Homestuck/Fridge

> TAKE INVENTORY PLUNDERED FROM THE BREEZE OF A THERMAL HULL

As you grab yourself some Fruit Trollups, a revelation suddenly dawns upon you...

This page is so empty because Homestuck actually has all the examples, even though examples aren't an exhaustively quantifiable thing and we both fucking know that, and either way they can't all be listed here.

A popular series of threads on the forum dedicated to fridge-based revelations are the "Obvious Things You Missed" threads, currently on the eighth thread.

For Fridge Logic, go to Homestuck/Headscratchers.

Fridge Brilliance
"T"

The thick continuity inspires this a lot.

"When the world looks kind of weird and you wish that you weren't there, Just close your eyes and make believe, and you can be anywhere!"
 * At the beginning of Act 1, John lacks a pair of arms, and you, the player, command him to retrieve arms from his chest. Out of sympathy for his lack of arms, you move the cake off his magic chest using your mouse, signified with the hand icon moving the cake. However, retrieving his arms reveal John holding his FAKE arms with his REAL arms. Now, say as a player, you never played this game called Homestuck, and never issued commands to retrieve his arms. Would he be forever armless without your command? No, he always possessed arms; its the character design that makes John look armless. The Fridge Brilliance arrives though when you realize the hand icon that represents the mouse could also represent his pair of hands moving the cake onto the bed. Compare that to the Fridge Horror of being John and witnessing a cake fly off your chest after hearing voices recently command you to retrieve your arms...shudder.
 * There's also a bit of Fridge Logic in place, as you later find the Exiles can only type—there's no mouse on WV's terminal.
 * MouseKeys.
 * Also, you could say his arms were on the chest. They were attached to his chest all along, even if they weren't visible.
 * For example, consider the crowning of Peregrine Mendicant as Queen of Exile Town. It may seem like a simple Awesome Moment of Crowning, but if you recall in the past that PM? managed to infiltrate the throne room of Derse and survived to become the Mendicant, and keep the Chess Motifs in mind, it becomes a lot clearer why she deserves the crown.
 * For those not familiar with Chess, there's a rule where if a pawn makes it to the opposite side of the board, they can be promoted to a more powerful piece (almost always chosen to be a queen).
 * More accurately, one can switch out the pawn with a previously captured piece. Think on that for a bit.
 * Actually, no. A pawn that reaches the end of the board is simply "promoted" into a better piece, not switched out for one already captured. (People usually use an already captured piece because, well, you only have so many chessmen.)
 * This fancomic spells out just how well PM's adventures fit the 'chess pawn' theme.
 * It also makes sense, because the Medicant is a pawn at the time, which means that she can't do anything to those that are behind her, so the droll when pickpocketing her will succeed no matter what because that's how chess is played.
 * Pawns can only move forward until someone before them comes into a space diagonal to them.
 * Jade being a Distaff Counterpart to John may not mean much, except when you realize that John (at least in the beginning) is a naive loser. Suddenly, their differing genders accentuate their distinctiveness from one another.
 * There's also the fact that John starts out knowing the least about how to play, and ends up being ridiculously powerful by the endgame, while Jade starts out knowing things way beyond everyone else, then gets Brought Down to Normal and misses out on much of the story developments while she was asleep.
 * Similarly, Dave and Rose have a tendency to not say what they mean. They both use sarcasm and sardonicism, but for different reasons. Rose is somewhat pretentious, and Dave just thinks irony is cool.
 * When Jade asks her magic 8-ball if it's John's birthday, she takes its answer of "not exactly" as a reminder of what a cheap piece of garbage it is.
 * You can't forget that it's also a tongue-in-cheek joke about the date in the story compared to the date the update happens on. For the majority of the story, it has always been April 13, 2009. So, it's his birthday, but also, kind of not.
 * After Jack becomes the Sovereign Slayer, he's referred to as an Ace to fit with the poker-card theme. In Blackjack, an Ace and a Jack beats a King and a Queen.
 * Anyone else notice that the Trolls can't finish their version of Sburb because their game was scratched?
 * Before the ancestors in the trolls' session initiated the scratch, "our" trolls were in the roll of the ancestors (and vice versa). In the Pre-scratch timeline, troll society was peacful. Note that with the role reversals, at this time, Feferi, who in the present timeline wants to abolish the blood caste system and help the weak, would have been empress.
 * All of the Trolls' similarities to humans -- from the existence of Troll Will Smith to the fact that they speak English -- could be explained by the fact that the Trolls created Earth's universe, and therefore humans.
 * Vriska suggests that Karkat would make a better human than a troll, and humans have the same freakish bright red blood. Makes sense, considering he was the trolls' leader, and the one who would have personally gotten the ultimate prize if they hadn't been interrupted.
 * Also, why does the "real" world operate under the bizarre rules of captchalogues and strife syllabi? Because the "real" world is the creation of a game and follows game logic.
 * WV presses the tab key. It unlocks a secret trove of Tab soda. Hilarity Ensues. Then he presses the Caps Lock key, and... unlocks a book on etiquette? WHAT ON EARTH DOES A CAPS LOCK KEY HAVE TO DO WITH ETIQ--
 * Ooooooooooooooh!
 * And when he activates it again the capsule locks.
 * The joke is actually a bit simpler than that. WV has been typing in ALL CAPS before hitting the Caps Lock key, so he almost gets a double dose of etiquette.
 * A Tear Jerker sort of Fridge Brilliance is this page. Learn WV's origins and come back. Yeah. Pretty much everything he does is much Harsher in Hindsight.
 * More precisely, this page has it's own depressing significance.
 * Now I'm sad and angry at the same time because of Hussie's amazing foreshadowing skill...
 * John figures out the alchemizing system much faster than anyone else. Consider his earlier struggles with both programming and using his sylladex.
 * Karkat is ridiculously ambitious but due to his blood color, he'd be considered a freak and pretty much shunned by the rest of his society, shooting down any chance of becoming a THRESHECUTIONER that he might have had otherwise. Which pretty much explains why he's so angry all the time.
 * Pretty much every troll's horns resemble their sign. Equius? Arrow-shaped horn+broken straight piece of horn = bow-and-arrow sign. And so on.
 * Watch Kanaya's hairstyle very carefully, particularly the bangs on the side of her head. Then, compare it to the traditional vampire cape.
 * Also, after coming back from the dead, she's bloody, and her last name is Maryam.
 * Nepeta seems to sleep with her lusus rather than in a recuperacoon, thus her dreams are filled with her species' history of violence. In other words, her dreams are probably filled with EXCITING TALES FROM THE HUNT, which explains why she acts so feral and yet so adorable. May also qualify as Fridge Horror.
 * Also it might explain why she has circles underneath her eyes - she might not get as good sleep from it.
 * Which makes me wonder if Equius busts the cocoon every time he tries to sleep....
 * Speaking of Equius and dark eye circles: you can actually see his blood color under his shades, unlike the others. If you watch too many police procedural shows like I do you've heard the word petechia associated with the bloodshot eyes of strangling victims. Remember how Equius seemed so creepy and perverse that the Narrator delayed introducing him? Remember how happy he looked when he's being strangled to death by Gamzee??
 * Dave doesn't just wear those shades to be cool - his eyes are red, which receive an abnormally high amount of light compared to other eye colors. Wearing sunglasses keeps him from frying his eyes. (Also related are that his and Rose's eyes - Purple and Red - are the most common pigments of someone with Albinism, although Word of God is that Rose at least isn't an albino.)
 * Late to the Punchline: I knew for a while that the troll equivalent of STRIFE was GRIEF (in backwards and upside down Daedric), but I only recently caught the joke. They're trolls. They're griefing each other.
 * And then, we see it again in the doomed timeline where Vriska fights Bec Noir. Considering pretty much everyone she ever cared about has just died, what emotion do you think she felt at that moment?
 * In Homestuck, two of the exiles, AR and WV, give WQ (the former White Queen) a makeshift crown. She turns it down and instead gives it to PM. I never really understood why until recently, however. PM went all the way to Derse (the city of the Dark kingdom), into the throne room itself, and survived to complete her task. The entire conflict between the Light and Dark kingdoms has been described with Chess Motifs, so of course, by completing her assigned duty, PM was promoted into a queen. Awesome Moment of Crowning indeed. -
 * Also from Homestuck, at first I was bothered by the slowness of act 1, and at the utter pointlessness and unneeded silliness of some of the actions Andrew chose to accept - seriously, did John NEED to wear that disguise for no reason? - but then I realized that, as of the beginning of Homestuck, Problem Sleuth had just wrapped up. Forum members submitting pointless, silly things was the entire point of Problem Sleuth, and the plot was more-or-less up to them. They were just doing what they were used to, and it was what Andrew had to work with. The first act was a needed transition, from the random wackiness of Problem Sleuth to the actual storyline of Homestuck. Once the forum members got the picture that, yes, there were aspects of the story they had no control over, they eased into a faster-paced, more Hussie-driven format, and the series quickly Grew the Beard.
 * Also, Andrew just stopped accepting command suggestions at some point between Acts 3 and 4.
 * Well the meteor did destroy John's mailbox...
 * Karkat and John are each other's Foils: John types in all lowercase, Karkat types in all caps.
 * Remember the first imp John fought? It had a BunnyKind Strife Specibus. John took the card and hung onto it.
 * When Karkat was explaining Troll Romance to Vriska in Homestuck he told her that Tavros could never hate her the way she hated him because there was something dysfunctional about him that kept him from developing the same degree of hate as everyone else. When Hussie introduced Kanaya, one of the other 'nice' trolls, he repeated a comment from Tavros's introduction about not sleeping much. Suddenly it became clear why Kanaya and Tavros are so nice compared to other trolls: All trolls suffer from psychotic nightmares so bad that they have to sleep in psychoactive goop in order to dull the edge. But Tavros, who can't fit in his cocoon because of his freakish horns, and Kanaya, who stays up late because she's the troll equivalent of a Goth, have minimized their exposure.
 * Given that we've recently learned that Karkat, and probably the rest of the Trolls, can't sleep their dream-selves dying may have made them all insomniacs. And if that's the case, Tavros and Kanaya don't just have minimized exposure - they've also got more experience dealing with sleep deprivation. Doubles as Fridge Horror if you think about it too long. - Volouscheur
 * Related, the most isolated trolls, Nepeta, Kanya, and Feferi are among the nicest. Nepeta lives in a cave with her lusus and has to hunt for food. While Feferi can't go very far from hers without getting killed. Meanwhile Kanya is both diurnal and lives in an area laden with undead. All of them would have had little contact with troll society and thus wouldn't end up "socialized" like the others. Feferi and Nepeta can get away with not caring about black romance because the imperial drone will never reach them.
 * Karkat is the Cancer troll, and is always in a crabby mood.
 * And according to http://www.mspaintadventures.com/scratch.php?s=6&p=005903 and so on, we discover that it's Karkat's fault that the Human's game universe has CANCER.
 * His handle is carcinoGeneticist. The prefix carcino- means cancer, and he messed up Bilious Slick's genetics, which gave him cancer.
 * Eveyone's IM handle is initialed with an A, C, G or T - like in DNA.
 * ... so I just reread this page ... after the Reckoning event, where you learn that John wasn't exactly born.
 * That seems to be more of a Running Gag that acknowledges the difference between the date in-comic and the date beyond the fourth wall. Another example would be the "it's like Christmas and your birthday all at once" update that happened during December when it was still April 13 in-comic.
 * Also notice how it is an "eight ball" and Rose gets bad vibes from it and rejects the idea of breaking it, worried about what consequences may ensue in doing so.
 * While Vriska, on the other hand, breaks them constantly.
 * To any human viewer, Bec Noir's red hand means he's just killed someone. To Karkat, it's reminiscent of his alliance with SGRUB!Jack Noir, who cut his palm to show Karkat that he wasn't the only one in paradox space to have "candy-red" blood.
 * Early in the story the trolls mention that angels are a kind of demon with wings...
 * Which makes Eridan believe the angels he saw regard Bec Noir as their king.
 * In Act 1, John alchemizes Some Hellacious Blue Phlegm Aneurysm Gushers (with ghostly healing properties!) from a box of gushers and the blue slimy stuff Nanna leaves behind on John's bedroom wall. What's Jane's mythological title in the B2 session?
 * "This attic is spooky. I wish those bullies would just leave me alone.Later I am going to ride a long magic dog through the sky and fuck their shit up."
 * I will just leave this here.
 * Hey, look, he did.
 * The kids have access to probably more info than any other group of players, thanks to the trolls. Why? Because the trolls are stuck because their game didn't end, but they succeeded in summoning Slick.
 * The Scratch is supposed to reset the game under better conditions, which explains why the trolls (specifically Vriska and Gamzee) cannot interact with their universe after it. It might also explain why they cannot get into it either, since who knows how resetting one universe might affect a universe connected to it (which makes one wonder about the troll's session being scratched and the players from the previous session).
 * When Tavros charged at Vriska, she stopped him with her arachnidsGrip.
 * Then she proceeds to take his lance away from him, stab and kill him, and throw him of a ledge.
 * adiosTorador.
 * Vriska admits to allowing Bec to prototype himself for rather selfish purposes, but she does make a good point. Bec Noir already exists, and due to the circular nature of time, any action which successfully stops this from happening will merely create a splintered time line, doomed to temporal erasure. If anything, she's simply being pragmatic in her jerkassery; she knows she can't undo Bec Noir, so she's trying to take advantage of the temporal loop to try and come out ahead.
 * The troll world is shown to be a Bizarro Universe in many aspects such as the role of angels, vampires, etc. Instead of teenage sex being highly frowned upon it's required upon pain of death.
 * Not only that, but unlike with humans where homosexuality is still highly controversial, it's apparently so inconsequential in troll society that it doesn't even warrant its own word.
