thelifetimechannel
Homestuck: Double Death of the Author
In which two fans cope with the end of Homestuck by writing their own big damn ending. Because we can. Created by a Seer of Life and a Seer of Time.
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Note
I loved your ideas for John, Rose, and Dave's Ancestral weapons; did you ever draft up ideas for the other five?
(Assuming you're responding to the weapons alchemized on these pages.) I messaged Gill about this and haven't gotten a response yet but I can at least say that Jade's creation was going to be a Bec-themed variation on her Iron Lass suit that would've shown up in one of the full combat flashes. I suspect Gill still has sketches somewhere if I can get ahold of her.
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so this question came to mind after noticing a pattern with 3 other fanventures related to either extending the ending or continuing the story, but if you were to give Damara a major role in this story (i know it won't happen but still curious) what would it be?
I'll admit very early on in the planning process we knew the dancestors would not play a big part in the story, so we never put much thought into Damara's role. Casting my mind way back... I feel like my take with her was that she'd gotten such a bad hand (Time player in a session fated to be scratched who thus couldn't make anything work even if they tried, bullied relentlessly, stuck in a dead end afterlife) that she fully embraced Time-as-dead-kids and wanted Lord English to hurry entropy up and let them go, similar to the Handmaid throwing her fight with the Empress. If I were to stick with that reading I suppose one way to bring her into play would be if we'd given Team Dreaming Dead more screentime and pitched her perspective against theirs in a 'why do you bother' confrontation, or even as an active antagonist working against them to draw English nearer, creating more of a ticking clock for Team Waking World to play against. That being said a common critique of TLC is that we spent too much time on philosophical debates (I regret nothing) so perhaps it's for the best we did not do that.
Given in her Demoness role she was seen as an omen of impending disaster, it might have been nice for one version of her to get to observe Lord English's destruction. Maybe she'd eventually come to some sort of truce with Team Dreaming Dead, or if she stuck with fatalism, she'd show up at the finale and they'd go 'oh no I guess you're here to help Lord English' only for her to reveal no, she wants that bastard dead too. She wants Time's destruction to come for us all, but especially him. He's had it coming for a long, long time.
#sorry I don't have anything more for you!#tlc mail#tag edit: also I do not feel comfortable addressing whatever was going on with the Sexy Asian Schoolgirl thing at All
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derseprinceoftbd
Weird question, but what are Gill's pronouns? I remember a post from way back that said something about Gill being "probably a woman" or something like that
From Gill directly:
She/they but I’m not picky, lol
#replies#derseprinceoftbd#I also use she/they mostly bc I have to be she/her at work#ideally I would be a cloud of gas or something
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(I come from a literature and music background while Gill comes from an art background so the behind the scenes power struggle of every S page was just)
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Happy holidays! [S] Checkmate timing test
These timings match up with Tensei's "Of Gods and Witches":
Before the battle we see WV greeting AR and being super excited. AR is kinda baffled but gratified. We see their former memories in the clouds, maybe WV points to them?
Jane, Nanna, and Kanaya target bigger undead monsters. Casey's undead consort army shows up when they are almost overwhelmed. Rose and Roxy both slap their foreheads in comic dismay.
Karkat, Terezi, and the carapaces are ground troops against regular underlings.
Remaining Alpha kids are air support against flighted underlings.
Hal is hanging out taking messages from everyone directing battle traffic.
The preloader shows the Battlefield, surrounded by those weird checkboard vine things. It should be just crowded and dark enough to imply a serious sense of foreboding. Upon the flash loading, the Battlefield spins and zooms as the music starts.
SCREEN 1: 00:00-00:05 Pan up across a wide shot of the kids in various battle positions on the battlefield. Aerial combantants (Terezi, Hal, Davesprite, and the Alpha kids sans Jane and plus Calliope. Kat note: Davesprite’s on the lilypad. Matches last convo, and also, he’s a beta too :P) are around the scene. Karkat and WV stand on top of a hill, WV holding a waving red flag. The Beta kids are standing on a lilypad in center screen.
