO WOND3R V4NT4S C4NT ST4ND YOU"; Equius is constantly yelling at him; lots of people on their team seem to genuinely just sort of dislike him.

CG: MIRACLES ARE LIKE POOP STAINS ON GOD'S UNDERWEAR. TA: eheheh makiing fun of people2 reliigiion2 i2 the be2t thiing two do.

So having one of the few people he does really like also ghost him probably did... bad things to his mental health. Especially so when said person wound up dead. But now that he isn't dead, I think they have a shot - they just need to address their personal problems. Tavros with his avoidance, and Gamzee with his resentment toward the world, and reliance on substances and religion to take the edge off. In this meteor iteration, that doesn't quite happen - their toxic auspicetism succeeds in letting them air out their dirty laundry to the audience, but doesn't bring full reconciliation.

In any case, this meteor trip is fairly short, and uneventful from the dream bubbles side, although I do think Tavros should get a talking-to from (Tavros) about real self-esteem and self-worth.

Still, being back in contact with Tavros again, even if in kind of a messed-up way, does make Gamzee start to reconsider some of his past actions. This brings us to:

Gamzee Asks for Equius and Nepeta back.

Gamzee's not as nice as he lets on, but he does genuinely care about his teammates, and for the people he really cares about, like Karkat or Tavros, I think he's willing to stick his neck out. Bringing back Nepeta and Equius is more for Tavros than himself, really, because Tavros is scared of him for doing that, and he motherfuckin' misses Tavros, okay? John mostly agrees because he's kind of scared of Gamzee.

Some really fun stuff starts happening this go around.

The Gamzee-Tavros situation becomes resolved because this time, Equius steps in as an auspice between Tavros and Dave, and this auspicetism is COMPLETELY HEALTHY (with the bonus of being extremely funny, and what is the point of a Homestuck ship if it is not deeply funny).

Gamzee and Tavros are able to enter into a totally healthy moirallegiance once the auspicetism builds up Tavros's self-confidence, much to Karkat's relief.

Being stuck in the auspicetism makes Dave go crawling back to Terezi on his hands and knees. I'm sorry, Terezi. I'll do anything if you take me back. Just don't let me die as the guy stuck in a threesome with the two worst trolls. Dave has overcome his xenophobia.

Dave and Terezi becoming official does make Karkat sad, however, so when Nepeta finally works up the courage to confess to him, he accepts the offer to date her, thus fulfilling Jaspersprite's musing that she might only be able to date him after she dies.

They also break up. We're keeping up this trend of Karkat and his disastrous relationships. He's still involved in the Rose/Kanaya/Vriska drama, too.

With GamTav and Dave/Tavros/Equius cinched, Tavros and Vriska reach a sort of truce with each other. Not really friends, since they kind of still dislike each other, but Vriska would genuinely be glad to see Tavros getting more actually confident, and muster up the energy to genuinely apologize for almost killing him, so there's a sort of mutual respect there now. Vriska and Terezi are even closer because of this, but still not fully over their problems.

On the topic of the Dave/Tavros/Equius auspicetism: Dave still can't stop bothering Tavros, but the lewdness of it sets Equius off, so he feels like he has to intervene. Dave also can't stop himself from bothering Equius, which ALWAYS BACKFIRES, and since Tavros has a weird fondness/rivalry with Dave, he'd find it within himself to ask Equius to back off (which would work, because of Equius's... Equius). And every time Equius gets too overbearing toward Tavros, Dave feels COMPELLED to intervene, because he's like, my fucking god, you are the two worst trolls, why must weirdos fight. Dave desperately wants out, but he can't stop staring at these two.

And weirdly enough, it's beneficial for all of them. With two people to yell at him for being weird, Equius becomes less weird. With a rival in Dave and more contact with Equius, Tavros becomes more confident. And Dave has two people to rap against and feel good about his art with, something he more or less had to deal with alone during previous trips.

On the topic of Karkat and Nepeta, there are quite a few implications that they wouldn't necessarily work out. For citations, let me just link my Nepeta essay, where I go over what the comic says about their relationship from a storytelling perspective; here, I'll talk about their relationship from a more interpersonal perspective.

Karkat's signals are mixed as fuuuuuuck. While I don't necessarily think this will be an issue for Nepeta, as - as a Heart player - she's preternatually gifted at understanding motivations, the thing is... I think Nepeta can do better, and deserves better, a sentiment echoed by Jasprosesprite^2. She certainly deserves better than being second to Terezi, at the very least, even if she states she likes his outbursts.