 * Their version of Christianity, instead of spreading into a dominant religion, dwindled until it was practically forgotten.
 * Not many Trolls seem to want to talk to Jade. And why is that? Because to them, she's just not that interesting. John had an Adult squatter in his hive, and Dave had that puppet, but Jade had a Lusus, like everyone's supposed to. Moreover, all of their text implies either high or low standings in the blood caste. But as Equius said, green is okay, but not great.
 * Actually, it seems they all have talked to her at some point. Even Sollux and Gamzee.
 * I thought it was funny that John was the only one of the kids who didn't have a Strife Specibus that could be readily construed as phallic. Then I remembered that Dave's Swordkind is a broken half-sword. Then I lol'd.
 * The hammerkind is his penis.
 * The Felt album. Listen to all of the songs, then listen to them in REVERSE
 * Care to clue me in?
 * They're full of Backmasking and samples that have been slowed down or sped up. The album is about a group whose gimmick is time manipulation.
 * Also listen to "Time on My Side". Then listen it 4/3 (=> 413) faster (WARNING: Any love for the original song may fucking pirouette off of a cliff. You have been warned.)
 * Why can the "player" hop from character to character at a whim in the main story? In chess, you can move any piece with somewhere to go. Why does the perspective change randomly in the Midnight Crew Intermission? In cards, you can only play the hand you're dealt.
 * Vriska's huge gamble at making Bec Noir and such normally seems retarded. But bear in mind that dangerous trolls are give moirails to keep this from happening. Vriska's moirail has been shunning her. It would have been more surprising if she DIDN'T wind up doing something like this.
 * The inability to prevent the powering of Bec as something unstoppable makes perfect sense when the circumstances of Grandpa's death are revealed - if Jade died the session would never be able to be completed as the destined paradox clone player was killed before the game began.
 * "Involving the one who hates you, and the one who likes you." Except, well, Rose doesn't actually say which is which, does she... Unfortunately, Vriska's Omniscient Morality Licence makes it even harder to figure out which is which..
 * Vriska could be both.
 * They can BOTH be both, with the likehate kismesis deal Karkat has.
 * 1. Look up John 4:13 in the NIV of the Bible. 2. Find the part where it references John 4:14 which mentions Savior of the Waking World. 3. Expel your intestines out of the gaping hole that used to be your anus.
 * Doubly crazy in that, the likely original word used for "spirit" is "ruach." "Ruach" is a Hebrew term that can also mean "wind," or "breath." Proceed to build a house with the bricks you just shat. But not so surprising when you consider that the Latin root "spir-" of "spirit" means "blow/breath"
 * Not much revealed in Numbers 1:3 (Numbers is the 4th book of the Bible) or Joshua 1:2 (Joshua is the 6th) book of the Bible....The 41st book or 61st book may or may not be revealing.
 * John's come into his hereditary Super Strength in less than a day, and on his 13th birthday, no less. Early on, he couldn't even lift a sledgehammer. By the start of Act 4, he's Dual-Wielding Pogohammer and Wrinklefucker with relative ease. So it's no wonder John's dad expected him to be able to lift the safe!
 * Why is Hearts Boxcars such as avid Tavros/Vriska shipper? Because he has a heart fetish!
 * I guess I don't quite get what you mean... yes he has a heart fetish, but did you mean something deeper than that?
 * Why does Jack become a Spade? It may have something to do with his friendly yet hate-filled relationship with Karkat (and EVERYONE). Although Karkat does not feel the same way.
 * I think it's more that during his time as Jack, he's playing up his difference from the chess motif by referencing a blackjack motif (Jack NOIR= Jack Black= Blackjack), whereas by the time he's Spades Slick, he's just one of the suites forming the midnight crew. His chance to be the Ace had come and gone.
 * And with respect to the above, John is wearing a spade shirt when Karkat discovers him. Dave is wearing a heart shirt/bib when Terezi discovers him.
 * The last update for the year 2010 was "Lab: Drop". The lab in question is a giant ball situated on a thin spire. Happy new years, everybody.
 * And then come the beginning of 2012, it happened again.
 * That's the joke.
 * One of Jadesprite's many, many problems is that she cannot stop seeing the Green Sun, an experience that is apparently painful. Why don't the other First Guardians have this problem? The other Guardians don't have eyes.
 * In fact, First Guardians are specifically engineered NOT to experience this: spoiler: the only difference in appearance between Bec, Earth's First Guardian, and Halley, the dog he was cloned from, is a lack of eyes, meaning that the DNA code applied to Halley that gave him the First Guardian powers also removed his eyes.
 * Suddenly Jack putting on Bro's sunglasses makes infinitely more sense!
 * [S] Descend. It's about the paradox kids, descending to Earth. Not Jack going crazy crazier.
 * Every major scene in the Flash has to do with something falling, from Dave getting pushed off the tower in the beginning to Jade's huge meteor drawing closer and closer at the end.
 * In this update, Kanaya says that she thinks the roles are intentionally given to the ones who don't suit them best, in order to challenge them. If you think about it, this applies to the kids: Rose is the one with an interest in dark magic, while Jade is the one who had visions of the future, but Rose is the Seer and Jade is the Witch. Furthermore, Dave idolizes his Bro and wants to be just like him, but John, who resents his father, is the Heir.
 * Not really resenting. The fact is that John very much respects his father and considers him one of the most important people in his life. However, he dislikes his fathers way of life, especially when it comes to BAKING. You can see very much that John and his father share many similarities and both have similar interests in the art of pranking, but the one main thing that keeps in the family lineage (baking) is the one thing that he cannot bear.
 * This paradox also explains why Eridan, despite bearing the title "Prince of Hope", is the first to lose it and join Jack Noir to have some chance of survival.
 * We later find out that "Prince" basically means "Destroyer" in the game, however. His title seems to be the most accurate now.
 * I would also point out that Jade, who is destined to become the Witch, makes it clear in her introduction that she is a firm advocate of the power of science, and thinks that things like magic are silly.
 * Karkat is almost a troll counterpart to John: Both are POV characters, both show Hidden Depths, both were involved in similar in-game events, and Karkat even resembles John a bit. John has a hammer, Karkat has a sickle.
 * Their battle themes are named "Showdown" (Karkat) and "Showtime" (John).
 * Interestingly enough, Dave's battle theme is "Beatdown." So Karkat's battle theme is named after a combination of John and Dave's.
 * Why does Trollian work with the kid's AIM-esque Pesterchum? Because Trillian allows the user to combine several IM accounts, AIM included.
 * The update "[S] Wake." has several Call Backs going on with it:
 * 1. The last Flash update before this on to issue a general command was "[S] Make Her Pay." Both Aradia and Vriska did just that in it. The same thing happens here.
 * 2. The last time Tavros saw Vriska wearing fairy wings, she was trying to please him, trying to make him love her. This time, she kills him. Kind of a stark contrast, don't you think?
 * 3. The first time Tavros and Vriska are the seen together, Vriska forces Tavros off a cliff. Guess what happens here?
 * There's a line in "How Do I Live" that's emphasised more in the cover than the original: Without you, there'd be no sun in my sky. Recall that Rose wants to sacrifice her dream self to destroy the Green Sun.
 * Related, but much worse: How do I breathe without you?
 * The theme for John's planet is Doctor. He's tasked with removing a tumor.
 * Since being prototyped with Bec, Big Bad Jack Noir has gained decidedly lupine features. What colour is Aradia's god-hood?
 * Also, What's the Time, Mr. Wolf?
 * In the 1/24 updates, we learned (among other things) that all the sopor slime is gone. Among other things, sopor slime helps to quiet the trolls' violent instincts. Little wonder that Eridan and Gamzee quickly went off the deep end with nothing to hold them in check.
 * After re-watching and thinking over [S] Wake, methinks Hussie is deconstructing at least a few Mary Sue tropes. In addition to Vriska, who wants to be one, and Jade, who was initially portrayed as one, we also have, most notably:
 * Aradia - Born in the lowest rung of her caste system, but has incredible psychic powers. Dies and comes back as a ghost with even more power. Possesses her sprite then a robot body, later gains time-travel powers. Resurrects via Dreamself into her God Tier form, which allows her to pause The Demon.
 * Kanaya - Born with an incredibly rare blood color, which allows her to be raised by the rare mother grub. She can bear the harsh Alternian sun when no other troll is shown to be able to do so. Her interest in fashion suggests she could also fulfill a few of those tropes, and despite being killed without the benefit of a Quest Bed or any sort of immortality, she returns from the dead -- and judging from what she does to Gamzee, Vriska, and Eridan directly after, she Came Back Strong.
 * Feferi - Born in the absolute highest tier of the caste system, and it's stated that if not for SGRUB, she'd have overseen massive changes to Alternia society for the betterment of all. She tries to be everyone's friend when troll society says she'd be justified in lording over them all. Raised by a particularly powerful lusus which basically nixes anyone's chance of trying to off her, most notably the current Alternian empress and anyone competing for the position.
 * Sollux - Like Aradia, comes with super eyebeam psychic powers, as well as l33t h4xx0r skillz, heterochromatic eyes and a small but endearing flaw (his lii2p). He then dies Saving The Princess and has not one but two extra lives ostensibly because of his 'bifurcated personality', which also makes him prone to truly interminable periods of Wangst. Add to this Aradia, Feferi and Eridan have all apparently been interested in him in one of the concupiscent quadrants, making him more or less the big troll stud, despite being basically a big geeky computer geeky geek-geek.
 * The funny thing is that in most works, they would be Mary Sues. In Homestuck, they're just characters.
 * Why does Gamzee say the Insane Clown Posse is BlAsPhEmY? Because Subjugglators are supposed to be harbingers of death to the lower classes (ie, everyone besides themselves and the sea dwellers), as opposed to the benign, even relatively peaceful presentation of Juggalos which the ICP presents.
 * Eridan's surname is taken from a water container in Ancient Grome, and bears the title of Prince of Hope. Eridan is Pandora's Box: Evil in an unassuming package. Some interpretations even state Hope was the last evil in the box.
 * The first time you caught a glimpse of this world in your dreams, there was no turning back. This statement of Terezi's awakening gains more meaning when you realize it was the last thing she ever saw.
 * So we're told that no matter what players may do, the Light Kingdom will ALWAYS fall and the Dark Kingdom will ALWAYS initiate the Reckoning... but why? Because if the players were ever to avoid the Reckoning, their paradox clones can't go to their home planet to become them -- a paradox which would naturally lead to a doomed timeline.
 * Gamzee was (almost) always blurry when he engaged Hero Mode. Why? Because Gamzee wasn't "all the way there", mentally. Notice how his appearance got sharper and sharper as time went on? You Can Panic Now.
 * Karkat frequently acts mean and represses his non-rage-related emotions. Why? Besides being a bit of a temperament thing, he's afraid crying will give away his "freakish" blood color, as Trolls' tears are a faded hue of their blood.
 * The SBaHJ cloud on this panel is labeled "cloun", and the panel referencing that strip has Gamzee in that cloud.
 * This is something this troper noticed instantly, but it counts as Fridge Briliance to others. Anyway, Romans had U and V be the same letter, so they pronounced their Vs with a U sound. Eridan doubles his Vs, transforming them into Ws, which sound pretty much like Us. Therefore, Eridan has a classic Roman accent, which explains why the others say his wavy accent sounds ridiculous.
 * And his username is caligulasAquarium.
 * In the same vein, Tavros becomes Tauros - ancient Greek for bull.
 * Something's been bugging me about how Andrew Hussie seems so familiar, what with his habit of being playful, Mood Whiplash, Fan Disservice and Jossing--holy crap he's the webcomics equivalent of Hideo Kojima!
 * There's a recurring chess motif, and Vriska thinks of herself as The Chessmaster who's been manipulating the kids and trolls. There are 12 trolls, and four kids. How many pieces are there on one side in any given game of chess?
 * And the Felt consists of the 15 gang members plus Doc Scratch, making another set of 16. And Doc Scratch and Vriska play chess against each other!
 * It took me an awfully long time to get the Libra=Scales=Scales of blind justice. I also seem to recall a panel where she could "see" the Trollian window, though it was blurry. Either she was "seeing" it by scent, or her blindness isn't total, making her...legally blind. (Probably the first one, though.)
 * Except that it's been stated that Terezi sees using both smell and taste. The panel was her seeing using smell. The pun still works, though, just pointing out a mistake in your reasoning.
 * And her screen is blurry due to her licking the screen to 'see' it with taste.
 * Initially, the Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff message of "Are you next" following Kanaya's death seemed fairly tasteless to a lot of people, given the circumstances. Until recent updates, that is. Remember why Bro killed Jeff in that comic? And what Kanaya is likely doing right now?
 * Why does Gamzee have access to every weapon with the Jokerkind Abstratus? Because the Joker is often considered a wild card in cards.
 * I never understood why God Tier people got those lame hoods...Then I realized, they were attaining a literal godhood!
 * I don't know if anyone else just thought of this, but I was wondering why the God Tier trolls (from what we've seen of them anyways) got wings, while the human's God Tier didn't. Then it dawned on me: Trolls are born as LARVA. Like CATERPILLARS. When they finally achieve God Tier, the trolls are metamorphosing into butterflies!
 * Think about this for a second. Equius has blue blood. His troll handle is centaursTesticle. What was the end result of Gamzee strangling him?
 * John is, for the most part, The Hero of the story. Someone who opposes the hero is usually an antagonist. Karkat is, functionally, a counterpart of sorts to John. In the zodiac, what is the sign "opposing" Cancer? Capricorn.
 * Can also work on a different level, considering recent events involving the Capricorn Troll and Karkat...