SCREEN 2: 00:05-00:09 On the chord, pan down across the kids on the lilypad, all in battle ready poses with weapons out
SCREEN 3: 00:09-00:15 On the chord, the opposite side of the hill we just saw WV and Karkat on. Pan to the right hand side. They stand on top of the hill. Scrolling by at differing speeds to the background hill are Jane (holding her fork made from the White King’s scepter), Kanaya, and Nanna. WV’s army of carapacians is gathered around them.
Screen 4: 00:15-00:19 On the chord, worm’s eye view of The Alpha kids and Calliope in the sky.
Screen 5: 00:19-00:21 A view of the underling army approaching: think the carapacian armies in flashes such as WV: Rise Up, where the hills are all separate layers that do a lot of panning. A mix of undead Alpha session underlings mingle with the Beta session’s horde of monsters.
Screen 6: 00:21-00:23 A bird’s eye view down onto the Beta’s lilypad.
Screen 7: 00:23-00:26 Third drumbeat Jane raises the scepter to begin the Reckoning. A red filter descends over the sky and contrasting green defense portals appear on the final drumbeat before the flute. A few streaks of meteors can be seen. The Reckoning has begun.
Screen 8: 00:26-00:28 As little synthesizer pretending to be a flute plays a first solemn note, the red filter descends further, the Betas look up to Jack fly overhead. They pan up, Jack moves down.
Screen 9: 00:28-00:32 On the second synthesized flute note, Jack lands on the platform.
Screen 10: :32-:34 The Betas and the ground pan down, Jack pans up. PM lands either in front or behind them
Screen 11: :34-:37 The background turns chaotic and red as Jack’s health vial appears. It’s already huge, as befitting of a final boss. It fills with vitality gel, but when it reaches the end, it laps itself and starts filling again in a different color.
Screen 12: :37-:41 Cut to a wide shot of the lillypad hovering over the battlefield. Clouds flit by, meteors fall, a crowd of underlings is trampling their way from right to left across the screen. STRIFE ROUND _ _ _ pops up at the bottom and numbers start spinning, eventually settling on ??? so that you don't know whether John had to reset to get this outcome or how many times.
:41 Slamming back to the lilypad, where John has his first engagement w Jack. This is done in a style of sprite similar to Rose’s fight with Jack pre-Cascade. They lock sword to hammer.
:45 Planetside, the Mayor raises his hand and Karkat raises his sickle and yells something. The carapace army advances against a horde of mixed underlings.
00:48 A general group of carapaces rushing forward.
00:50 Carpacean and underling footsoldiers meet. Remember: Carapaces on the left, underlings on the right!
00:52 Kanaya and Jane face off against a bunch of undead. Kanaya with her chainsaw, Jane with lifey powers glowing around her hands.
00:56 Transition by having John’s hammer and Jack’s sword meet on screen, and with a flash, we cut back to them.
00:56-00:58: With a series of blows in time with the guitar notes, John moves Jack rightwards across the screen.
00:58 John takes off Jack’s hat, but gets knocked back.
1:00 John jumps into metaphorical shadows of the background and Rose slides in, needles at the ready.
1:03-1:09: Rose takes off a tentacle. It would be amusing to try and have some kind of callback to her previous fight with Jack here.
1:10 Dirk, Roxy, Jake airborne. vs flighted underlings. This would be a good moment for a fraymotif: Jake gets the idea to use it, and either performs his and Dirk’s Caccia Amore (a buff whereby they swap glowy power auras and cleave through a group of underlings no problem) or his and Roxy’s Shot in the Dark (trapping a group of underlings in a black voidy version of Jake’s hope bubble and ricocheting bullets inside until they’re all grist).
1:26 Show planetside combat. Cool moments for people:
Karkat drags a few airborne underlings down with Blood powers for his army to trample.
Terezi does some sort of mindy thing perhaps to direct Jane and Kanaya
-The second of Jake’s two fraymotif ideas. Because you know, he’s the only one who was actually seen buying his, and Act 5 is pretty goddamn clear Fraymotifs are purchased from consorts.