And the thing is, Karkat is pretty explicit about saying that he doesn't return her feelings; in a world where they date, there's always going to be a sense that she's his second choice. And, just... my girl deserves better, okay? Moreover, while he respects her personhood, he's also pretty nasty to her when he DOES talk to her, implying he doesn't necessarily respect her choices. And also, she's actually really bad at shipping, so there will be this extremely weird tension of like... a hobbyist vs. a professional. I don't think Karkat would be able to stop himself from mocking some of her shipping choices if she ever opened up to him about that.

But I think them getting together is important for Nepeta, developmentally - I talk about this in my essay for her, but shipping is something I think she does need to outgrow, since it's kind of a replacement she's using for her loneliness. Moreover, I say in that essay that the issues she has in her moirallegiance with Equius warrant relationship counselling - and that's what Karkat is uniquely qualified to dispense, as the team's Blood player. Although they end up not working out, Nepeta would take several valuable lessons from this relationship - that she's kind of bad at shipping, that Equius is being kind of a shithead to her, and that she needs to start making friends with other people.

Now then. We're finally getting into some drama in the bubbles.

Please imagine for me Equius and Horuss talking, and Equius being aghast at the way Horuss is so derisive towards his matesprit and moirail. Now imagine him pulling a mic out of nowhere and rapping at him about how his problem is that he does not respect his partners. Now imagine Tavros and Dave joining in, also out of nowhere, with Tavros adding bars about how the hemospectrum is, not a good thing, he thinks. And Dave adding bars about how he does not have a fucking dog in this race. He's not even a troll. He doesn't understand their hemospectrum. Let him out of here. The fine fucking art of Alternian slam poetry. I think Horuss would start crying. So would I if three people including my grandkid started rapping at me.

Nepeta's uncanny emotional acumen leads to her wanting to befriend Damara, but being unable to speak her language.

GameOver!crew is up to something, IDK, probably showing (Tavros) inspiring people and rebuilding the ghost army, to tell a parallel story to Tavros becoming more genuinely self-confident.

We check in with the Alpha kids, too, who have some group therapy sessions led by Roxy.

Vriska and Tavros confront Rufioh together, a final culmination of their no-longer-enemiesship, and together, they steal Rufioh's ones. Like, Tavros starts speak1ng w1th ones, something he always had in him, and they also roast Rufioh so badly that he stops speaking in ones. But the way it's presented to the audience, Vriska outright just says that Tavros should steal his ones. And Tavros does. This carries over to successive retcons, as it's implied that Tavros just kind of starts naturally being more confident as healthy relationships are established sooner and sooner.

Anyway, a final note about Equius - his problems are mostly due to being sheltered. Although he is probably the most casteist highblood, he's not really that casteist, as what's really going on is just that he's got a BDSM kink. But because he's sheltered, he does not realize that it's a kink. And a fetishist who does not realize that they're a fetishist has more power than God.

His protectiveness of Nepeta does come from a good place; preventing her from playing FLARP was actually in her best interest, given what happens to people who play FLARP. But he's very much going overboard with it, likely an extension of his own lack of understanding of how much sheltering is good and how much becomes detrimental. What he really needs is for someone to point it out to him, which I think he gets via Nepeta or via Karkat, and then have a reaaaaally long think about it. He's genuinely a polite and helpful soul, who doesn't WANT to make people uncomfortable. The auspicetism is very good for him in this regard, as is his moirallegiance once Karkat talks him and Nepeta through their issues.

The point is, once he's forced to reckon with the fact that the degeneracy is coming from inside the house, I think he'd have a LOT of regrets about the way he treated Aradia. Which leads us to:

Whoops That Robot Thing Was Really Inappropriate Huh

Equius approaches John to ask him to make Past!Equius reconsider the Aradiabot Thing. John's getting kind of impatient with all these trolls who keep asking him to go back through time, but given that everyone seems a little happier each time, he can't help but agree.

So he goes back to the past, before Equius can give Aradia her robot body with the love chip in it, and something really fun gets to happen here: first of all, Equius's Void status makes him really hard to place, so John winds up missing by a bit, time-wise, so Aradia's already in the body. This is the first time that retconning!John and Aradia have been in the same place together, and when she meets him and finds out that he can time travel without causing paradoxes, she demands (with her Aradiabot deathmurderkill intensity) to be taken back in time to before she died.

John's retcon powers explicitly ignore the usual rules of paradox space - he describes it as a "fresh start". Given that Breath is associated with choices and freedom, his retcon powers are kind of the ultimate culmination of his abilities as a breath player. Although doomed timelines can and will still result from paradoxes caused by players when John isn't there, anything he directly interferes with is totally a-okay.