 * Since magic is not real, Eridan uses science power for combat. Sollux was blinded in his fight against Eridan. In other words, Eridan blinded him with science!
 * Now in song form!
 * Some of the trolls who don't really care about blood color seem to forget the order of the hemospectrum -- here Sollux can't remember what's lower than yellow and here Nepeta doesn't seem to know where green lies. You'd think it'd be easy to remember, since it goes from red to violet like a rainbow . . . but since rainbows are created by sunlight filtering through water droplets and most trolls never go out during the day, they've probably never even seen a rainbow! And then I realized that the only time the word "rainbow" has been used in relation to trolls is "rainbow drinkers", who come out during the day . ..
 * Aradia's SGRUB title is Maid of Time. Here, she states she is made of time. Ha ha.
 * Heir (Air) of Breath? SEER of Light? Even Knight of Time could be taken with a second meaning.
 * Concerning [S] Wake, maybe all the characters seen in the flash awoke one way or another, besides the obvious...
 * Aradia awoke not only to God Tier, but also awoke her normal emotions again, feeling happy to be alive.
 * Vriska not only awoke from demotivating WV in his nightmare to face Bec Noir, but also awoke her conscience after killing Tavros and feeling guilty about it, even fearing facing Noir as she planned all along.
 * Feferi has always wanted to be with the Furthest Gods of the Ring; her death of her dreamself awoke her powers as the Witch of Life, so to speak, due to her communication with Jade, being able to speak from the afterlife to the living compared to other deceased characters in SBURB and SGRUB.
 * Jack Noir probably believed himself invincible killing one life after another with his First Guardian powers; witnessing Aradia gave him an Oh Crap on his face, and becoming time stopped by Aradia may have awoken fear in him, or something close to rethinking his killing strategy besides using green fire and showing his stabs.
 * Tavros awoke his self-confidence actually comitting to try and killing Vriska, despite failing and getting impaled. And, there maybe a second wake-up involved due to dying and being in the afterlife; maybe communing with deceased First Guardians and Lusii per his powers.
 * Nepeta MIGHT have awoken to stopped being so cheery after her encounter with Noir; possibly, her Rogue of Heart powers might have kicked in, requiring her heart to stop beating for this to work. However, unless something is seen in the comic, this one is pure theory.
 * Just today it was revealed that Rogues are a kind of antithesis to their powers in that their powers effect others rather than themselves, so this thought here might hold ground
 * Close to Valentine's Day 2011, we have two characters on a date, AND a steamy fanfic from one of the troll's ancestors. OMFG, COINCIDENCE.
 * As of the writing of this entry, Nepeta's encounter with Gamzee ended with him closing in on her threateningly, and jumping to another scene. Although there was green blood on Gamzee's club, it is still unknown whether she's dead or alive. So would that make her a ... Schrödinger's CatGirl?
 * The cat is out of the bag. Nepeta's body is seen separated from its head.
 * Karkat did manage to bring Kanaya back to life with his Corpsesmooch. Just... not quite as expected.
 * Where is the Fridge Brilliance?
 * It wasn't a kiss from another or a man that revived her, it was her own kisses rainbow drinking/vampire bites that did. This is apt for one born of a Virgin mother grub.
 * Not only that, but Kanaya was revived as a rainbow drinker, requiring *blood* to survive. What is Karkat's SGRUB title?
 * One of the first times we hear from Eridan, he asks Kanaya to auspistice between himself and Vriska. Auspisticing means preventing a feud from boiling over into an especially violent rivalry. And when Vriska and Eridan are about to face off in a duel... Kanaya does intervene.
 * You were so much better than that traitorous piece of shit Cal who betrayed me to join Hook.
 * Speaking of Peter Pan parallels, there's also that "binary refrain" that's said to herald the fall of "the tyrant less an arm and an eye" in the story proper... Though they didn't say which one.
 * The code was used to create Doc Scratch, and look who is kicking the crap out of who now.
 * The most recent intermission shows Lord English, Doc Scratch's (who was created from Cal) master - who resembles a pirate, complete with peg-leg.
 * Hell, the whole storyline of Tavros and Vriska's ancestors plays out like a partially genderbent Peter Pan (it can only be assumed the Summoner was the basis for Pupa Pan, and Mindfang is a Pirate missing an eye and arm)
 * Spades Slick hates clocks and all matter of things to do with time. Who ends up stopping his counterpart Bec Noir in his tracks? The Maid of Time.
 * The conversations the kids and trolls have with each other are shown exactly, because they're typed - the logs are automatically created. The Midnight Crew's speech is paraphrased in the frame captions because they're communicating via radio, and no exact record is made.
 * Doc Scratch seeks death after summoning Lord English and ending the universe, but he needs help. Why? Because, as his creation shows, he's an omniscient, omnipotent prankster. Comedy is easy. Dying is hard.
 * And the reason Scratch flipped out on Vriska? She was using, essentially, himself to fight himself. Then he blew himself up. Sort of.
 * Doc Scratch says, "I am an immortal entity with a large cue ball for a head, and no biological means of reproduction." That means Cal isn't anatomically correct.
 * What does it imply that you believed otherwise until you read that?
 * Remember Bro's other puppets?
 * While this troper loved [S]Descend, she always did wonder why, exactly, Bro stabbed his sword into the giant record. Turns out he was setting up the Scratch. Holy shit.
 * For that matter, the fact that the Scratch is caused by a literal Record Needle Scratch, which "halts" the universe like a needle scratching a record. Well played, Mr. Hussie.
 * Likely obvious, but consider a Scratch in billiards- when the cue ball falls into the pocket i.e. dies. - very curious, indeed.
 * Compare how Dream Feferi dies to how Eridan dies.
 * The running gag about carrying no less than five computers with you at all times is all the funnier when you go back and realize that John has thus far lost six.
 * In [S Seer: Descend], Rose at one point goes through six curtains, with the fifth being blue and the rest red. Since blue represents the trolls' universe and red the kids', it's actually a metaphor for the structure of the last five acts and the current one. In the next room, there are five open green curtains, followed by a closed green curtain. We may have a good idea of what will happen in Act 6....
 * Absolutely confirmed.
 * Many aspects of the comic, such as Stable Time Loops, RPG elements, and four chosen heroes, can be seen as an elaborate parody of Final Fantasy I.
 * Gamzee is originally introduced as the Bard of something. To those who only know bards as the Spoony Bard trope or from tabletop games and RPGs, it makes sense in light of his spacey-ness and general uselessness. The original Celtic bards, however, were the bearers of oral tradition and passed down laws, histories, and folklore. Gamzee is the Bard of Rage because he is meant to remind the trolls of how flat fucking terrifying the Subjugglators were.
 * Other than it being crucial to his characterization, why is Karkat a mutant? What is his sign? Cancer. What is one of the looser definitions of cancer? A mutation.
 * Also, he wields a sickle. A sickle cell is a mutated blood cell.
 * Makes a lot of sense that he gave Jade's Universe cancer.
 * He also causes a mutation inadvertently. By trolling Jade, she brings it up to John, which causes him to decide to change his chum handle from valid DNA (GT) to a mutation. (EB)
 * When Jade prototypes Dream Jade with her sprite, she plans to get Jadesprite to fight Bec Noir, although Jadesprite boohoos and flies off. But Jade's dreamself is alive again, so she can reach Godtier now. If she does, she will be part sprite, part godtier, part witch of space and part First Guardian.
 * Uh... where's the Fridge Brilliance here?
 * If Rose actually destroys the Green Sun, God Tier Jade will die too
 * But that won't be heroic or just! ...Well, okay, it will be heroic, just not on Jade's part.
 * Except the fact that Rose didn't destroy the Green Sun. She technically created it.
 * At one point, Jade states how wonderful it would be to combine traits of both animals and humans.
 * It's understandable why Jade is in to furry fandom when you consider that her guardian is a dog.
 * The Heir of Breath went to the Land of Wind and Shade. The Seer of Light went to the Land of Light and Rain. The Knight of Time went to the Land of Heat and Clockwork. The Witch of Space went ot the Land of... Frost and Frogs? What do either of those have to do with space? Frogs does. Remember that the player has to breed a frog that will become the new universe!
 * Don't forget that it's also very cold in outer space.
 * No it's not.
 * Sollux's symbol is gemini, which is a (II) symbol. Gemini is also the latin word for twins. Sollux wears a pair of shades, and if you will recall, the only other troll who also wears shades is Terezi. Coincidence?
 * also after a recent event involving Eridan, Sollux became blind, just like Terezi.
 * Wait, Equius wears shades too...
 * Sollux Captor. Switch the S and P. Pollux Castor. Twins.
 * Obsessed with two. Computer hacker. Binary. Duh. (I literally just realized this.)
 * Though it hasn't been revealed if Neophyte Redglare was blind or not, why would someone of a Nocturnal race need to wear sunglasses if she wasn't blind? Her lusus' eyes are as bright as the sun, That's why!
 * Justice is blind.
 * Bec Noir only seems to be concerned with killing. He's kind of a one-dimensional character, isn't he? Maybe that's because he's only 4-dimensional, to his counterpart's 12.
 * That idea falls apart when you realize that counterpart was never prototyped. Spades Slick was exiled before he could get the Queen's Ring.
 * When I first read the poem They Wait in [S] Seer: Descend, I recognized the quotes for the kids had all made earlier appearances but had not researched the quotes before. Well I finally did, and mind is blown.
 * Rose's quote comes from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, a poem that The Other Wiki describes as having "shifts between satire and prophecy, abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its elegiac but intimidating summoning up of a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures." Which fits pretty well with Homestuck overall.
 * The person behind John's quote, François de La Rochefoucauld, is a good World to contrast John's Fool. Where John is at the start of his journey and knowing very little, Rochefoucauld is a mature man well versed in the world around him. Add that while his writing can be summed up that everything boils down to self-interest, he makes this claim as a non-spiteful humanist. A compassionate cynic to John's compassionate optimist.
 * How many people here knew that a Becquerel is a unit of radiation before reading Homestuck?
 * Or that Irradiated Steak is a product you can actually buy?
 * Or that Irradiated Salisbury Steak is a health item you can obtain in Fallout: New Vegas?
 * The tagline for that trope is alarmingly apt: "From where you're kneeling, it must seem like an 18-carat run of bad luck. But the truth is... the game was rigged from the start.". When you consider other elements of play within that game as listed on the trope page, such as gambling/Casino, Dog and God (!), A courier (!), and the list goes on...
 * Fridge Horror: Radiation causes cancer. Or in this case, gives it god-like powers.
 * That gust of wind that extinguished the salamander's burning village was a bit of a Contrived Coincidence. But look, the salamanders are happy, John's happy, and the plot can progress...oh wait, John can do "the windy thing".
 * Karkat's ancestor aka the sufferer, is most likely troll jesus. Take into account that we, with our red blood, are more or less modeled in Karkat's image. In other words, he's an inversion of the Father/Son part of the Holy Trinity. Furthermore, after arguing with his past and future selves, he refers to them as "past and future ghosts," or to fit with the theme, the Holy Spirit(s). Oh, and by the way; "the disciple Jesus loved" was none other than John the Apostle.
 * If you want to get more Biblical, think back to how John, the first guy we meet in the series, got into the Medium: he bit an apple that the first girl we met in the series helped him obtain.
 * The same guy and girl who apparently must eventually hook up, at least if you believe a horrible shipping chart made by an alien Jesus, that is, Karkat.
 * On a side note: even odds that his name turns out to be "Jegus."
 * How has nobody mentioned the biblical David and Jonathan? Jonathan was even technically the "heir," and while calling David a "knight" is a stretch, he was a warrior!
 * Why are Vriska's psychic powers so powerful, despite being a highblood? Because she's only ever seen using them on lowbloods, who are reputed to have low psychic tolerance.
 * On a related note, Vriska is the only highblood we know of with a psychic ability, and her powers are used almost exclusively to subjugate and control lowbloods.
 * Karkat's sign of Cancer is associated with motherhood, and he often plays Team Mom. He's also the one who gives birth to everyone through ectobiology.
 * Vriska's treatment of Tavros makes more sense when you consider that, based on his ancestor (the Summoner), she expected him to be both her Matesprit and her killer.
 * Neophyte Redglare took Marquise Spinneret Mindfang's eye and arm using Pyralspite, her dragon. Terezi took Vriska's eye and arm using Doc, L's Dragon.
 * Recent updates with Vriska looking over her ancestor's journal have shown some skipping. Fridge Horror assumes its due the Scratch descending, due to Terezi scratching Disc 2 of Homestuck, where the story is right now. However, the simpler explanation might be Vriska seeing without glasses as she views the journal, leading to blurry vision in certain updates. The audience IS reading a Diary Over the Shoulder of Vriska for this Exposition Break.
 * Nope, Fridge Horror. [SFlip] shows us that it is very glitchy, not even from vriska's POV.
 * Eridan is descibed as being a bit of a tool, correct? Usually, his tool-ness shows when desperately talking or acting for a redrom or blackrom with one of the other eleven trolls or either one of the two female kids. Literally, he is acting like a tool because he is THINKING with ONLY HIS TOOL! It gets better when you realize his weapon of choice in Alternia and SGRUB is his phallic laser rifle, or his white magic wand, which trades up style for simplicity. Best of all, Undead!Kanaya's Crowning Moment of Awesome in slaying her murderer Eridan becomes a series of Visual Puns when you see her snap in half Eridan's wand, chainsaw his torso area, and remember her first-strike Groin Attack against Sober!Gamzee.
 * At one point, Dave finds a disturbing comic on his Bro's computer, where Rolf somehow kills Animal. What makes it especially disturbing is that they're Muppet Babies. So, why use their Muppet baby selves and not their regular Muppet selves? Well, anyone who watched that cartoon growing up might remember the theme song, specifically these lines:


 * What happens with the SBURB/SGRUB players? Their homes are transported to weird worlds, and when they fall asleep, they wind up somewhere else.