-General note: While the kids can be doing good, the underlings have to be putting up a fair fight, with the tide of battle turning to the underlings’ favor once Jack uses the Miles. Otherwise the Crisis Point looks like it comes out of nowhere for no good reason.
JACK PLATFORM
1:40 Dave + Davesprite versus Jack. Davesprite takes off a wing and Dave gets his sword. Jack tries to bludgeon Dave with his massive healthbar…
1:50: Jack getting his health bar lopped in half by Dave. (NOTE: Dave does not participate in direct offensive attacks, only defense)
1:58: Jack summons the Red Miles, which destabilizes the lilypad, throws all the betas off balance, and punches holes in the lilypad. Terezi's jetpack is hit and she crashlands.
~2:05~ Crisis point
2:12 dirk gets decapitated like a dumbass.
2:13 rxn shot: Roxy is like why tf did u do that
2:15 Kanaya and Jane chainsaw their way out of an Underling Jane revive-killed a little too late, leaving them trapped in its ribcage. They’re pinned as soon as they emerge. Don’t worry, I’ll be making the gore sooty and ashy because Gill has done enough gore-things.
2:17 Karkat's army is cornered by a bunch of tough looking underlings. Looking up at the sky, meteors are hurtling towards the surface.
2:21 General pan of the carnage, ppl looking desperate
2:27 JACK PLATFORM On the Crescendo: Dave raises a hand and a bunch of Skaian defense portals glow red. Zoom into one to picture of Earth with the time ticker showing time passing.
2:30 On the crescendo: GB!Jade pops through the portal with the meteor and nabs the planet, then leaves the way she came. THEN the meteors shoot through, passing harmlessly through empty space.
2:34 Use as transition to Jade’s attack (keep the meteor but change the background), grabbing meteors and blasting them through/around Jack
2:40 PM and Jack dueling, but PM getting knocked back
2:42-2:50: A montage of tired and pinned kids (Jane reviving Dirk goes here):
2:50: Jade and PM look @ each other and nod.
2:50 As the drums kick up, PM charges the screen, providing transition for Jade’s retreats into the sky.
2:52 Jade hovers. A fraymotif circle appears beneath her while the former-Becs are seen on the lillypad below.
2:53 Cut to below her: The Spacey thing can be seen in the sky, but something comes over the hills in dramatic fashion. Cheers love, cavalry’s here The hills and the army rise until they’re in frame, Casey at the helm.
2:57 is the reveal shot with the low strings.
3:01 As the drums swell, Casey orders them to charge. They go for the underlings’ flank, a wide shot showing skeletons mobbing underlings.
3:03 A reaction shot of the two armies meeting.
3:05 Roxy and Rose slap their foreheads in a show of comic dismay, but Rose looks down in surprise to see a fraymotif circle under her feet.
3:08 In time with the Savior chords, the boys also notice the fraymotifs circles under them.
3:11: The camera cuts back to a wide shot of the battlefield to display the name of the 4-person motif: Unite Synchronize. No, shush, I know what I’m doing.
3:12 Jade gets some big ol’ insta-runes lighting up behind her.
3:13 PM and Jack fly awhile before PM suddenly takes off into the open void. Jack is confused, looking around for her. He looks up.
3:19 Activating lock-on fraymotif thing, comprised of the Light and Time circles. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.
3:22 Rose and Dave, with their insta-runes.
3:23 John nyooms in front of Jade and activates his own insta-runes. I definitely know what I’m doing, stop looking at me like that.
3:26: Space + Breath instarunes light up and spin in a way that can only mean FRIKKIN LASER BEAMS.
3:28: Zoom out, through the various flavors of instarunes, out to Jack who’s in the dead bulls-eye of all of them.
3:30 He tries to evade, but Light + Time mean there’s a dead lock-on on him.
3:32: Well clear of the blast, all four kids do a gesture that sets off the beam.
3:34 MAXIMUM BULLSHIT ACHIEVED: THE GIANT LASERBEAM OF FRIENDSHIP
We see it go off from a few angles in time with the beat and get Jack caught in the crossfire at 3:38 , taking off another tentacle and wing.