So all Aradiabot asks him for is passage back in time, in order to sanction her interference in the past. After she dismisses him, she still more or less has to adhere to events in the original timeline, for two reasons - the first being that she doesn't want to risk a new doomed timeline, and the second so she can keep the timeline predictable.

So even though she's basically asked for passage to the time period before SGRUB, it's basically outright stated that the progression of events has to be more or less the same, up until the point where John's other retcons take place. So here are the cascading effects of Aradiabot preventing her own death:

Aradiabot takes Aradia's place in the Team Charge debacle, being blown up/"killed" (as a sprite) by Sollux's eye beams, so that she can take Aradia's place as Doc Scratch/the Handmaiden's servant and "carry out" their orders.

Meanwhile, Aradia seeks refuge with Equius, whose void powers keep her hidden from Doc Scratch's omnipotence.

Because Sollux never actually killed Aradia, and Aradia communicates with him via Equius's account, Sollux is less depressed and self-loathing. He no longer predicts a future where all of them die and he has to be blinded. It's left deliberately vague whether this future comes to pass because he's less pessimistic, so his Mage powers are calling a happier future into being, or if his future changed, so his Mage powers are prophesying something new.

Nepeta starts regaining memories of alternate timelines and past retcons, as an extension of her Rogue of Heart powers. This includes the relationship counselling she received from Karkat.

Between Nepeta and Aradia yelling at him, Equius's character development starts sooner, so he's squared away for future events, and ends up not making the creepy Aradiabot, making a non-creepy one instead.

Aradia and Equius do not strike up a relationship, and become uneasy enemies/friends.

Aradia secretly god tiers well in advance of Jack's arrival, and meets him at Derse rather than awakening on her crypt there.

Aradia and Sollux continue a loving matespritship, leading to Sollux settling into a moirallegiance with Feferi. He's devastated when she dies, which still happens along with the rest of Eridan's freakout; Aradiabot doesn't intervene because she's needed for:

Aradiabot winds up being the one to sacrifice herself piloting the meteor, allowing Sollux to stay with the rest of the team when he meets up with Aradia, (Aradia), and (Sollux) at the Green Sun. Aradiabot winds up with the GameOver!crew.

With the 1337 hackers back in commission, Sollux and Roxy are able to establish a server connection with each other, allowing them to communicate during the 3-year meteor trip.

Aradia involves herself in the Rose/Kanaya/Vriska Mess, and I kind of can't decide what I like better - a vascillatory pitch/flush threeway between Rose, Kanaya, and Vriska, now that Vriska's near the end of her character development, with Aradia serving as a stabilizing force as Kanaya's on-again off-again moirail, or Aradia stepping in as an auspice. Either way, it's out of Karkat's hands.

This has a knock-on effect of finally giving Vriska the chance to fully make amends with Aradia, which winds up cinching the Vriska/Terezi moirallegiance. The scourge sisters are back baybee. And between a healthy moirallegiance for Terezi and a healthy moirallegiance for Gamzee, I think pitch Terezi/Gamzee could work as a healthy ship this time around. I'm not married to it, but they did always seem to hate each other well before SGRUB.

Nepeta has LEARNED HER LESSON regarding dating Karkat, so that does not happen.

Karkat now has no quadrants. He winds up desperately throwing himself at Sadstuck Sollux to try and help him get over his breakup. It's not a good look. Sadkat. He also takes up talking to the alpha kids for emotional support, which puts them off, too. Still gives really good relationship advice. He's clearly one of the more unstable members of the retcon!crew at this point.

We're light on the dream bubble drama this time around because of how MUCH is happening for the retcon!crew, but there's going to be a reference in there of Nepeta learning East Beforan.

SO. NOTES TIME.

Aradia expresses outright that she hated the feeling that she was set up and that she wishes someone would have stopped her from being so reckless. And although she seems to find some satisfaction in being the stewardess of the afterlife, there's clearly some resentment there that she's been forced into that role, as she expresses that what she's really looking forward to is watching it all break apart. There's also kind of an orphaned plot thread where Aradia is spending a lot of time in the afterlife putting knowledge together, which never really directly pays off except to the audience, and I think a really good way to bring that back in would be for her to be communing with (Aradia) in the dream bubbles in order to make sure the timeline flows as smoothly as possible.

As for Aradia/Kanaya - they're actually really good friends, and Aradia expresses that she's flattered that Kanaya wants to talk to her so much. There is a tone here that matches the way Vriska thinks about Kanaya when Kanaya is still ostensibly Vriska's moirail, and Kanaya herself admits to being attracted to people who are reckless. In fact...