 * I dunno if this is appropriate, but: WAY NSFW (just delete this addition if it doesn't belong, but it is the source of that comic dave found)
 * Aradia's role in SGRUB is Maid. In her society she should be a person who carries "sex toys". She's doing it right.
 * The lack of updates for a few days now since 5/27 might actually be brilliant. Currently, the audience is witnessing two story perspectives-the main screen where updates are usually posted, and the web site banner on top with Homestuck's narrator-for-now Doc Scratch getting ready for his guest Slick Spades. The last posted update has the guest, with his weapon, bonking the Physical God narrator over his head. Now, how is this action relative to lack of updates? Remember the second half of Act 2 when the audience is introduced to WV, who seemed very hungry and had not eaten for a long time yet had enough energy to wander the Desert Wasteland in search of food and wind up in that chamber? As WV and SS are of the same species, it's possible for Slick to do nothing but bonk Doc's head for a couple of days without rest or food in a feeble attempt to crack his skull. AND Doc might not mind letting Slick do this for two reasons: One-He's a Physical God; days could pass like minutes to him, and Two-Doc's a Smug Super, he could be ALLOWING Slick to hammer him nonstop with his horsehead club for a couple days, just to make this result more humiliating to Slick Spades. In other words, SS is holding up the narrator Doc Scratch from narration!
 * "There Once was a Man from Trolltucket" would be exactly as offensive to its native audience, but for entirely different reasons.
 * Sollux, with his ever-present theme of duality, was close to two troll-girls: The lowest-blooded, and the highest-blooded.
 * They're also the only two trolls with alliterative chumhandles (AA and CC respectively)
 * Recently, some of the images have been distorted or corrupted for some reason. But when you think about it, the reason's quite clear: The disk is scratched.
 * Kanaya's sign is Virgo. Her last name is Maryam. Think about that for a minute.
 * Clubs Deuce is a goofy-seeming fellow perfectly happy to blow people up. Gamzee, a goofy fellow turned slasher villain, wields the Deuce Clubs.
 * Q: Equius is so freakishly strong, wasn't he strong enough to break the bowstring with his neck muscles? A: Yes.
 * Remember that update on Andrew's Formspring where he tried CS5 before returning to CS3? Know how he mentions having "a ton of pertinent files open all the time so I don't have to spend as much time rooting around for stuff?" These spoiler-ish updates may be a Meta example of one way the story unfolds-mining past images for use later in present updates, with these updates a Call Back of a past Tear Jerker concerning Karkat and Terezi.]]
 * Regarding the above mentioned eventual callback, the other Seer and Knight are equally likely to recreate this scene. Look how easily those pictures can be edited, Terezi's shades could easily replaced by Dave's pair.
 * Also, this update has Homestuck's current narrator Doc Scratch paraphrased as stating "events have begun to outpace his awareness. The deeper into this dark pocket he explores, the more he will be forced to speculate." As his time may be up soon, his Omnipotent vision may be growing blurrier, decreasing his accuracy to predict events. This may explain his current speculating as an Unreliable Expositor on Jack and Vriska's duel and its consequences.
 * Jossed. It's because the entire duel between Jack and Vriska is an alternate timeline.
 * Finally, Andrew may have commented on his real life delay for a few days here, affecting the suddenly succintly slow pace of the story.
 * I wondered why Sollux's blood color was yellow while two defining colors of his are red and blue. Then it hit me; Yellow, red, and blue are all primary colors.
 * Also, in astrology the colour yellow is associated with the sign Gemini.
 * This page shows four of the kiss-ressurections in the comic so far. The titles match. On one hand, we have the Seer of Mind kissing the Page of Breath, while the Heir of Breath kisses the Seer of Light. On the other, we have the Knight of Blood kissing the Sylph of Space, while the Witch of Space kisses the Knight of Time.
 * This may just be a coincidence, but I was looking at a group picture of the trolls and kids, and I realized something: There are 6 female trolls. 1/2 of them have long hair(Vriska, Feferi, and Aradia), while the other half(Terezi, Nepeta, and Kanaya) don't. 6 and 1/2. when you remove the signs and spaces, you get 612.
 * I also found out that the kids have their own version of above. There are 4 kids. 1 of them(Jade) has long hair. The other 3(John, Rose, and Dave) don't. 4, 1, and 3. Put it all together, and you get 413.
 * Another interpretation of 413 and 612 is 4 kids turning 13 and 12 trolls turning 6
 * Consider this quote from Doc Scratch for a second, "Each dark pocket, in time, will be filled." depending on how this is pronounced this could either be talking about A-how Scratch uses the kids/trolls to achieve his own agenda or B- A prophecy of the Scratch fixing everything up in the two sessions
 * Also there are 12 trolls + 4 kids= 16 (the number of pieces in a chess set) methinks that the prior may apply here.
 * The trolls and kids as one side of a chess board actually makes a lot of sense. You have two Heirs as the King and Queen, and Knights as the Knights, obviously. The Witches have been acting a lot like Rooks throughout, doing critical work on the sidelines we never really focus on (Jade corresponds with her penpal, Feferi makes dream bubbles). That leaves the Seers as the Bishops and everyone else as pawns.
 * The game started out as chess, then Jack took over and the rules started to bend closer to cards, eight players working as chess tokens may set the game right again. Probably 4 derse dreamers and 4 prospit dreamers, so sollux really was doomed from the start.
 * it could also support my whole "Doc Scratch is the one who gives" the commands" theory he's the only one who really has the power to control the player but he can't be controlled himself.
 * Three possible readings of the quote: 1. Each dark pocket (in Doc Scratch's knowledge) will eventually be filled. 2. Each dark pocket in the flow of time (all the incomplete time loops) will be filled. or 3. Each dark pocket (of a pool table) will be filled (all billiards-themed characters will die).
 * Snowman must not die - because if the eight-ball is potted prematurely, both players lose!
 * If you remember from [S Cascade] (assuming you've seen it), Slick killed all the other members of the Felt, and then Snowman.
 * He didn't kill Clover.
 * Correct me if I'm wrong... but aren't there 16 balls on a pool table, as well? If you include the cue ball, that is. It probably means something.
 * John has wind powers. John lives near the Tacoma Narrows.
 * Recall back when Terezi sent John to get mauled by his Denizen and we all thought she was a big evil bitch? Now, take into account the revelation that Terezi can see the outcomes of doomed timelines, as demonstrated by Vriska. Terezi deliberately facilitated the doomed timeline in order to aid the alpha. She was actually helping the whole time.
 * Recent updates reveal that Betty Crocker wasn't human. However, it should already be known that she was never a real person to begin with.
 * The timing of the latest albums, The Wanderers and Sburb, could fit here. Consider the Wanderers album released in July as possibly the one meant for June, and its theme around the Exiles Crossing the Desert in a Heat Wave. Either way, the album works well as music for the hot months of summertime! AND, the Sburb album is a collection of piano music that could fit well detailing the beginning to ending of the players' conflict in Sburb. If this was meant as the official July release, it could work well as Awesome Music played along with a fireworks display in celebrating the Fourth of July!
 * Read Kanaya's introduction page while listening to Monty Python's Lumberjack Song.
 * Apparently The Scratch switches the roles of the original heroes and their ancestors\guardians. Jade claims her penpal (who augmented the bunny) is her grandson. In a scratched universe, Grandpa would have a grandmother Jade.
 * A fan thoery that came from Mindfang's diary was that the "slave girl" Mindfang summons was Kanaya's ancestor. According to this page The Dolorosa (Kanaya's ancestor) was sold into slavery.
 * The Disciple, Nepeta's ancestor, was obsessed with recording the teachings of the Sufferer, Karkat's ancestor. Karkat loves Rom-Coms and talking about romance. Suddenly, Nepeta's shipping wall makes a lot of sense.
 * The Sufferer, Karkat's ancestor, and the Disciple, Nepeta's, had what was described as basically a perfect, fairy-tale romance. No wonder Nepeta had such a crush on Karkat- their ancestors had the kind of love story that would have been irresistible to her. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch for us to think she saw herself and Karkat as the next Disciple and Sufferer.
 * Related: The Sufferer and Disciple's romance connects to Nepeta and Karkat's Sgurb titles, The Rogue of Heart and the Knight of Blood respectively.
 * This update is a Call Back to that update. Following that snap, Sollux falls asleep. Now, this update uploaded about 2 to 3 in the morning, could signify time for the Homestuck audience to go to sleep due to being up too late, or attempt an Archive Binge in the new Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff CSS from the beginning.
 * In the latest update, Karkat calmes Gamzee down by shooshing him and patting his face and the two are established as moirails. Now, way long ago, we got to see Nepeta's shipping wall, where there was a picture of Gamzee and Karkat as moirails, with Gamzee touching Karkat's face. Nepeta noted that it's still plausible, but that the roles will have to be dramatically reversed.
 * From a biological viewpoint the violent nature of troll-kind makes perfect sense as a means of natural selection to prune out the mutations arising from their constant inbreeding. However Doc Scratch said that he was responsible for the trolls violent nature. Does that mean Scratch is somehow responsible for the Mother Grub method of breeding? What a creep.
 * This may also explain the troll's vestigial genders.
 * Everything involving lusii was imported by Doc Scratch
 * Sburb essentially wipes out your race when played. Emissaries from the horrorterrors, like Feferi's lusus (and the vast glub), are probably a common feature of the game for sessions where the host species has left their home planet.
 * Eridan, whose romantic advances have been turned down by nearly every other main character, lives in a wrecked ship.
 * You remember how angry Aradia was throughout her tenure as a robot? It makes more sense once you realize she was filled with Equius's blood!
 * At first, Aradia killing Vriska didn't make much sense, since earlier in the comic she said she didn't want revenge. Then you see that her exile told her to do it. She's used to hearing voices in her head, and she'd always do what they said. What's one more voice to her?
 * Not really, she specifically makes it known she's n0t 0K with it.
 * When Tavros goes to confront Vriska, he completely forgoes all tactics and runs straight at her. You could say he charged like a bull.
 * Vriska, on the other hand, stood her ground and let him come to her...just like a spider.
 * Vriska once said, regarding the trolls' ancestors, "Y" Mindfang was killed by the Summoner. Vriska murders Tavros. Neophyte Redglare was killed by Mindfang. Terezi kills Vriska. Orphaner Dualscar was killed on the Condesce's orders. Eridan kills Feferi. The Dolorosa was assassinated by Dualscar. Kanaya kills Eridan. The E%ecutor and the Disciple defied the highbloods and got away with it. Gamzee kills Nepeta and Equius. The Sufferer eventually broke under torture, cursing the highbloods with his dying breath... and Karkat singlehandedly stops Gamzee's rampage with kindness and a Cooldown Hug.
 * Also relatedly, something I didn't realize until recently: when Vriska kills the Black King, she rolls an 8^8. We now know that that roll gets you Ancestral Awakening. Mindfang vs a giant ugly blackish monster, huh?
 * I was impressed with the versatility of the word "scratch" and all the relevance to story in some way.
 * 1. It refers to the billiard term, "Scratch" or to put the Cue Ball in a pocket. It makes an apt name for certain Cue Ball themed villain. Plus in billiards when a Player scratches, they lose their turn and the next player begins their turn. This is similar to how when a scratch is preformed in the troll world the Players and Ancestors switched roles. The Ancestors scratched and lost their turn, now it the other Players' turn.
 * 2. It refers to the action of "scratching" a record, which is moving the needle across portions of a record to make an odd sound. Interestingly, doing so moves to a different part of the record which is kind of like moving through time.
 * 3. It refers to scratching a CD. Scratches on the surface can cause a number of misreads and various other problems. In a way, a scratch on a CD is like cancer to the CD. Sometimes its fatal and sometimes a doctor can cure it. The trolls screwed up the kids' session is similar to how Terezi scratched the game disk.
 * 4. It refers to "starting over from scratch". "Starting over from scratch" is a phrase used to describe having to start over with absolutely nothing. Where "starting over from square one" means going back to the beginning in the same condition you are now, "starting over from scratch" refers to something even more extreme. To use a board game as an example, "square one" would mean you get sent back to the start square. However, "from scratch" means you would need to start a whole new game. This parallels the fact that once the Scratch happens, the current players aren't sent back to the start of their journey in order to try again. A whole new game session begins with new players.
 * 5. It can also refer to "making from scratch". This is a phrase used to describe building, making, or creating something without using any part that is already partially done. This phrase is used in cooking or baking. If you were baking cookies, you could buy all the ingredients needed and make them from start to finish and bake the cookies from scratch or you could buy a package of Betty Crocker's Cookie Dough and use that as a starting point as several of the ingredients are already mixed together and half the work is done for you.
 * 6. Scratching Out. A term that used to mean deletion or removal of something from something else. IE Scratching an item of a list.
 * If you look closely at the page where Gamzee's revealed to be the most important character in Homestuck, he initially comes off as creepy. However, with recent events, it's revealed that Gamzee's good again. If you look again, you'll realize that it's Gamzee's normal expression, except covered in blood.
 * Rose animal motief is that of a cat. When she goes grimdark her skin gets darker essentially making her a black cat, a black cat whose title as a hero of light means that she is mainly manipulating luck.
 * Some might be wondering why Sollux is fluctuating between flushed and caliginous feelings for Gamzee in the showdown. Sollux's entire shtick is duality....of course he'll have two conflicting opinions of him!
 * On a side note, think about this. Did you notice that out of all of the trolls, Sollux has the most relationships? That's right, in canon, Sollux is the most paired up troll!
 * As-TROLL-ogy?
