What was it that you thought when you went home, John? Back to your real home? That the sky here is too bright? That it looks like someone nudged the contrast a couple degrees in the wrong direction? How does it look now? You died the moment you made the decision to go meet your destiny.
The objective reality of that life might be in dispute by some of the more pedantic canonistas out there. They know who they are. That was the actual choice Calliope was giving you that day. Terezi kneels at your side. She cries quietly, and waits for you to say whatever dumb shit is rattling around in your poison-addled mind.
It rustles through the trees, breaking the perfect silence of an autumn afternoon. You try to touch her face, but you can barely see now. You miss, and lovingly caress the air instead. Your hand lands back on your chest. You feel blood soaking through your shirt. JOHN: i always hoped that if i was in this position Once there, he requests the use of the fastest Skaianet starship available.
Jake, who is now completely and openly infatuated with Dirk, and who believes that he will be coming along on this voyage, readily obliges. Dirk gives him the bad news: English will be staying behind with Jane, ready to serve as the father to countless generations of her new presidential dictatorship.
He kisses Jake one last time, saying that they will never meet again. Back at Dave and Karkat's house, the two mourn their political careers. The commiseration session takes a turn for the personal, and they discuss their relationship, subtly and not-so-subtly egged on by an impatient Dirk. The two affirm their friendship, but this time it's not enough. For once in his life, Dave takes the initiative. They kiss. Davekat is canon. Kanaya and Roxy visit Jade in hospital.
Calliope, who was negatively affected by the presence of their dead alternate self, has since shut themself in at home and begun religiously scrawling on the walls. Kanaya gives Jade the antidote, and she wakes up. Jade, who is now somehow aware of Dirk's influence, declares that he must be stopped. Dirk agrees with her, claiming his role as the villain of the story outright. He accepts the intrinsic antagonism of his narrative power, and has decided to carry that antagonism to its natural conclusion.
He states that his eventual death will be Just. Kanaya realizes the extent of Dirk's manipulation, but it is too late. He is already gone. The dead cherub resumes her possession of Jade, and seizes the narrative once more. Though she has sworn neutrality, she points the remaining players in the direction that Dirk, Rose and Terezi have fled. Kanaya, Roxy, Dave and Karkat resolve to give chase. Years later, we see Dirk, Rose now in a robot body and Terezi approach a new planet.
The most important Sburb session in the history of existence is about to unfold. Meanwhile, inside the black hole, another timeline has been in progress. In this timeline, John chooses to eat candy at the picnic instead of meat. Upon doing so, he starts feeling sweet and sentimental about the time with his friends that he missed out on while holed up at home, and which he now risks sacrificing by leaving.
This failure to validate canon leads John to suspect that his existence is somehow insubstantial and meaningless. Calliope distracts him with one final task: he must rescue Gamzee, who she insists deserves to begin his redemption arc immediately. John reluctantly does so, retrieving him from the final moments before the events of [S]: Collide. Back on Earth C, Gamzee is set free from the fridge and declares his redemption arc begun. He claims that every bad thing he had ever done was simply due to extenuating circumstances beyond his control.
Roxy and Calliope are taken in by this transparent bullshit. Not buying this foolishness for a second, John texts Terezi out in the furthest ring. The two privately dunk on Gamzee, who begins attracting the attention of civilians with his performative contrition. John's decision not to validate the truth of canon does not go unnoticed. Dirk, as his ascended self, is shaken by this profound undermining of his own narrative significance.
He calls Jane, tells her to cancel her presidential bid, and goes off the grid. Jane visits Jake at his mansion, where he has been getting drunk and shooting things.
They discuss Dirk's strange behavior and sudden disappearance. As Jane joins in with Jake's day drinking, she attempts to seduce him but is ignored. Not to be denied, she resorts to using the terrible power of the trickster lollipop. The two sleep together. When they come to, Jake is alarmed by his lack of consent in the matter--Jane manages to talk him into a committed relationship.
Rose wakes up, miraculously recovered from her illness. She and Kanaya renew their vows of love to one another. Soon after, they visit the brooding caverns and find a newly hatched grub which bears a striking resemblance to Vriska Serket. Jade gives the news of Jane's political withdrawal to Dave and Karkat. They all agree that this is a welcome development. Jade proceeds to aggressively flirt with Dave and Karkat. They both agree that this is a very unwelcome development.
She then drags the two of them out on a date, pressuring their feelings even further. Eventually it becomes unbearable--Karkat throws a tantrum, and Dave simply fucks off. John and Roxy go on a coffee date.
Gamzee soon interferes, offering to act as John's wingman while Roxy is in the bathroom. John is naturally disgusted by this. Gamzee leaves and John surreptitiously texts Terezi about it until Roxy returns. Dave then interrupts, taking John outside and asking for advice on handling his relationship with Jade and Karkat. John can't give him a satisfying answer. Dave decides he needs to talk to his bro, and goes to his studio. There he finds Gamzee, as well as a note left by Dirk.
Dave's worst fears are realized as Dirk kills himself by hanging in public, his death automatically proving Just due to his self-hatred. At Dirk's funeral, Dave gives a conflicted but heartfelt speech which Gamzee immediately defiles with his own eulogy. John leaves in disgust right on time to interrupt a crucial moment of intimacy between Dave and Karkat outside.