AA: i just wish AA: back when i was behaving recklessly AA: i had s0me0ne t0 tell me t0 st0p listening AA: even if i ended up ign0ring their advice AA: it w0uld have been nice

GA: It Must Be A Certain Madness Im Afflicted By GA: To Orbit Those More Reckless And Dangerous Than I And More Daring For It GA: I Guess I Want To Help Them But They Never Can Be Helped It Seems

So I'm just kind of saying... Aradia and Kanaya moirallegiance... is not entirely unfounded. And a moirail stabilizes a troll's other relationships; if we have a moirail for Kanaya and a moirail for Vriska, then the Mess that is whatever's going on with Kanaya, Vriska, and Rose would probably resolve itself, I think. Either way, Rose is surrounded by SUCH a girl's night of emotional support to help her with sobriety now.

As for whatever's going on between her and Equius, I tend to believe the comic when it tells me relationships don't work out, and Aradia expresses regret for kissing him during the Ministrife. I think they could be good vitriolic frenemies, though.

Okay, onto Sollux.

In the same panel where Eridan and Karkat are implied to be "hatched for each other" pale-wise, Feferi and Sollux are foreshadowed in the same way:

They also spend a LOT OF TIME curled up in a pile together talking about their feelings, which we don't see with matesprits, but we DO see with moirails. Nepeta and Equius do the same thing, and they are kind of THE moirails. So I think Sollux and Feferi were always meant to be pale, but because Aradia died, Sollux wound up taking Feferi on as a matesprit instead. Between EriFef, SolFef, and GamTav, people getting flushed and pale feelings entangled is like, a Running Thing, so it's not really surprising to me.

Now, here's the thing. We already know that Sollux likes to cope with a rebound, since he went flushed with Feferi after Aradiabot exploded and was presumed dead. And Karkat cares very fucking much about Sollux, to the point where Gamzee speculates that he's actually Karkat's best friend, and Karkat even calls him that (although Karkat also kind of just calls anyone his best friend, lol).

CG: GAMZEE WAS MY VERY GOOD FRIEND, WHO WAS THIS GOOFY LOVEABLE BULLSHIT CLOWN UNTIL HE WENT PSYCHO AND KILLED SOME PEOPLE. I LIKED HIM A LOT. CG: I DON'T KNOW, I GUESS MY BEST FRIEND IS REALLY JUST THE GUY WHO I HAPPEN TO BE FEELING MOST SENTIMENTAL TO AT THE MOMENT, IS THAT A FUCKING CRIME.

This crab's got so much love in him. In any case, I mostly just want to keep sticking Karkat in these extremely unhealthy relationships for a while. It makes it sweeter when he finally winds up with Eridan LIKE HE WAS ALWAYS MEANT TO... but yeah.

Cross-session communication is also entirely possible, as Sollux set up chat clients between the trolls and the kids in the first place, and even without that, Kanaya found Rose's old GameFAQs on a server in the Furthest Ring. With both Sollux and Roxy on the case, there's no way they can't somehow establish communications way sooner.

Regarding Nepeta regaining her memories, let me once more point you towards the Nepeta essay. She's on track to become the one who attains Ultimate Selfhood, and comforts people like Jade and John about not really knowing their friends or being lonely.

But yeah, obviously Sollux asks for Feferi to be brought back.

F-EF-ERI!!!! 38D

Mostly Sollux just asks to be prevented from provoking Eridan so harshly. Eridan still winds up blowing up the matriorb, and thus, still getting killed by Kanaya in retribution, but this means that Eridan is now the only member of the team left dead.

PITCH FEFNEP. PITCH FEFNEP. PITCH FEFNEP

Pitch FefNep leads to Feferi letting slip something casteist where Sollux can hear; he doesn't personally care because he's heard much worse, but puts them on a break while she sorts herself out. They get back together after that.

Karkat alone :'( he's mostly just talking to the alpha kids at this point, trying to hide from all the happy fucking relationships happening all around him.

If the last retcon was really heavy on the retcon!crew, then this one is much more about what's happening in the bubbles. We get most of our dancestor development this go around. Do not read if you like the dancestors! I go very in-depth about how most of them are horrible people on purpose here, so their arcs are mostly about them being pulled up on their abject awfulness.

Nepeta, who has learned East Beforan, is able to talk to Damara and have an earnest heart-to-heart with her about how awfully she was treated. They hug and cry. Damara, finally validated, gives everyone a big middle finger.