 * This line from Doc Scratch's description of the Handmaiden: "She stirred up class warfare and intensified bigotry in whatever era she haunted." Aradia, the Handmaiden's descendent, had some sort of romantic relationship with the bigoted Equus.
 * Karkat, despite his constant rage, has never killed, maimed or severely injured any of his friends. He listens to their problems (despite being an asshole about it) and gives them advice. He also tries (and fails) to keep his team from killing each other. He also stops a psycho clown mass-murderer with kindness. He's also never had a kismesis, and when he thinks he finally has found one in John, he ends up becoming friends with John. By troll standards, he's a saint ...or The Messiah
 * The hood of Dave's God Tier outfit looks a bit odd...until you realize that he's wearing a chain mail coif. He is the Knight of Time.
 * Additionally God Tier Jade really does look like a witch. Also, she looks a bit like Kanaya, who shares the element of Space, and Jade at the moment can sorta be considered undead. And "dog" is "god" spelled backward, so Jade has also reached the "Dog" Tier.
 * Also, the shrunken down planets circle behind Jade, the five planets forming the corner points of a pentagram, which is quite fitting for a witch.
 * In the ending of the Act 5 Flash, PM puts on the ring and is as strong as Bec Noir. She then teleports into the Troll's universe to fight and, hopefully, kill Bec Noir. What's brilliant?
 * The Green Sun has twice the mass of the universe. To create it, two universes had to be destroyed.
 * Andrew has stated that Derse represents Destruction. Ironic then, that two Dersite Dream Selves and Derse's moon help create the Green Sun. Or maybe not, because two universes are destroyed by beings empowered by the Green Sun (the first universe Bec Noir destroys directly, the second universe Doc Scratch destroys by proxy - with Spades Slick firing a bullet that's probably ALSO Green Sun empowered.)
 * One of Alternia's moons is purple - which is what you get if you add the primary colors red and blue. Red is the color of the Kids' universe, while blue is the color of the Trolls' universe.
 * It's also the inverted color of the green moon. They're opposites. This may very well mean something.
 * Considering that the destruction of the red and blue universes created the green sun...and that Derse's purple moon was involved...
 * Draconian Dignitary got the jump on Dave on twice. In Act 5, Dave finally returns the favor.
 * Why is the Green Sun green while its components are red and blue? Because it couldn't be created until both the universes were destroyed. If you take a picture and remove red and blue from it, the only colors remaining will be shades of green.
 * fun factoid, when one looks at a nebula or a star with just the eye looking into a telescope, it will appear green, because the only spectral lines we can see are oxygen, the green lines. Sun is just another way of saying "star".
 * Of course it's PM that get's the White Queen's Ring - she was promoted to Queen.
 * The planet of each player seems reveal what elemental atribute each player has (or maybe it's the other way around)
 * Some are Obvious
 * Wind and Zephyr for Breath
 * Light for Light
 * Quartz and Clockwork for Time
 * Frogs and... Frogs for Space (it works in story)
 * Pulse and Blood
 * Silence and Void
 * But some don't really seem to make that much sense
 * How are Maps or Treasure meaningful to Light? Light can be luck or it can be insight, like a map. Too bad Vriska doesn't use it that way since luck doesn't matter.
 * Makes more sense when you consider the other half of her title. Thieves and treasure, hm?
 * Nepeta's planet is Land of Little Cubes and Tea what does that have to do with Heart? Look at the Hero of Heart emblem it's a tea cup.
 * Remember that the planet names are often abbreviated like Dave's Land of Heat and Clockwork is referred to as LOHAC. With this in mind, Nepeta's planet makes much more sense.
 * Some of the songs in Vol. 8 have a Double Meaning Title.
 * Drift into the Sun refers to Rose and Dave undergoing their suicide mission to explode the Green Sun, using Derse’s moon as a vehicle. Alternatively, a drift, defined as a mass of matter, in this case Derse’s moon, is turned “into the sun” thanks to the Tumor.
 * The bonus song, Black Hole/Green Sun, refers to the Tumor's detonation as a black hole and supernova into the Green Sun. However, at the end of [S Cascade,] when the song ends, Jade, John, the planets, and her cruiser plow through the Fourth Wall, leaving a black hole behind as their point of entry and escape.
 * Jade becomes the Witch of Space in the October 25 update - less than a week before Halloween.
 * She places the planets and Skaia in orbit around her in the shape of a pentagram. The Kid's four planets with their associated elements and Skaia taking the point for light.
 * It's mentioned near the beginning of the troll intermission that troll culture places an unusual emphasis on architectural design proficiency at a very young age (letting the trolls that have just recently survived their trials design their own homes), but that no one seemed to really know why that is. Well, in light of the information from Doc Scratch regarding the trolls ancestor's failed Sgrub game, this makes sense. That was an effect of Scratch's influence in his efforts to better prepare the trolls for Sgrub, much like they became incredibly violent and competitive under his influence.
 * As of the act 5-6 Intermission, we learn that Doc Scratch really is an excellent host. Falls emphatically under Fridge Horror, as well.
 * After his summoning, Lord English locks himself in a sarcophagus. He wears a Cairo Overcoat. A Chicago Overcoat is slang for a coffin. So a Cairo Overcoat would actually be an Egyptian coffin.
 * If you look closely, the sarcophagus is his Cairo Overcoat. It's a reference to the innocuous doubles of Problem Sleuth.
 * Not just that, it's a reference to Mobster Kingpin's (imaginary) vessel, the Chicago Overcoat. He eventually becomes Demonhead Mobster Kingpin. And what is Lord English? A demon.
 * Gamzee was never "the most important character in Homestuck". Look who he's holding in his lap in that scene. It was Li'l Cal all along.
 * I guess you could say English was * Glasses Pull * made from Scratch. YEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH! And then there's that possibility of him having a connection to Betty Crocker...
 * On that note, in pool, English means to put a spin on the cue ball. "Putting a spin on" means "give a new interpretation or meaning to".
 * So if Doc Scratch was hosting Lord English, you could say he was already here?
 * tICK t0ck 8R8K H34DS honk HONK: It made no sense originally... however, it turns out to be foreshadowing Lord English's arrival.
 * The honk HONK voiced by Lord English and included in his code has spawned numerous Epileptic Trees about Gamzee being Lord English or being related to him. HOWEVER, if you think about it, the whole thread of the "honk HONK" theme can be traced back to Lord English. Doc Scratch is an agent of Lord English, and was responsible for guiding the development of troll society in this iteration of their universe. In now-familiar circular paradox space fashion, it could easily have been Doc Scratch who planted the seed of honk HONK in the first place, after which it grew into the rule of Subjugglators on Alternia, which led to Gamzee's madness, which led to his scrawling of the honk HONK code, which led to...
 * Regarding Doc Scratch, here's a thought... the Green Sun was formed when the Troll's Universe was destroyed, thus everything inside it would be obliterated and non-existant. But then where are Doc Scratch, his clock, and part of his building surviving that the Doc's body could become Lord English? Simple. A POCKET Universe. The cueball-headed Doc was Scratched.
 * Dave's tux alchemizations were a long list of {Foreshadowing}, first he has his regular tux, showing a broken record, or a scratched Beat Mesa, then he has the Four Aces Suited and the Felt Tux, showing a broken Cue ball and a Broken 8-ball both very big plot-points as well.
 * Despite being part of the aristocracy, Eridan apparently spends very little time underwater. This is because, unlike Pisces, Aquarius isn't a water sign - it's an air sign.
 * Considering the comic's theather-esque style (with acts, intermissions, etc.), it's quite fitting that Lord English breaks a leg shortly before his debut.
 * I found this: Why do all the sudden I feel ridiculously stupid? Like someone was waving the answer right in front of my face and I still didn't get it. If you don't get it read over the third paragraph a few times.
 * Even better, that section opened with "Lord English: Reveal yourself".
 * While rereading the comic I came across the conversation between Kanaya and Jade. They were talking about the fact they were both Prospit dreamers that awoke rather early in life. Kanaya explains that Doc Scratch showed up one day and she awoke on Prospit very early. Kanaya then remarks Jade was lucky she didn't have an influence like that in her life. BUT being a Doc Scratch was First Guardian and awoke Kanaya's dreamself, it seems plausible that Bec, a First Guardian, might have been responsible for Jade's early awakening.
 * An instance playing on Ship Tease: Jake has a thing for blue ladies. Jane has a thing for fine moustaches. You know who was a blue lady pre-Scratch? Jane, as Nannasprite. And guess who had a fine moustache pre-Scratch: Jake, as Grandpa.
 * Somewhat relating to the above, but remember how Jade said that her Grandpa liked to collect pictures of models? Notice how they're blue? Yet another similarity Jake and Grandpa share. Enough said.
 * Because Jake IS Grandpa Harley, through etcobiology and such.
 * The Homestuck Anthem features John, Rose and Jade's instruments, in that order. So where's Dave? Playing the rest of the song from the start. He is a time traveler, after all.
 * Andrew Hussie refuses to write the fourth recap. Because it would have been too long? Well, there's that, but in addition, mere minutes later we get another sort of recap of the same material. As Jade summons the fourth wall during the End of Act 5 animation, the story so far flashes back from the most recent panels to Jadesprite's creation - which happened to be when the last recap was written. Look fast, and the recap is already provided for you.
 * It would only make sense for the heroes of Hope and Doom to be rivals.
 * Remember the incredibly catchy "Mayor Maynot" from the Wanderers Album? It was foreshadowing what happens to PM: "Here's the mail it never fails it makes me want to wag my tail" And the sounds of a dog barking. PM takes the Queen's Ring, thereby becoming part dog.
 * Unfortunately this part might not really count, since Radiation had no idea what was going to happen later on in the story. He wasn't foreshadowing anything intentionally.
 * Accidential Fridge Brilliance?
 * John's relationship with Vriska cold be attributed to Jake's fetish for blue skinned woman and sassy spider-related heroines.
 * Similarly to something above, the Ship Tease with Alpha!Lalonde and Jane's dad can be attributed to them both being in a relationship prior to the Scratch.
 * Early in Gamzee's playthrough, Gamzee makes the accusation that Tavros "sToLe [Gamzee's] NoSe" (Tavros' normal emoticon is "}:)", Gamzee's is ":o)", Tavros had just written his as "}:o)" to screw with Gamzee). Compare Gamzee's face to his emoticon: It has no nose.
 * Similarly, Vriska's winking face has one eye closed and seven open. It may seem like just a coin-flip of how to handle an eight-eyed face winking (between one eye and four eyes), but since seven of Vriska's eyes are covered by the same eyelid she could only close one eye, seven eyes, no eyes, or all of her eyes, and there's no reasonable way to wink with the other seven emoticon eyes.
 * In Seer: Descend, most of the books you read on the shelves were non-sense. However there were one that now made sense. It was a book on a theory that with some adjustments, the Queen's Ring of Orbs fourfold could be modified to add more orbs to it, to which is immediately dismissed by Rose as non-sense. This is, however, instead an instance of The Dev Team Thinks of Everything now that Act 6 is in the post scratched session.
 * Or it refers to the trolls' session and their 12-orb rings.
 * A "gavelkind" is a system of land inheritance. The character who has "hammerkind" (a gavel being a small hammer) as his strife modus is the Heir of Breath.
 * Jade's fetch modi seem to be relevant to the story. We've already seen a Battleship and the Crocker Monopoly, and doesn't the jenga tower look a lot like ? Connect 4: 4 kids and 4 trolls are being united. We've had characters talk with the dead (Ouija), and the 12 silhouettes on the Guess Who modus are reminiscent of our introduction to the trolls.
 * Yahtzee could refer to Vriska's dice, Cluedo to the Midnight Crew intermission, Operation to removing the Tumor...
 * Jake just accidentally killed a fairybull. He feels just awful. Does this remind you of anything???
 * Jade is rosy, Rose is jaded
 * Dave, the coolkid, ends up in a land of heat, and Jade, the hothead, ends up in a land of frost
 * Kanaya is one of the only, if not the only troll that enjoys sunlight. Her main relations are Vriska and Rose, both of whom are heroes of light.
 * The Summoner was a Rufio/Peter Pan reference. And what was the legacy he left behind? A world made up entirely of kids. A literal Neverland.
 * Jade made the Girl's Best Friend, a rifle with DD's symbol on it. Well, diamonds ARE a Girl's Best Friend.
 * Check the total grist used to make it. All diamonds.
 * Even better? The amount of diamond grist needed to make the Girl's Best Friend was 500,500. In Roman numerals, D=500.
 * Kanaya's title is actually an Incredibly Lame Pun when you think about it. Sylphs are mythological creatures that manipulate air. In other words, Kanaya is a Fairy.
 * The apparent dissonance between Vriska being embarrassed about killing Tavros and dismissive of the trolls she killed to feed her Lusus make more sense when you think about it for a bit. The trolls she killed for her Lusus were so that her Lusus wouldn't eat her, so she saw it as business. Tavros' murder, however, was personal, even more so than Aradia's, which was specifically a revenge strike. She even says as much.
 * Sollux's bizarre semi-Unexplained Recovery on the Green Sun makes a bit more sense if you remember his connection to Gemini; besides the whole theme of twins and duality there's also the fact that Castor and Pollux, when they died, divided their time between Hades (the afterlife) and Olympus (home of the gods). Given that Sollux is now with three God-Tiered individuals...
 * In Lord English's infamous Alt Text, his initials are the only letters that are solid black instead of flashing in several colors. Considering LE enters the trolls' universe right after Snowman is killed (and all the other Felt members have already been offed), it makes sense...
 * When we see PM's vantage of Jack Noir rocketing towards the Green Sun and the meter rocketing away from it, it looks like a clock with the hands pointing to 6:12.