3:40: After getting laserblasted, Jack stumbles back, weakened, only to look up and see
3:42: HEY THERE, PM. She flies at him, just above the beam, sword ready and the camera zooming in each successive chord.
3:46 On the second to last chord, Jack raises his one arm and broken sword in defense: on the last chord, there’s a shot of them in the frame together, rush at one another-
3:50 Everything goes white; SHE STRIKES and fades in on her in the aftermath of a sword stroke, having taken Jack’s hand.
3:53: Everything sloooows down and Jack slowly falls to the ground away from his detached hand.
3:57 A shot of the battlefield with all the enemies dissolving as Jack falls.
04:03 On the low piano key, pulses and the battlefield goes from a torn red hellscape to normal. As the flash ends, it fades to a final screen before the replay button appears: a battlefield scene with the lillypad in the foreground transitions to the victory platform, where a green house stands. No, I don’t care if Hussie’s was red: It’s the Beta kids’ fight, the Beta kids’ regent, the Beta kids’ Battlefield, the Beta kids’ frog, and the Beta kids’ STORY - it’s the Beta kids’ green house on that goddamn victory platform.
FLASH ENDS
#there are two different versions of this timing test in my files lol#my original notes had the turning point/defense portals at 2:49 which I think is more musically appropriate#but those got moved for Gill's giant laser beam of friendship which.#hey if making it very anime will get her to actually draw it eventually so be it#I am still enamored with Jack getting disarmed and trying to clobber Dave with his extra health bar#bonus content
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i have always wondered did you have any specific songs in mind when making the storyboards for the yet unfinished flashes? (going from the one against Jack towards the one with English's defeat) (also hi i've asked like 3 or 4 questions before in the last year or so but didn't have an actual account back then, now that i do i wanted to thank you again so much for creating such a masterpiece. favorite fanventure of all time i love it, still wanna make an unofficial collection mod for it TwT)
Yes, we did!
[S] Checkmate's track was Of Gods and Witches. I know that for a fact. Iirc, [S] Converge was A Taste of Adventure? and [S] Ascend is, unsurprisingly, Ascend.
Also you know what? As a holiday gift and perhaps a subtle encouragement for Gill to get back to drawing for it, I shall post our annotated timings for Checkmate. Stand by.
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dierker
if the images were stored on st.ash, mspfa no longer supports it as they randomly broke a ton of peoples urls. i had to reupload a couple hundred pages of mine lol
Well that's fun! Gill informs me that some of our pages were indeed hosted on stash, so I guess we will figure out how many of them and fix the damage as we reflect once more on the trials and tribulations of longtime digital storage.
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hey sry to bother but it seems that in the mspfa site the pictures in the last page comic seem to be broken, from what ive heard that happend with alot of adventures on the site so id guess id prob happend from that
Oh dear. If it's a sitewide issue I'll monitor it for a few days to see if they can fix it on their end, otherwise I'll try to get ahold of Gill for her to reupload the images. Thanks for the heads up!
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Actually, while we're on the topic, not to blow my own horn, but I think I've noticed a revival method literally nobody else has: if, as is not an uncommon assumption, the Black Queen's Ring is the Ring Of Void is the Ring Of Life...
Then what about the *White* Queen's Ring?
Certainly to my knowledge (I do not follow anything HS2 related) the ring situation remains ambiguous. The rings of life and void being one and the same was a common theory and one TLC invoked (I used to be able to provide a clear timeline of its travels in our comic; that time has long passed) which would leave the White Queen's ring unaccounted for. Alternatively it's possible that the ring of void is the Black Queen's ring and the ring of life is the White Queen's. Since afaik canon never takes a stance, the possibility is certainly open for fanworks!
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(I'm sorry if I ask too many questions.)
If you had the mechanical possibilities, would you have Vriska live or die? Why or why not? I'm sketching out ideas for a rewrite thing somewhat based on yours, and in mine 9 Trolls would live, with Feferi and Gamzee definitely fully dying; I theoretically could write the means to give Vriska the Ring, but I'm wondering what her death would add or subtract? Do you feel her final death was a choice you would have made on your own, or was it your conclusion to her under the necessary caveat of Canon-3 year retcon=dead Vriska? (I've always struggled with the idea of redemption and survival in my fic and original writing, the easy way out versus the possibility of an overly saccharine ending.)