Feferi heals Mituna's brain injury, because literally why the FUCK has nobody else done that. Now once more in control of his faculties, he breaks up with Latula, pissed off that she took advantage of him all those eons to boost her own ego. He also gives everyone a big middle finger. Damara steals her skateboard and high fives Mituna.

Porrim's basically the only dancestor who grew as a person so I think she mostly escapes unscathed.

Latula gets chased around by Sollux and Aradia, who basically just bully her for being bad at games. This is a date to them.

Gamzee completely refutes Kurloz, with his newfound clarity about the real miracle being friendship and the real dark carnival being the world he and his friends will build, not that LE noise.

In a double team between Terezi and Rose, Meulin gets eviscerated for the way her own Issues have made her ships deliberately awful, that she could have simply Not, and she has a bit of a breakdown.

As Feferi is grappling with her privilege and internalized casteism, Cronus wanders up to try and hit on her, and she goes "oh my god... when people look at me, are you what they see? A friendless loser that nobody likes? A total waste of seawater who's only pretending to be cool with the lower castes? A totally fake poser? 38(" Cronus just goes "..." and starts crying and Feferi ends the convo oblivious to that, just going "wow... thanks for talking with me! really gave me a lot to think about" imagine how funny it would be -

Karkat finds and talks to (Eridan), where he fully admits to missing the guy. His mopiness is so extreme that (Eridan) takes issue with it and punches him, before basically yelling at him to get his shit together. Karkat then yells at HIM for him to get HIS shit together, and they both leave, intent on getting their shit together.

We also get an update on Vriska and Meenah at this point, where Meenah is starting to seem more into how they totally ditched their responsibilities than Vriska is.

So the thing with this update is that most of the trolls have sorted their shit out; even Karkat has had a lot of introspection about how he really just fucking loves his friends and should have been more honest about it, not worried so much about appearing weak or lame. With the double Aradias in play to kind of handwave that the timeline will be stable because they're ensuring all loops get completed and all necessary conversations happen, and with everyone's successful relationships on display, we can kind of truncate the next leg of the journey:

Karkat Fixes Everything

Karkat is the Friendship Troll. Karkat is the Romance Troll. Karkat is the Bonds troll. He is their team's Blood player, and as the Blood player, he's been shown to deeply love all of his fucking friends - yes, even the assholes. Maybe even especially them.

As such, it's vitally important for the last push - last leg of the journey - to belong to Karkat. Where would our Blood player be without his bonds? Well, we actually have the answer to that. It's knocked out and prevented from joining in any of the important boss battles. LAME!

So in the last retcon, Karkat hears from Nepeta about the retcons that have been happening, and he really starts digging through his own past. If every retcon so far has been each troll only feeling comfortable undoing their own personal mistakes, then what of the guy who feels personally responsible for everything, all the time, forever?

Look, I'm not saying that a shipping chart saves Homestuck, but... by the time this last retcon is through, every Alternian troll is alive and god tiered. And he is dating Eridan.

If you have any questions about him dating Eridan, please refer to the link above. That essay is nearly as long as this one. There's SO MUCH FUCKING FORESHADOWING.

I don't think the god tiering needs to be explained, because if we hear that Karkat basically made his past self a shipping chart, and we've seen everybody's character development as they've gone through this journey, and we have Aradias on timeline duty and Nepeta with memories of past retcons and her alternate selves, I think we can more or less gloss over exactly how they go about earning their wings while maintaining timeline integrity. The important thing is that Karkat is dating Eridan now.

Because that leads to the last few bits of dream bubble stuff, but before we get into that...

Miscellaneous Plot Things That Need To Happen But I Don't Know Where To Put Them

Yeah there's just some ideas that I have floating around that need to be placed somewhere but IDK exactly where, or exactly how they shake out.

Hal becomes a real boy. And by that I mean as part of their character development, Jake makes Hal "real" a la brain ghost Dirk, and then the rest of them have to scramble against the clock (Jake's ability to maintain Hal's realness) to god tier him and make his existence permanent. He's a Sylph of Mind, which allows him to negate Condy's mind control. And maybe a GCATboy?

(Tavros) becomes the new leader of the ghost army.

Davesprite winds up dead at some point in the bubbles and doesn't explain how he died, but he and (Dave) get to fight each other and hash out their Realness and Relevance issues, before facing their final boss fight as bros once more.

Jade and Nepeta get to talk, and Nepeta gives Jade the reassuring speech about Ultimate Selfhood and how she won't be lonely forever. Maybe it's flushed. Might leave it ambiguous.

Somebody needs to auspicetize Dirk and Jake holy shit. Dunno who. Maybe Karkat, but I kind of like him pitch with Dirk, so IDK really.