 * The troll ancestors who initiated the scratch were too weak because they lived in peace. And when they initiated the scratch, they became the ancestors instead of the players. Now, realize that the current troll world is so terrible because the Sufferer failed to spread his message. That means there is a good likelihood that the reason the original troll world was peaceful was because Karkat (acting as an ancestor in the original troll world) SUCCEEDED in spreading his message.
 * Not to mention Feferi would have been the Empress.
 * Remember how during the buildup to Vriska's death, the transition to the next pages always read "Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock." Now, at first it seems to just be a reference to the clock which decides whether the death of a god tier was heroic or just, as it ticked away in Vriska's final moments. However, if you think about this in relation to who Vriska is as a character, it turns into more of a fridge brilliance. Simply put, Vriska is or aspires to be a one armed, one eyed pirate. A certain other one armed, one armed pirate,(Read, Captain Hook), was continually haunted by a crocodile who would make "Tik Tok" noises whenever he approached due to the fact that he swallowed a clock, and was scared to death of this crocodile because that was how it was prophesized he would die. See the connection. Andrew Hussie has made Vriska into a walking (And dying) peter pan reference.
 * When Karkat was hit by the bucket, he let out a Vast Expletive.
 * The fact that the Life symbol kind of looks like a pair of tentacles make sense when you remember Feferi's Lusus.
 * Spades Slick's obsession with scottie dogs is Hilarious in Hindsight considering his counterpart Jack Noir's final form once Bec is prototyped.
 * Doc Scratch says here that he is a soldier in a war of one bullet fired. Which bullet? The bullet fired by Spades Slick at Snowman that kills her and destroys the Troll's universe, summoning Lord English.
 * Lord English and all his affiliates are green, according to That Other Wiki a number of artists and poets associate that color with The Devil.
 * It is said that players have to die to reach the God Tiers because they must be able to face their own death. It seems like John involuntarily cheated because he was unconscious at the time, so he never proved himself as intended. However, when we learn about his doomed timeline counterpart's Heroic Sacrifice, we see that, when it comes right down to it, John could face his own death.
 * "RK" is diluvial (pertaining to floods) because it's the last two letters of Ark. It's obvious in hindsight, but it's not something that's easy to figure out.
 * And then it turns out Dirk is from after a great flood...
 * It should've been obvious that the letter in the mailbox was a trap, since it's taking place on 11/11, Veteran's Day. Mail isn't delivered on Veteran's Day.
 * If you think about it, The Reveal that the trolls were in a post-scratch session was possibly foreshadowed (or perhaps there have been coincidences?). Remember in [s] Past Karkat: Wake Up we only got to see the grub versions of "our" trolls, but not the ancestors? Also remember how ectobiology works; by pinpointing someone in time and creating a paradox clone of them. If the trolls had been made with their ancestors' DNA, Karkat would know what the "extra twelve useless wrigglers" were for since the machine had pinpointed at them. Instead, the Ancestor grubs were probably made with a mixture of our trolls' DNA, thus explaining Karkat's belief that the "extra" grubs were "useless".
 * Karkat's God Tier outfit (assuming that is Karkat) has a long flowing cape, making him look a bit like a stereotypical vampire. Karkat is the Hero of Blood.
 * It's the same as Dave's though...
 * The reason his cape is the same as Dave's is because they are both "knights". That makes Karkat a literal "Blood Knight".
 * What's with the Reciprocal Fiction Paradox (look inside Trivia tab)? At first it sees wacky... but then of course, the creator of MS Paint Adventures is Andrew Hussie, who oversees all of the universes in Homestuck. It's highly possible that he updates the stories in the Beta universe, Alpha universe, troll universe, and our universe. Who knows, maybe he uses the time he's not updating the comic in our universe to update the ones in the others.
 * Dirk Strider's new fetch modus requires that the items in a column has to rhyme. It's also filled with different types of orange soda. The word "orange" is also infamous for being unrhymeable. Given the obsession for irony that both Striders share, there is no way that wasn't intentional.
 * The new post-scratch kids seem much more hip,rad, and mature than their pre-scratch counterparts who are often seen as more nerdy,eccentric and likey to be outcast. Jake English is notably cooler than John, Jane is more calm than Jade, Dirk is more mature and sincere than Dave, and Roxy is more 'tipsy' than Rose. Why? Because they're in the 'Alpha' session, where as the kids came from the 'beta' one. A small observation if one considers the whole 'Alpha-Beta' sexual terminology.
 * They're also three years older.
 * When "Di" Strider MST's Jane's book, he puts a note next to the name "Anna" and says that it would be a good name for Jane. Who was Jane known as before the scratch? Nanna!
 * With the revelation that the class Prince is the most active and destroyer of all of them is it really surprising that Eridan destroyed the last shred of hope that they had?
 * Most likely, when you saw this page you though to yourself, "Wow, that an out of character thing for an omnicidal maniac to do." But, when he put on the ring, he prototyped himself with all the first tier sprites, specifically John's Harlequin. So, he did because he's part clown.
 * I always thought it was from the dead crow.
 * So UU hex code color of #929292 is a reference to uranium, right? Well what about Karkat's #626262 hex code color? Well element 26 is iron. As in what makes your blood red.
 * Actually, 62 is the atomic number of samarium, a volatile but durable silvery-grey metal used in various applications including permanent magnets and cancer treatment. But that works well too.
 * Iron also matches Karkat's text and sign color, references the irons that the Sufferer was put in, and is the name of his color in the "coloUrs and mayhem" album.
 * So why did Doc Scratch prod Rose into checking the cue ball and going grimdark? Even after she recovered, she was surrounded by a blackout that kept the trolls and anyone else from reading her future or that of anyone near her. In other words, it prevented anyone from realizing what The Tumor actually does until it's long too late.
 * Gamzee's handle is terminallyCapricious, and in a roundabout way he's ultimately responsible for Jack becoming the all-powerful Hero-Killer that he is now. Karkat may have given the Kids' universe cancer, but Gamzee made it terminal.
 * I'm Sorry I Thought That Was Obvious
 * Ro-Lal is an anagram of LOLAR.
 * In Cascade, you see a shot of Jade's legs as God Tier. She is wearing ruby slippers. And black and white stockings. And lives in the West (or East, can't remember). Her God Tier is the Witch of Space. Anyone else worried that a house is gonna fall on her?
 * Technically, a home did fall on her....and a whole lot of other houses did too.
 * This also makes sense as Feferi, another "Witch" player was killed by Aquarius; the "Water Carrier".
 * Why is G Cat not loyal to any one member of the Alpha Session? Sure, G Cat is... well, a cat. But also because the Alpha Session lacks a Space player.
 * And on that note, the Beta kid's terrible prototyping combo made their session unwinnable. The reason why? Bec threw himself into it just to protect Jade. GCAT most likely never will or would.
 * Nanna Egbert and Grandpa Harley both lived and died years before the events of Act 1, when Beta!Mom and Beta!Bro are still alive. Jane and Jake live years before Roxy and Dirk.
 * Remember the first character select screen in Act 6? When you hover over a character, it shows their relative location on a map of the Earth. Dirk and Roxy are unselectable, blacked out, and marked with a question mark. The arrow marking their location also has a question mark over it. [S] Jane: Enter reveals Dirk and Roxy were actually living in the future, where Earth looks nothing like the character select screen's map. That's why they couldn't be selected - they weren't even alive yet.
 * Lord English is finally revealed in Intermission 2. So guess who shows up when Act 6 Intermission 2 rolls around?
 * this might be streching it jsut a bit, but has anyone else noticed that the sickle, Karkat's weapon of choice, looks a lot like 1/2 of the cancer symbol, at least in the general outline?
 * I think the sickle is more likely a reference to Sickle Cell Anemia.
 * Or a crab's claw.
 * In the Beta timeline, Davesprite typed in orange instead of red and was called not real by John. Now in the ALPHA timeline, Dirk's auto responder talks in red and is the fake one while Dirk, the "real one", types in Davesprite's orange.
 * This might be fairly obvious but it makes sense that Kanaya became the rainbow drinker; she was under the sign Virgo and in various vampire mythology only virgins can become vampires.
 * The song used in this animation, apart from being awesome, actually has in-story significance: as a recent update reveals, the pre-Scratch versions of the troll Ancestors have managed to avoid fading away along with their doomed timeline, lingering on to become key figures in the Alpha Session Even In Death.
 * Like many people, I've wondered exactly what the number 413 means, and the likely answer may be groan-worthy: since I'm from the same area where Hussie lives, she can confirm that in Western Mass 413 is... the area code. Yeah.
 * I dunno about that. I think Hussie moved there AFTER he started writing Homestuck, and it was actually an incredibly improbable coincidence.
 * It's not a coincidence... Hussie moved there BECAUSE of Homestuck. Probably.
 * Eridan is generally seen as being a desperate loser who was borderline sociopathic even by the trolls' standards. Up until you consider the fact that all the trolls were still children, still on the road to being mature adults. Except for Eridan, who was already mature and already doing whatever he had to in order to make sure his species lived. He hated Vriska - he was her kismesis for a while, remember - but he still allied with her to get lusii to feed Feferi's horrorterror lusus and keep it from screaming...even though all he'd need in order to pull off that genocide he kept threatening would be to neglect just one scheduled feeding. And avoiding the drones? Well, there's a reason he was hitting on anyone who seemed like they were showing interest - he was coming on strong for a kid, but for all we know he was coming on just right for an adult. Frankly, if Eridan were human, he'd be that loner who's way too mature for his age and who creeps out the rest of his peer group as a result.
 * Except for the part where he kills his potential matesprit because she rejected him, blinded the guy that took her, killed one more person, and doomed his entire race just because he wanted to defect and join the bad guy. That's not something a mature human does, nor does 'coming on to anyone that shows interest' make a healthy human being. He'd still be a desperate sociopathic loser by human standards.
 * The A2 Session is a void session, which cannot produce a fully matured battlefield, and thus cannot create a Genesis Frog and produce a new universe. Jane's entry item is a cruxite tree that bears no fruit.
 * Andrew's death scene seemingly exits only for only one purpose: to bring closure to a Formspring Running Gag about him marrying Vriska, which subscribers to the DOTA philosophy will likely never bother to find out about.
 * An old one I'm surprised no one has caught yet. When Jane notices the extension on the fake SBURB file Roxy sent her you can see that the icon is slightly fuzzier compared to the others. Thats because Roxy probably took the logo and shrank it or saved a smaller logo as a GIF or JPEG to use as the icon for the file. A small find, but Jane probably wouldn't have clicked it with the normal .~ATH icon in place.
 * I just realized, the Heroes of space are Kanaya, Jade, and The Dolorsa's prescratch counterpart (presumably). What colour is Kanaya and the Dolorsa's blood?
 * They're all associated with green...
 * Im Sorry I Thought That Was Obvious
 * Jane: Proceed reveals the very much alive Gamzee, who's sporting a God-tier outfit. Since he has scratches on his face and isn't dead, this clearly is the Alpha Gamzee. Since Gamzee's godtier, it explains his strength.
 * THIS.
 * Nanna died first though.
 * An amazing realization hit this troper during the Doc Scratch arc when the reader was transported into his house. Every time you clicked, the link said "tick" or "tock" (unless it was another word such as "honk"). What represents those noises? You, clicking the button. The click your mouse makes is the clock.
 * Rose's Grimoire for summong horrorterros involves making windows. Come to Roxy and her Fenestrated Planes and we learn the go through the Furthest Ring.
 * Remember when Jade put on the White Queen's Ring and got this imaginary transformation? She never gets the first three prototypings, but she does eventually get the fourth one.
 * Li'l Cal is a juju. Jujus origins are untraceable. We know Li'l Cal exists because of a causality loop which means he exists because he exists. Sort of like a law of physics or even a fundamental flaw in the session/universe. The notion that he would spring from the void even makes sense, if the void refers to Paradox Space, Since Paradox Space is basically fate. The the creation of Jujus goes in line with the idea of fundamental flaws in sessions dooming them. It could even be considered a reverse of the gaming abstraction idea in the sense that a few bad lines of code create random glitches in reality. Heck that could even explain all the callbacks to different "games" like Problem Sleuth and Jailbreak; straggling lines of code not properly removed before release.
 * According to Aranea, the cobalt-blood Psychic Powers are primarily about empathy, and the "maniupl8ion" is just a byproduct of that. She describes how strange and awkward it is to constantly feel what everyone around you is feeling about you, especially negative emotions, and how isolated it made her feel. Now, consider: Aranea comes from pre-Scratch Alternia, which operates under a much less oppressive/insane system than the totalitarian Teenage Wasteland of post-Scratch Alternia, and likely had far more face-to-face interactions among young trolls. Vriska, then, is an empath, but one who has rarely interacted with anyone at close enough range to feel their emotions, instead communicating mostly through chats and only using her powers to be a jackass to people far away from her. And then the game begins, and all of a sudden she's actually face-to-face with everyone... and feeling exactly how much they hate her guts. Is it any wonder, then, that she's less nasty in person than on Trollian?
 * The reason why undyingUmbrage seems to prefer nonsexual romantic "porn" makes sense when you remember the bit with Dirk and Jake in the dream bubble. In it, Dirk explains that the Condesce finds human sexuality disgusting, to the point of trying to make humans reproduce the same way as trolls. In other words? It had been previously established that trolls are squicked by human reproduction.
 * Kanaya's blood is a rare deep shamrock green, and the only main troll to have it. She fills in many roles for other trolls' Ashen Quadrants, and none of the other characters act as auspistices or mediate, so Kanaya is heavily associated to it. The symbol for the Ashen Quadrant is a club, but for a troll with such particular blood...it could also be a shamrock.
 * In Universe, Aranea can pass for an Exposition Fairy. Seriously.
 * Meenah, the Thief of Life, stole her and her friends' lives to live past the Scratch.