I don't mind the questions! It is a mental workout sometimes to cast my mind back so far, but luckily I did a writeup on this back when it happened!
In summary, I'm sure I could've found a way (rules lawyering weird loopholes is my passion) but if we brought back Vriska we were bringing back everyone, and that's not the route we wanted to take.
I was very much not trying to do a redemption through death, though - Vriska had a long time in the bubbles to short her shit out, and by the time TLC ends, I think she'd done a good job of it. Her double dying wasn't her being 'redeemed', it was her taking one last bow before the dreamers left the stage. It does rankle me a bit that both Thieves in TLC die sacrificially, because I didn't want to imply that's the only 'good' end for the personality type, but it's how the cards (literal index cards) fell.
#'Redemption' is a messy topic in writing and fandom#and imo it's most important that a character understands what they did wrong#stops doing it#and tries to do better#rather than some dramatic gesture that everyone is forced to accept bc they're gone now#Vriska spent a long chunk of her afterlife laboring outside the spotlight to help people#The lightshow at the end was a bonus#tlc mail
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So these are just my personal takes, knowing that I don't have the zany flair of the canon act names:
A6A6I4: OP3R4T1ON R3G1SURP 2
Fairly straightforward. The bulk of the act is them defeating the Empress, and their battle map also functions as a title drop.
A6A65: A GALLERY SHOWCASING MY STUNNING SUCCESSES
Or some variation thereof. This subact is framed as Caliborn's art show, so imagine the most obnoxiously pretentious gallery show name you can think of. I am not plugged in enough to the art world to make a good joke here.
A6A6I5: let's win the game, guys!
That's the name of the bulletin board memo the kids open for coordination purposes and listen, we had a lot of fun coming up with other memo topics and then writing chaotic group convos. I wish to recognize one of TLC's most iconic (to me) running gags.
A6A6A6: Cherubquest
Our original unofficially named act.
A6A6I6: Sunlight on the other side
In her conversation on the beach with Kanaya, Rose mentions that they're getting close to passing through the victory door and seeing real sunlight on the other side. It's a phrase I always liked, and the vibe of A6A6I6 is 'we are so close to the finish line', with things finally looking up for our heroes.
A7: The Overhead
This is extremely self-indulgent, but I at one point toyed with 'the Overhead' as a villain name for Skaia because a) it's eight letters like ancestor titles, b) Skaia is literally hanging over their heads, and c) in business lingo the overhead is the indirect, ongoing cost of doing business, and the conclusion of TLC involves challenging the costs SBURB and Skaia expect children to bear. Given that the children are paying that price, maybe a better name would be The Overhead Strikes Back...
Besides Cherubquest, what names would you give your Acts+Intermissions?
That's a great question, actually.... we never formally or informally named any other sequences beyond Cherubquest (unless you count the Alpha session bitchfest.) Give me a few days to contemplate this.
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What are your thoughts on Hussie's statement about Rose's arc here(https://www.tumblr.com/the-meat-machine/734661517556006912)? I see the typical attitude of the book commentary beyond the technical as "no I swear this was totally all planned out and VERY DEEP and I deserve ALL THE CREDIT for the most positive readings because my ideas are TOTALLY INTENTIONAL and I am not just a shitposter who took fame poorly I swear", but what do you think of the interpretation itself? It's certainly a basic idea about her arc that you don't exactly lean into, and while your handling of Rose was of course more satisfying and coherent in execution than Canon's, do you feel like this is an idea you agree with that you might have "left behind" when plotting her arc out, as it were? Or as a less-than-coherent post-hoc justification? Also do Asks have a size limit I'm sorry thus is so long
While I found lategame HS's 'real people don't have arcs' stance to be a handwavy way to excuse dropping all the characters the author didn't care about, I'm fairly content with this commentary, actually. Rose's rejection of SBURB starts early, and her choice to destroy her gate and start ripping apart her land's nice themed puzzles was a good turning point for her and the story. SBURB does not play fair. It does not have your best interests in mind. Why not start gutting it?