Dad needs to die. Sorry Dad. If I can find a way to kill off all of the sprites besides ARquiusprite, I will. It's explicitly stated that sprites are drawn to the battlefield during the Reckoning, presumably to die, as part of the coming-of-age themes - losing one's guardians. It's sad but it's gotta happen.

All the Godtier!Calliope stuff basically happens as-is.

Can you tell I need to do more research on the alpha kids...

Ok Back To Karkat And Eridan

I think I'm going to leave their moirallegiance fairly ambiguous, but when Eridan is brought back, he and Karkat are basically together all the time. Karkat's signals are mixed even on the best of days, so I don't know how easy it'll be to tell that these two assholes slinging death threats at each other are pale, but *I* will know, and that's what matters.

This leads to the last two dancestor takedowns:

Karkat and Eridan (mostly Eridan) round on Kankri. Eridan calls him SO MANY SLURS. The fact that Karkat not only condones this, but is DATING ERIDAN, kind of makes Kankri lose it a bit.

(Karkat) and (Eridan), who have reconciled in the bubbles, finally find (Vriska) and Meenah. (Karkat) gives the two of them the speech that retcon!Vriska gave (Vriska) in the comic's original ending, but this time around, (Vriska) actually agrees with him. This serves as a conclusion to (Karkat) and Meenah's arc, and causes Meenah to feel so bad that she walks back to the other dancestors in shame, as (Vriska) leaves with him with the treasure to finally fight LE.

When Meenah returns to the dancestors, the first one she finds is Aranea, who's really sad about her own little escapade, blaming herself for the way Game Over went. This prompts Meenah to go, no, it was probably my fault, shouldn't have let you run off like that. And this would, from all the sobbing dancestors, prompt a string of "no, I'm the reason we failed"s, eventually culminating in Meenah rallying them together to do one last good thing before everyone gets sucked into the black hole and go join the fight against LE. Everyone agrees.

(Gamzee) is revived by the life players and cursed with immortality, so he can go on to become LE and complete that time loop. He is immediately locked in the fridge. This is also why he can't fucking die no matter what you do to him.

This also leads us into the final boss fights.

VS. CONDY

The twelve trolls. The Condesce represents tyranny, the worst aspects of the trolls' old society, and as such, is most thematically taken down by them. While she did fuck up the alpha kids' lives, too, I just personally think it's so much more thematic and satisfying to watch her be beaten down by the trolls.

VS. THE THREE JACKS

The eight kids plus Hal plus Davesprite. With Bec Noir specifically, it's fucking PERSONAL, as this guy killed their parents. This is where Dave fulfils his destiny of killing an iteration of English with his sword, when he decapitates Jack English; the person in the middle of that sandwich is Davesprite, which is how he dies and winds up in the bubbles. The iteration of Jack that survives to date Ms. Paint is Spades Slick, as he's the most sympathetic out of all of them and didn't kill anybody's parents.

At some point during this fight, I like the idea that they get zapped away by Jack English, John zaps them to the Godtier!Caliborn fight where he gets sealed in the juju, and then we cut back to the fight with Jack English, where, inexplicably, they all zap right back in.

VS. THE FELT

The spares - ARquiussprite, (Gamzee) in the fridge (who has since been revived by the life players and blessed/cursed with eternal life so he can go on to fulfill his role in the timelines and become part of LE), Dad, and the other sprites (if any of them are left alive).

VS. LORD ENGLISH

The GameOver!crew, the ghost army, the dancestors (they have a Big Damn Heroes moment right near the end, buying Jake time to deploy the Weapon), Aradiabot, and Davesprite.

Jake fulfills his destiny to defeat the Lord of all Angels by being the one to deploy the weapon, which deposits the beta kids, who knock LE in to the black hole. They then zap out of there, collecting the alpha kids from after the Caliborn fight, and zap back to the fight with the Jacks.

This specific configuration of boss battles winds up leaving Lord English entirely up to dead characters, who are then implied to all eventually get sucked into the black hole - their memories to live on through the living characters via Ultimate Selfhood, which only Nepeta achieves on screen, but implies that they will all achieve eventually.

It's important to me that the GameOver!crew is the one leading the fight against Lord English, as they're the ones who were the most screwed over by LE and his machinations - manipulated into killing each other, used as servants of his will, dying ignobly in a doomed timeline filled with special stardust. Meanwhile, the retcon!kids and trolls prove what they've learned - about compassion, kindness, equality, and forgiveness - by beating the shit out of the Condesce, who represents the horrors of Alternia, and the Jacks, especially Bec Noir and Jack English - the latter of which is a shadow of what Lord English represents - immaturity, cruelty, hatred - and the former of which is a culmination of all the failures they committed to get to this point, a symptom of their universal cancer.