 * Also, the title works well considering her Ax Crazy personality.
 * As a Seer of Mind, Terezi could see the imaginary Dirk that Jake made. In the Alterniabound flash, she tells Tavros to not let anyone say to him that Rufio isn't real. Rufio is indeed real - Terezi could see (in a sense) him! Terezi wasn't just cheering Tavros up, she was completely sincere!

Fridge Horror
"Farnsworth: ...You mustn't interfere with the past! Don't do anything that affects anything, unless it turns out you were supposed to do it, in which case, for the love of God, don't not do it!"
 * At the start of Homestuck, the player moves a cake off a magic chest to help John retrieve his fake arms. If you look at the Fridge Brilliance above, you realize John's hands are represented the mouse hand icon as he moves the cake. However, what if no player was playing the game? Imagine being John, doing nothing in his room one day until he starts hearing random voices commanding him to retrieve his arms, and as he goes to retrieve them in an attempt to stop the voices, witnesses the cake floats on its own to the bed. If no player was present to give him commands, then John could believe he is losing his mind, become the victim of an invisible demon, or worse factoring in the possibility of doomed timelines. Shudder...
 * John captchalogues Casey the Salamander before he blasts off on his jetpack. ...So what happens to her when he dies in the alternate timeline?
 * Jade's death showed us that when a character with a sylladex dies, their inventory empties. Instead of being locked inside a sylladex card, she would just have been killed by the Denizen. Not a brilliant upside, but still, better than being in limbo forever.
 * Dream Jade didn't have a sylladex. The ring was on her finger. Eternal limbo still applies.
 * Dreamselves don't have sylladexes. John at that point wasn't even a dreamself anyways.
 * Lil Cal was ALIVE THE WHOLE TIME. If that wasn't creepy enough, Bro cut him to pieces.
 * Well, he was only seen actually moving in Dream Dave's room. Maybe it was Dave subconsciously moving him?
 * Word of God confirmed that Cal was being moved by Dave subconsciously, because although Cal isn't alive, Dave thinks on a subconscious level that he is.
 * He's been put back together since then. With very visible stitches.
 * For an in-universe example, Tavros's realizing where Tinkerbull is. That's... That's just cruel.
 * Equius's Trollian name is relevant to his interests. Played for Laughs anyway with troll culture's "Fine Art".
 * Thinking too much about cyclical timelines and Skaian visions brings up serious questions of whether there's any sort of free will at all in the game.
 * Free will does exist, it is just that the characters have knowledge of the future that ends up motivating them to do the acts that appear inevitable. See Vriska's need to involve herself in Bec Noir's creation: she sees John inexplicably fall asleep at his computer when about to prototype the doll, and decides to involve herself by putting him to sleep herself. The fact that she has used her powers to interfere with the kids' timeline feeds back into her own timeline, creating the events that entice her in the past.
 * Aradia mentions here that "a future self returning t0 the past fr0m a d00med timeline will always be slated f0r imminent destructi0n herself". Unfortunately, this may apply to at least two members of the main foursome...
 * Given that she exploded it may apply to her as well.
 * Davesprite is probably exempt due to prototyping. Kernels have a preference for doomed (and dead) entities so it wouldn't make much sense for them to be doomed after the prototyping.
 * Oh, You Just Had to Say It. Turns out he wasn't exempt at all.
 * Turns out, YES HE WAS.
 * Rose may be doomed but that isn't clear because it may not apply to mental time travel.
 * Given that Dream Selves are essentially 1-ups Rose is probably safe.
 * I do recall Rose saying her Dream Self was going to die in a Green Sun destroying suicide, doesn't that count as a doomed destruction? May also count as Fridge Brilliance.
 * ...Except she and Dave have now ascended to God Tier, and they unwittingly CREATED the Green Sun in the process.
 * Jade's sprite prototyped with Bec. Jack, wearing the prototyping ring, gains Bec's powers, becoming nigh omnipotent. Now remember that monsters (imps and whatnot) also get powers from prototyping.
 * Gl'Bgolybsprite prototyping suggests this to be self-evidently not the case. More likely we can simply expect a lot more canine imps.
 * Even then, this means Jade's going to have to kill the likeness of her best friend, over and over again.
 * Can we really compare the two?
 * No worse than the Trolls who had to kill the likeness of their often beloved Guardians over and over again. But yeah, they only seem to get some size and appearance from the prototyping. But I wonder what will happen when someone puts on the white ring...
 * It's got two arms, a goofy hat, and Bec-like powers. If this is just a Bec-like resemblance, then Bec is clearly working in more than three dimensions.
 * ...What?
 * I do not see it.
 * I think I got it. You see, Jade's grandfather died a long time ago due to travos screwing up. This means it would've been impossible for him to have given Jade all of those fetch modi. If that's the case, who did give her those modi??
 * It says it right there. She got them all as a Christmas gift from her gramps. It was a single gift with several games.
 * Jake probably gave it to her.
 * The troll sexualization of the bucket makes the role of an imperial drone extra creepy, especially considering that the characters are thirteen.
 * It is never said that an imperial drone will approach a 13 year old troll. The emphasis was on how much more important it was to find your quadrant's respective partners.
 * In fact it is stated that the genetic material is supplied by adult trolls.
 * Bec's prototyping and later Jade being tossed in the kernel means he is essentially dead. And if Rose blows up the Green Sun, Jadesprite will probably die again.
 * We have learned by now that characters with sufficient Psychic Powers, such as Sollux and Bec Noir, can use their powers to blow out any surveillance equipment monitoring them, with enough force to take out a wall. This wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that we as readers are observing them in much the same way. Let's hope Hussie doesn't get any ideas...
 * Does this count?
 * Equius' lusus is referred to as male... and then... Equius likes drinking his lusus' milk... Oh.. Oh God...
 * A male with a lactating udder. Maybe Lusus romance is a bit more complicated than you think?
 * A recent update had Kanaya referring to Jade (and humans in general) as "milkbeasts but without the hermaphroditic structures." I'd say that pretty much confirms that Alternian milkbeasts are all hermaphrodites.
 * this shows that there have been 42 Daves. this shows the current living Dave count at 12. Do the math.
 * That doesn't mean those are all dead Daves - through Trollian, Terezi is recording every single passage through time that Dave does, while Jade could only see the Daves that were currently running around. He had done plenty of time-hopping before she could see him, and will go on to do plenty more time-hopping as he says.
 * 42 Daves, 12 living. What's 4+2?
 * Equius forbidding Nepeta from engaging in EXTREME ROLEPLAYING. Later it's revealed his house has a nice view on Vriska, which means he had a DAMN GOOD REASON for forbidding her. (BTW, if someone could find the fan art showcasing it, it would be cool -- couldn't find it on Skaia.Net).
 * Here.
 * Recent updates are a call back to Jade's fantasy of being a wolf, only now told from WV's perspective, and in the form of Serenity's flash speak. Remembering the final line makes me worry for Serenity.
 * Or Vriska, which is more likely since she actually is described specifically as a weird bug. Scratch did say she wouldn't live to see the silver lining.
 * And its in morse code.
 * When Sollux was blinded and lost his psychic powers and his bifurcation motif, the blood from his mouth split the Gemini symbol on his shirt into half. The symbolism is apparent.
 * Ever since Gamzee was introduced, his speech pattern has been an occasionally annoying mix of upper and lowercase letters. This speech pattern? The effects of the sopor slime pie literally meshing his split personalities together and giving him a semblance of sanity.
 * A miracle is not a good thing if you're the one getting beaten by it.
 * Gamzee's off his meds. Tasteless yes, but strangely accurate.
 * When Karkat first expresses his distaste for Gamzee's typing style, he responds by typing in all lowercase, but eventually says that it doesn't feel natural and that it's better to do "wHaT fEeLs RiGhT aT wHeRe YoUr HeArT's Up In". More possible foreshadowing?
 * Ready for some Fridge Logic AND Horror at the same time? the 1/26/11 update implies that Ax Crazy Gamzee is using the Trollian viewports to know where the others will be in the future to intercept and kill them. Fridge Logic dictates that any time Gamzee uses this to kill someone, he's changing the future and creating a doomed timeline; therefore, we already know that any attempt of his to take advantage of this will end in failure. The Fridge Horror? It also means that there are hundreds of alternate timelines out there where Gamzee has killed someone/everyone and there was nothing his victims could do to escape him. Have fun with that thought.
 * No, it would not be possible for him to just create doomed timelines like that. If he was going to attack any of the Trolls, the Trollian viewports would show it happening, because it would not be possible for him to go against it. Remember, any attempt to change or analyze the future has already happened, just like in pretty much every other instance of weird time shit in the story.
 * Don't you remember when Terezi tried to get Dave to send himself to God Tier? The Dave sleeping on the Quest Bed, purely by the fact that he had chosen to travel to the future rather than wait, was from an alternate (doomed) timeline. So let's say Gamzee uses his Trollian viewport and sees Terezi walking down some stairs 5 minutes in the future right before having a conversation with Karkat, so he makes sure he's at that staircase 5 minutes in the future and kills her. He's just created a doomed timeline, because now her conversation with Karkat never happens and the future has been changed. In the "alpha" timeline, because he could see Terezi talking with Karkat, something, anything, will happen to prevent Gamzee from successfully intercepting and killing her beforehand. The only time Gamzee will kill someone is because it's been "preordained", not because he uses the viewports to spy on them.
 * Although now this is very unlikely to happen, if he were to see Terezi have the conversation with Karkat, and wait until she's finished her conversation, and then kill her. If he hasn't seen what happens next, or if he saw himself killing her, then the timeline is not necessarily doomed.
 * No, that is simply not possible by the way time travel works in Homestuck. Gamzee, or anyone else looking at Trollian, do not have the ability to change the future. Dave and Aradia do, but even they can only "change" the future in ways that were supposed to happen anyway. The timeline is set in ways that are unshakable by the players. Compare looking at the Trollian viewports to reading the memos: no matter what the Trolls think about the memos, they are inevitably going to write exactly what they and others have seen written, because it has all already happened. They do not have the ability or the option to change what they have already and are going to write. Looking at future memos and resolving to not write them is not going to create doomed timelines, because events have been conspired to ensure the timeline goes exactly the way it is supposed to with no unnecessary interruptions. Also compare it to the frog cloning minigame of Sburb - despite the weird time travel shit involved, it is impossible for Kanaya or Jade to create paradoxes.
 * What was that don't do it / don't not do it quote from Futurama again?

"color:white:It is certainly true that destroying it will end my life. And it is certainly true that The Tumor you will deliver to its location has enough power to destroy it completely. [...] T A"
 * In Seek the Highb100d, you can get behind the monitor as Equius, it's behind the same room you started in... And then you find Gamzee soon after, meaning that Gamzee may have been listening, niegh, watching you the whole time.
 * It literally just occurred to me that all of the trolls were about thirteen give-or-take, and the majority of them died horribly. Um...Andrew? I'm not particularly comfortable anymore.
 * All of the kids' guardians have died. Remember that code Karkat ran waaaaay back at the beginning of Hivebent? That one that killed all the lusii? It also applies to everybody that Karkat will ever meet. So from the minute Karkat first talked to John, he was accidentally dooming John's father to death.
 * Lets take it a step farther, as of the act 6 intermission 1 we know Karkat meets Dave and Rose, so he also doomed roses and Daves guardians.
 * Another step forward, It's also implied that he will be meeting John and Jade in the Alpha session with the Alpha Kids all four of them ummm. It's not looking so good them either.
 * In the past, Bec Noir has tried to teleport to wherever John and Dave are and kill them. In a way, he succeeded. Recently, it's revealed that he also tried to kill Jade by this method, but couldn't bring himself to do so. So what about Rose? We haven't heard from her in a while...
 * Except that we know that she's still alive when the Rift happens.
 * Actually no, we most certainly do not know that. Her timeline and her timelone alone specifically goes black long before anyone else's does and no one can explain why.
 * The reason Rose's screen goes black is because she pretty much just went grimdark. Vriska said that she couldn't see John when he flew into the Blackout, which is the same reason Kanaya can't see her. It's too dark in there.
 * A way of interpreting this last is that if the time windows can't see Rose, neither can Noir.
 * Well, from this page we know that Rose is still alive at some point in the future, and from what Dave says it sounds like it's pretty close to the full 24 hours. But we don't know exactly how the timeline aligns.
 * When Aradia found Li'l Cal, Dad's wallet modus was within...with some blood on it, and seeing as how in the present timeline is is currently held by John...
 * Maybe Dad had a backup wallet, like a sensible person.
 * John gave the wallet to WV, when he, the bunny, and CD went off to deliver the Tumor. Since WV is alive and uninjured in the future and the bunny doesn't have blood, things don't look good for poor CD...
 * Confirmed. Bec Noir kills CD after he kills Jade.
 * Why did little Dave wear a heart shirt? Because BRO MADE IT FROM MAPLEHOOF'S HIDE
 * Actually, his bib is the one with the pink heart. His shirt later is black with a red heart.
 * Isn't it nice that all the characters we knew and loved are at least guaranteed a reasonably nice afterlife? And it's secure as long as the Horrorterrors are around to provide the bubbles. The same Horrorterrors who were last seen asking for rescue. You may panic now.
 * On the subject of the Horrorterrors needing rescue, Rose, Dave and the surviving trolls are on the trolls' meteor base in the Furthest Ring traveling at nearly light speed, with Jack Noir in pursuit. Jack's at it again.
 * With the revelation that The Scratch is a hard reset of REALITY and that if the kids want to survive they need to jump ship to another universe (like, say, the Troll Session). The fact that Bec Noir arrived in the Troll Session with an arm covered in blood can inspire this. (since the Trolls and Kids are implied in the first conversation of the act to come up with a plan to do exactly this, they'd all be in one place...)