John offers to retcon Dirk's death but Dave refuses. Once Dave and Karkat leave at Jade's call, John notices that he can't seem to use his retcon powers at all. Roxy comes outside and proposes to John, which he accepts. John texts Terezi, but a timeflow difference between the interior of the black hole and the furthest ring outside it results in them speaking again six months after the wedding takes place. John reveals Roxy is now pregnant with their first child.
In the meantime Jade's relationship with Dave and Karkat has not been going well. Jane's bizarre three-way with Jake and Gamzee is even worse. Unaware that he is speaking to Terezi from inside the black hole, John tries to convince her to return to Earth C.
He shared a fierce sibling rivalry with his younger brother and raised him harshly, to the point of his behavior being considered abuse by Andrew Hussie. He and Jake were revealed to be dating for some months after entering the medium, but when the story resumed from their perspective, Jake was shown to feel uneasy about the relationship.
After [S] Collide, Dirk and Jake confront each other and seem to talk through their relationship. Dave Strider is a rare type of person. He is an albino. Fantastic Racism : Species-to-species racism is referred to as "xenophobia" by Earth C's inhabitants. Jane is repeatedly called out for being a xenophobe to trolls, as her plans as president involve imposing a tight control over their reproduction. As Candy goes on, it becomes increasingly blatant that she is against trollkind as a whole, calling their whole species "insects.
Lampshaded with the Archive of Our Own parody introduction page. Played with in that the endings, if anything, leave even more loose ends and end up with things in a darker state than the beginning. Foreshadowing : In one of the commentaries for the printed Homestuck books, Hussie makes mention of the phrase "meat or candy" as referencing what makes up a story - the hard hitting events and the character developing fluff before adding that "it's not time to talk about this yet".
Internally within the epilogues themselves, this can happen if you read the Candy path first. Muse Calliope, possessing a dead instance of Jade - who is from the Meat route - discusses with Aradia the nature of narrative voices, and how the nature of a narrative can be retroactively altered when the narration is revealed to be a character in themselves. In the Meat narrative, it's revealed that the narrator is Dirk and he is actively controlling the narrative to force his friends along the path of his own design, until Muse Calliope arrives and overrides his control for a time.
A few pages back in Act 6 of Homestuck heavily foreshadow the events of the epilogues. The narration describes the book as a tough, emotionally draining read that's cathartic in all the worst ways possible, which is the entire concept of Meat in a nutshell. The Prologue is prefaced with a parody of the Archive of our Own interface, complete with a tag list.
Many of them are a given such as the eight human players and most of the post-scratch trolls , but some tags seem odd, like "gerrymandering," "breastfeeding," "vore," and Barack Obama being listed as a character.
These tags aren't exactly jokes, as they do appear within the Epilogues at one point or another. Good Powers, Bad People : Jane, who can resurrect the dead , becomes an unethical politician in Meat and a full-out monster in Candy.
Growing Up Sucks : A major theme. The challenges of Sburb were far easier to deal with than the challenges of adulthood, and the characters fail more than they succeed. Hard Truth Aesop : Sometimes political differences make friendships impossible, and not everyone you were close to as a teen will grow up to be a good person.
Happy Ending Override : Good Lord yes! According to Hussie, this is, of course, one of the major themes of the work: Because, as certain characters go to some length to elaborate on, you can't tell new stories without reestablishing significant dramatic stakes: new problems to overcome, new injustices to correct, new questions to answer. There can be no sense of emotional gratification later without first experiencing certain periods of emotional recession.
And by peeking into the imagined realm of "happily ever after" to satisfy our curiosity, we discover that our attention isn't so harmless, because the complexities and sorrows of adult life can't be ignored. Nor can the challenges of creating a civilization from scratch, when several teenagers are handed god-status.
It turns out the gaze we cast from the sky of Earth C to revisit everyone isn't exactly friendly, like warm sunlight.
It's more like a ravaging beam, destructive and unsettling to all that could have been safely imagined. Our continued attention is the very property which incites new problems, and the troublemakers appear to be keenly aware of this. Rose: You will need to travel back into canon and defeat Lord English. Tropes Applying to the Meat Epilogue. Actually Pretty Funny : When Dirk expresses fascination that Roxy thinks Calliope is beautiful, Calliope's alternate self expands on this by narratively giving Roxy a wish to remind Calliope they're beautiful every single day.
Despite their antagonism, Dirk laughs at this. And the Adventure Continues : Deliberately invoked. Dirk reasons that without continued conflict and a goal for the protagonists to chase, the story will end, and therefore in his view stop mattering. So he makes himself the new villain, brainwashes Rose and manipulates Terezi to join him, and runs off into space to set up the "most important Sburb session ever played," with the other main characters in hot pursuit.
Possibly unbeknownst to him, Muse Calliope is also chasing him down, accompanied by Aradia and Davebot. Auto Erotica : John and Terezi hook up in a car. Bathroom Stall of Angst : Facetiously referenced when Dave says "brb gonna hit the toilet for a quick power sob" when Karkat doesn't listen to his suggestion. Card-Carrying Villain : During his final soliloquoy, Dirk Strider explicitly calls himself a villain who needs to be stopped. Dropped a Bridge on Him : Past! Rose and Vriska are taken out early into the Lord English fight.
In the case of the latter, this is because Dirk was tired of Vriska hogging the spotlight and wanted to permanently remove her from the narrative. She ends up being taken to the Candy timeline. Dying Declaration of Love : John dies halfway through confessing his love for Terezi. He bites off Dave's head, and attempts to swallow John whole, though John escapes.
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