I wrote a little snippet of Aradia once, and I think I'll use that to end this essay:

(ARADIA): ok now that we are all done being stupid (ARADIA): im sure enough people here remember the plan that i dont need to explain it again (ARADIA): so instead i just wanted to say (ARADIA): leave your backs to us and face forward without fear (ARADIA): the dead and irrelevant will slay the demon of double death while you unmake the threats of the living (ARADIA): and personally i think it's very fitting that he will perish here as nothing more than a bad dream (ARADIA): this will be the last time we see each other (ARADIA): so on behalf of everyone that you are going to be leaving behind (ARADIA): live (ARADIA): and be happy!

#homestuck #eridan ampora #karkat vantas #nepeta leijon #feferi peixes #kanaya maryam #gamzee makara #vriska serket #sollux captor #aradia megido #equius zahhak #tavros nitram #terezi pyrope #unfortunately i was not able to get my actual project done so i'll save that for 6/12 hahaha #but have this meager offering instead

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magistralucis · 4 months

Text

"I'm right here." - Trazyn/Orikan (requested by @beril66)

(Drabble for a prompt fill challenge, prompts available here.)

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They debate the pros and cons for a while, but in the end Orikan gets his wish, as he must've always known he would. Trazyn feels some kind of way about it. It's odd - as he gathers the necessary tools and heads to Orikan's quarters, he feels not a single smidgen of hatred, only the weight of dread mixed with weary concern. This is not how he would've characterized his sentiments towards the Diviner before any of this happened. He feels out of himself, frustratingly passive, inadequate.

"Orikan."

But if the Overlord of Solemnace is not adequate for this task, no one else will be. He desires breath, deletes the notion from his engrams, and enters.

Orikan is lying silently on the ground. Sannet is watching over him. Outwardly the astromancer is closer to restored - his primary servomechanisms have regained their function and the necrodermis 93% regenerated, the scratches buffed out and his carapace polished a rich turquoise - but Trazyn doesn't need to scan him to know that little about Orikan's mental state has changed. He sends an interstitial greeting, receives but a tiny blip in return. Trazyn dismisses his Arch-Cryptek with a nod, then with some effort, kneels down beside Orikan.

"Don't suppose you want it done to the tiles." He says out loud, more to himself than the astromancer, then dares the slightest touch with a fingertip upon the other's blackened spine. Orikan tenses, a shiver passing through his circuits. "I'll be gilding below those (gesturing at the three orbucula along his spine), then your clavicle-collar, and your headpiece. Has Sannet updated you on my process?"

A small nod. Trazyn heaves a sigh-analogue. Three whole decans have passed since that fateful battle, and just as long their cohabitation in Solemnace - but Orikan is still so afraid, and refuses all attempts to clarify the problem. Hardly an encouraging atmosphere where hands-on work is necessary. Still, for Orikan, he will do his best.

"... Good. If you've no other qualms, dear colleague, I will begin."

-----

They don't talk. Not about each other, not even loosely to fill the time. Trazyn's working at the same speed as his living self once did, which is rather slow for necron engrams, and in the absence of Orikan's jabs and insults he finds himself dwelling on the strangeness of the other's request. No one among their kind has needed to hand-gild anything since biotransference. Few individuals remember the art at all, and besides, they have decorator-scarabs for the purpose. Trazyn certainly isn't painting on his own raiments whenever he's damaged or switches bodies, and he loved gilding with his hands, it was his finest skill among the scribal arts.

But even when Trazyn lived the practice was considered old-fashioned. It's not an art he imagined Orikan, with his dislike of the past, would be caught dead asking for. Their world has shifted about them and maybe it's everything Trazyn has ever wanted, except he knows they're not the things Orikan would've usually wanted, and the thought of the other's discomfort bothers him more than he'd admit.

(Then again they never thought all that seriously about being caught dead, full stop.)

The hand holding the brush trembles. He is thinking illogically again.

(Trazyn only foolishly thought they had.)

Enough of this. Trazyn forcibly focuses his oculars elsewhere and redirects extra core-flux to his fine-motor actuators. It's easier because he's not facing Orikan. The spaces between the orbs and his spine are narrow, and while Trazyn can zoom in visually for the little details, he has no choice but to physically lean in close to actually let his brush pass over those areas. He tries to be discreet about it, but ultimately he must hold Orikan against him as he works, or else lie beside him for a clearer view.