You might reasonably ask, if I feel this way, why did we go back to the planet quests in TLC? Three reasons:
Structure. As should be extremely obvious from TLC's everything, we were far more interested in character-based emotional exploration and closure than Dramatic Plot Shit. However, we were trying to bring a very long and increasingly messy story to a conclusion in a reasonable number of pages, and SBURB's tasks and quests provided meaningful goals for the characters to accomplish. They were, in many ways, busywork that we could use to force the characters to act and interact.
An excuse. SBURB's attempts to reflect players' psyches and anxieties meant we could use the land quests to force the characters to confront their issues in very direct ways while lampshading it the whole time. Yes this whole adventure is very metaphorically on the nose! Blame SBURB!
Spectacle. Because our goals for TLC were so character dev-oriented, and because I am so longwinded I never established a twitter presence, we wanted some kind of visual interest to break up 1500 pages of characters having long-winded emotional discussions. Whatever your thoughts are on Rose's obligation to play the rain, it looked pretty cool.
So having Rose play the rain - and forcing the other kids to complete their planet quests - was mostly a choice made out of narrative convenience, and although I have many problems with canon's ending, Rose ditching her quest for good is not one of them. However, I definitely did not want to force Rose to become a good, obedient SBURB player who happily ushers a new world into its clutches. Which is why the true final boss of TLC is SBURB/Skaia itself, and Rose gets to lead the effort to dismantle it.
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Besides Cherubquest, what names would you give your Acts+Intermissions?
That's a great question, actually.... we never formally or informally named any other sequences beyond Cherubquest (unless you count the Alpha session bitchfest.) Give me a few days to contemplate this.
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ltparsons
These posts are mostly empty if you view them on dashboard, but look ok on the blog itself. Recent Tumblr updates broke something, it seems. I suspect square brackets as the culprit - post with the links don't have any square bracket comments.
Well that's incredibly obnoxious. Hopefully tumblr will resolve whatever they broke quickly, but I suppose for now, view the posts on the blog?
I still haven't forgiven them for breaking all my nice color coding and formatting. You don't want to know how long that took.
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Hey. The Alt-Caliborn storyline posts seem to be...gone? Like, the actual Pesterlogs you made appear to be gone if I go through the links.
Huh, interesting. The links on this page? They're all working fine for me in two different browsers. I'm not sure what the problem could be.
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Wouldn't it be amazing if there was a way to port DDOTA into the unofficial collection as a mod or something? I've just been thinking how awesome it'd be to have it there more accessible and archived just in case. Also so newer HS fans could get the chance to read it too ^u^
I noticed when the Unofficial Homestuck Collection first came out that MSPFAs were listed on the support for additional content checklist! I've kept an eye on it but haven't seen much progress in that direction, and it's not an area where I have a lot of technical skill, but people would certainly have my blessing if they wanted to archive or mod in DDOTA/TLC! Digital preservation is always a best practice, and while the people running MSPFA have put in amazing amounts of work, you never know.
(It could even function as a bit of a stress test, perhaps. I am fondly recalling the time we had to contact the MSPFA team while posting the Alpha session bitchfest because one of our pages had too much text for the site to handle and they had to update the code.)
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derseprinceoftbd
@thelifetimechannel anyone else or just the two green-eyes
I don't recall if we had any magnets of Caliborn or Gamzee, but if so they would've gotten exiled to the microwave near the end there, since our take was that the cue ball broke up Lord English's physical form and turned them into souls without bodies. That's why they're both shown with black eyes rather than white eyes in the walkaround, as in our version of ghost lore we established Calliope's black eyes were because she was a soul cut off from its body rather than a soul whose body was dead.
... Given that, in retrospect we should've made soulripped!Jake's eyes black, which would have been fitting given the whole gouging thing. Missed opportunity!
#derseprinceoftbd#replies#jake: creepy black eye sockets#dirk: hm. gross *tries to put shades over them* *they fall through*#tlc mail
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