He's seldom been this up close and personal with Orikan without dying. Nor with anyone else, not in this context: the living Trazyn's handiwork belonged to books and scrolls foremost, stone second, with the occasional jewelry-burnishing for interest. And even if he were only working on those (and not Orikan's body), remembering how it was done before is not the same as putting the work to practice, especially since Trazyn's current technique is different to how it was done before. There's a brush and there is gold, and therein ends the similarity. Trazyn's pigments are no longer bound with gum, but with fluid living metal, which adheres directly upon Orikan's body once painted. There is no need for varnish, nor the bite of regal acid, nor heat produced from anywhere other than their cores. Trazyn's own nanoscarabs are following along, tidying up the edges and weaving the gold layers into necrodermis at a subatomic level. His artisan's pride suggests a filigree finish, though his rational side suspects Orikan won't care for it.

Nevertheless he ought to bring it up at some point. It's a pretty touch, a dignified thing. Trazyn finishes gilding the lowest orbuculum down Orikan's spine, sits up with the faintest creak of his knee-cabling, moves away.

The astromancer's hand darts out of nowhere to grab his wrist.

Trazyn bristles. Literally bristles, the epidermic layer of his necrodermis rippling visibly as his subconscious prepares for an attack. It dies down as soon as he regards Orikan, and the immensity of the panic radiating from him; no need to run a diagnostic scry, nor even ask what's wrong, since the Diviner is incandescent with alarm-patterns from every functional node. Without a word Orikan drags himself to kneeling, crawls forwards - then collapses right against Trazyn's ribcage, clinging on for dear life, or whatever passes for its illusion nowadays.

"Orikan!" Trazyn's voice crackles, then fuzzes out of his vocal emitters entirely. It comes back dampened, soft, despite his best efforts. "What are you... oh... oh, damn it all."

There's no answer. But the point is loud and clear: Orikan needs his company, he won't be left alone. This was never about mere gilding - something happened to Orikan during the brief moments of his godhood, and Trazyn's presence is the only thing that's been grounding him ever since, for he's the one other proof Orikan has that the interdimensional horrors could be overcome. "I was only going to move to the other side, you know I wasn't going away." Trazyn says quietly as he puts down the brush, sitting up as straight as his back will allow. He supports the other's frail body in his arms and drapes one half of his cloak over him. "I'm right here, Orikan. It's all right."

They're pressed turquoise against turquoise, core-flux burning hot. Trazyn would not have believed, once upon a time, that such a happenstance could've occurred in any other context than his unfailing triumph over Orikan: he'd have been all too happy to see the Diviner crushed, made centrepiece or vassal or a slave, the gold and turquoise proof of his ownership more than anything else. Those fantasies feel distant now, like they're a different lifetime and a dozen different Trazyns away. In the present day Trazyn the Infinite is merely staring down at their hands, two charred and two unblemished, his oculars dim and sad as he clasps their fingers in comfort.

Fleetingly the archaeovist recalls this was how the Nihilakh nobility welcomed additions to the dynasty. The newcomer, usually a child or a foreign spouse, would be granted a ceremonial robing of the dynastic colours followed by gifts of gold and turquoise goods. Seal-rings for a new groom, hairpins for a bride, amulets and jeweled rattles and gold-embroidered toys for the newborn babes. Trazyn has never had cause to perform this ceremony himself and remembers nothing else about it, and he certainly doesn't think Orikan had anything like this in mind - but as far as welcoming Orikan to his household goes, he supposes this is the most benign way they could've gone about it.

"My dear Orikan." He soothes, watching the glimmer of Orikan's discharge nodes slowing to a quiet blink, and rests a warm palm atop the other's cranium. "I will not leave you. Take as long as you like."

-------------------

(Notes: This is a piece exploring a headcanon that Orikan wears Nihilakh colours because Trazyn gifted it to him post-TIATD, presumably during a recuperating period on or near Solemnace. Orikan got battered to hell and back during that battle, it's doubtful Trazyn would've let him go in that state; since I also enjoyed writing about necrontyr!Trazyn's scribal duties in Unravel recently, I've brought back the chrysography/hand-gilding angle for this piece. 🥰 It struck me as a low-key but very intimate image.)

#warhammer 40k #wh40k #trazyn the infinite #orikan the diviner #the infinite and the divine #the infinite and the divine spoilers #necrons #necron #drabble #prompt fill #i've been dwelling on the requests i've received during this week and finally they're coming to fruition... slowly! 😂💖#@beril66: i have your other requests but since they arrived in one ask i'm posting each fill separately in their own post #next up is some necrontyr sauciness 😘

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