 * It's scarier if you assume they do somehow make it. So they're in the trolls' session, possibly searching the veil for the right meteor that their friends are on. Do they find it? Well, Gamzee had to get a hold of Zillyhoo somehow, right?
 * Considering the EOA5, the original comment here saying "if the kids want to survive they need to jump ship to another universe" is brilliance itself...
 * Why did the trolls suddenly went silent in the bad alt timeline when John died due to fighting the Denizen early? It's because their session ceased to exist the moment whatever convoluted Weird Time Shit sent Lil'Cal from arriving in Alterina and Kanaya's hands, and thus allowed Doc Scratch to be born, who in turn set everything up in the first place was prevented due to Dave prototyping Lil'Cal. They didn't go silent so much as cease to exist.
 * Or not. In Paradox Space, the alpha timeline is eternally present at all points, and any deviation will simply doom everyone in it. The Trolls were still there in the alpha timeline, they just couldn't communicate with the doomed one. Two timelines can exist at once.
 * Which actually may disprove the theory since Terezi converses with both Daves. Doomed Dave contacts her right before Noir kills him.
 * Still in the Alpha timeline, it's just not Alpha Dave. As long as they remain in the Alpha timeline they can be contacted no matter who they are.
 * Which leads to a moment of Fridge Brilliance as well. Ever since it was revealed how dreamselves worked, this troper always wondered why Dream John and Dream Jade didn't take over as "real" John and Jade. The answer is it wasn't John's death that doomed the timeline, it was Cal being prototyped.
 * Though Dream John wouldn't have been able to take over anyway, since that particular use of a dreamself requires use of the Quest Bed (which no one was in any position to take advantage of) or a kiss from one of the other players (which would have required getting to John's seventh gate themselves to get to a body in the same room as an angry Denizen).
 * Except it turns out that the timeline was doomed before John died. In fact, John voluntarily died to fix the timeline. Thus, Cal being prototyped probably was the thing that doomed the timeline.
 * This page is becoming Fridge Horror, in retrospect. Dave mentions that "rose is crazy jades crazier" in the future. While that second could be just in comparison to the present moment, when one considers what has just happened with Rose it gets pretty ominous.
 * During Hivebent, when Gamzee and Equius are talking to each other, Gamzee says "iF i CoUlD mAkE yOu SmIlE iT'd Be ThE bEsT fUcKiN mIrAcLe I eVeR dId PaRt Of." After Gamzee snaps, he finally DOES make Equius smile... by asphyxiating him. Shiver.
 * Two horrors from S Flip:
 * Gamzee is STILL the most important character in Homestuck, past his alternate timeline self helping contribute to Bec Noir‘s existence. Assume as a high blood, he desires law and order like His Honorable Tyranny did. He framed Vriska for Eridan’s and his own murders, and then gave Terezi her Legiserator gear to pursue Vriska for consorting with Tavros. (This might explain why his head is on the ground, besides his oversized horns unable to fit on the jury table-he’s a peasant blood, unworthy of sitting with other high bloods.). Vriska earlier was doubting how she could face against Bec Noir, rethinking fighting him. However, Terezi’s game of chance may have forced her to choose impulse over reason, and continue what may be a time lord ordained conflict between Vriska and Noir. Indirectly, Gamzee kept the timeline stable.
 * In a mixture of Fridge Horror and Tearjerker, Terezi and Vriska were Fate’s bitches all along. Terezi attempts to Screw Destiny, possibly with her coin flips giving split timelines and manipulations of neutral systems like the LOHAC Stock Exchange and constants like Doc Scratch’s smugness over being used. Vriska prefers more to fill the gaps in the Only One Possible Future in an attempt to turn negatives into positives and control randomness in her favor, culminating in killing Bec Noir and “saving everyone’s ungrateful asses.” Now, as Doc Scratch always tells the truth, stating the result of the coin flip was constant across all timelines means this meeting between Seer and Thief was obvious. Their attempts to fight the game of Sburb/Sgrub (Terezi’s willingness to get suckered in order to choose a more positive outcome out of the consequences, and Vriska’s cheating to control the system in her favor) was WHAT THE GAME WANTED. This also crosses into Tear Jerker into realizing all their efforts to resist and Screw Destiny, including Character Development, may have been the game’s manipulations all along in favor of a alpha timeline where all the trolls die at Noir’s hands, and Lord English descends to eliminate the kids’ doomed timeline.
 * Vriska wasn't just wrong about being able to stop Jack, she was wrong that he would choose to fight her. Once more, she drastically misjudges someone's psychology, Smug Snake that she is.
 * The Harley family's tradition of having their dead family members taxidermied raises some squicky questions. Grandpa Harley taxidermied dead Dream Jade. Jade grew up knowing that this was in the lab at the top of her house, and she didn't know that dream selves could die, which means that she grew up believing it was her taxidermied dead future self. Who taxidermied Grandpa Harley?
 * From around Gamzee's first appearance: "Sometimes you just like to pick stuff up and watch the colors. It's so beautiful. Life is beautiful." Foreshadowing?
 * The purpose of the Exiles is to repopulate the players' planet. The Midnight Crew and Snowman are Exiles of the Trolls' session. We know the Felt couldn't be Exiles, as they are green, and they don't resemble either Prospitians or Dersites. This means that the Midnight Crew brutally murdered their own descendants.
 * Huh? Are you saying that the Felt evolved from exiled carapaces? That... doesn't make any sense.
 * I'm pretty sure the most logical explanation for what species the Felt are is that they're natives of Alternia's green moon (where Doc Scratch's apartment is located and the first Intermission takes place).
 * Karkat hates the thought of wearing his blood colour on his sleeve and dresses in grey, becoming a classless 'ablood'. However, he decorates his home with bright red sails and pennants, the same colour as his mutant blood - it's established that he had his home built for him when he was a very young child, and while he was a grub he still had a visible red body.
 * Actually, no. A troll isn't chosen by a lusus until after emerging from their cocoon with arms and legs. Now, it seems that lusi always choose a troll with the same blood color, so it's probably still detectable at that point, but who knows by the time his house was designed and built.
 * Apparently the Scratch not only reboots a session, but drastically rewrites the universe in which it took place for the sole purpose of making the session more winnable; in the trolls' case, it turned their race from a peaceful race into a race engaged in eternal conflict. How will this be reflected if/when the Scratch occurs in the humans' session? Will humanity become bathed in civil war like the trolls were? A horrible thought to say the least...
 * Nope probably not because half the appeal of the kids comes from them coming from our universe and J mentioned Terry Kiser which suggests that movies haven't changed that drastically.
 * Also, consider that the original troll session was unwinnable because the peace-and-love hippie trolls of the first time around were too soft to win; their universe was rebooted in such a way as to make them tough-as-nails fighters. So, what's wrong with the human session that makes it unwinnable?
 * The cancerous nature of their session, the Ring falling into Jack's possession, and the eventual Prototyping of Becquerel. The first one is changed because it's a different universe, the second because he won't get the rabbit this time (though he does appear to be messing up some stuff anyway) and the third because the GCat has no loyalty to cause it to Prototype itself.
 * Also, the second factor (Jack getting the Ring) is changed by having the Black Queen replaced with someone Jack shows less hostility towards.
 * In a society where buckets are seen as lewd, Eridan is a bit of a perv. What does his constellation look like? A bucket...
 * A man pouring out the contents of a bucket. Troll buckets contain material that propagates their race. If you were to pour it out, you would be interfering with the reproduction process, which is what Eridan does when he hopesplodes the Matriorb.
 * Could you say he is spilling seed?
 * "Run, Aradia's ancestor! Run!!!!" Wait a minute... isn't she stuck in a Stable Time Loop which makes it a Foregone Conclusion that she'll become the Handmaid? Yes she is. 0_0
 * Scratch has indicated that the First Guardians are the influence that changes the starting conditions of a scratched session. But the kid's session already has a First Guardian, implying that their guardians have already switched places via a scratch. The fridge horror? The presence of a first guardian created by a scratch means that Lord English has set his sights on the kids universe. He is already HERE.
 * Trolls are required to produce two buckets of genetic material for the drone, but it's never been stated that they contain the same substance. Does anyone else think that, while Matesprits donate the "traditional" genetic material, Kismesis may instead take pleasure from cutting one-another and then donate the blood?
 * On this page, it says that the Handmaid and the Condesce are the last two trolls alive. But what happened to God tier Aradia?
 * "The last two trolls alive" almost certainly means the last two trolls in that universe. It's been established that Sgrub is a separate universe from Alternia, and that timelines of separate universes are non-parallel. Comparing chronology between universes is meaningless. Doc Scratch, of all people, would understand this.
 * Colors Imagine now, he is crazy and talking about blood. Enjoying the colors. All of them.
 * Karkat's handle on PesterChum is CarcinoGeneticist, or Cancer Geneticist. He accidentally messed up the game universe, saying "the disease I gave you". Karkat is a CarcinoGeneticist that gave the universe Cancer.
 * One word: S u c k e r s . The more you think about it, the worse it gets.
 * Notice how Scratch never actually says that The Tumor is going to blow up the Green Sun:


 * Why is the Green Sun green while its components are red and blue? Because it couldn't be created until both the universes were destroyed. If you take a picture and remove red and blue from it, the only colors remaining will be shades of green.
 * Fridge Horror: Word of God confirms that Dave and Rose were led to a moment in time ages in the past. They only recently emerged from the Green Sun. Just how long did the trip take them? They could have been stuck in the sun for decades, centuries, millenia, eons...
 * Dave's God Tier time powers hopefully helped them out.
 * Also, time doesn't work the same in the Furthest Ring.
 * The fact that they emerged from the Green Sun literally dripping in its plasma (or whatever you'd call the remains of two exploded universes) is scary enough.
 * This might also possibly be made better in that the way they rose out of the green sun also has some similarity to John's animation after he came back. To me, that sequence suggested they might be unaware and their bodies might be invulnerable during the process of reviving. And once the process was completed successfully, there you go, Dave and Rose with no memory of the ordeal.
 * Way back in Act 3, Jadebot tried to investigate the frog ruins, but Bec wouldn't let her. Then Cascade showed that Jack Noir was among the things hiding in that time capsule. Bec had a good reason for wanting to keep Jade away from the thing.
 * Doc Scratch is an excellent host.
 * From the post-Scratch universe: "It is so elite in fact, you are the only of your kind invited to playtest!" Either aliens exist in this universe or humanity now has a Fantastic Caste System. Please be aliens.
 * The phrase "Multiglobal empire" seems to indicate the former.
 * Lord English burst out of Doc Scratch's body. Doc Scratch is the First Guardian of Alternia. The First Guardian of Earth is Becquerel. Due to various shenanigans, Becquerel is now Jade.
 * I don't think we need to worry about that. I'm pretty sure for that to happen Bec would have required being created with the Cue Ball. Doc Scratch referred to the Cue Ball as "one of my seeds" and he also mentioned there have been instances of himself in all sessions that Lord English appears in. What I'm worried about is the NEW First Guardian that might have taken Bec's place. Remember Bec was created in the first session, but what kind of First Guardian will be created in THIS one.
 * A god cat.
 * http://www.mspaintadventures.com/scratch.php?s=6&p=005961 Hey, that looks like the Betty Crocker Spoon logo, but it's a trident.
 * Remember that Gamzee's religion predicts two evil clowns. Lord English goes Honk. Does this mean Lord English is one of the two? If so, who's the second one... oh dear...
 * Lord English was born of Doc Scratch. Like Gamzee, he's bifurcated - Lord English is both of the mirthful messiahs.
 * There's an urban myth saying that the Crockercorp is utilizing subliminal messages with their spoons... one of which Jane owns. This could possibly explain why Jane is a bigger fan of Betty Crocker than her Nana form. However, what are the extents of the subliminal messaging? Is it brainwashing Jane? Could this lead to another Gamzee on our hands?
 * We certainly know BettyBother utilizes subliminal messages.
 * Wait a second... is one of those subliminal messages saying "STAY ASLEEP"? ...Could it be referring to Jane's dreamself?
 * On a slightly different note, it's possible Betty Crocker isn't completely evil. One subliminal message is CEASE REPRODUCTION. Assuming Betty is actually Her Imperial Condescension, she knows what Sburb does to a universe. Everyone important to the session isn't going to be born, they're created through ectobiology. She's just trying to limit the casualties.
 * Then it turns out the only reason Crocker is doing this is because she finds human reproduction distasteful. It's just straight up Fantastic Racism.
 * It's bad enough to read through the part with John getting killed in an alternate timeline, but before he blasts off on his jetpack to his doom, he captchalogues Casey the Salamander...what happens to her?
 * Hell, Homestuck's entire plotline counts: Four 13-year-old children are ripped from their lives and thrown into another world that's on the brink of destruction by tons of explosions, completely alone with out any real indication of what they're supposed to do, all because they were unaware that a videogame demo would cause it.
 * If Sburb is just a demo, what the hell would the full game be like?
 * We're possibly about to find out, with the Alpha supposedly being the full game and all...
 * After Dream Jade dies, her dream is a nightmare and she says she will never fall asleep again. This becomes Fridge Horror when you remember that Jade is narcoleptic.
 * It's implied that Vriska was making her narcoleptic, since her ability to affect the kids with her mind control powers seems limited to making them fall asleep, and in the update for December 12, 2010 she claimed to be The Man Behind the Man for basically everything that's happened to them so far. So she could stop making Jade randomly fall asleep... or make it happen more, if she wanted to be cruel.
 * In her conversation with Tavros, she calls Jade her guinea pig for testing cross-universe/timeline psychic powers, so it's almost definitely her doing.
 * When Gamzee gets ready to attack Nepeta, he's shown switching to his juggling clubs, which are described as "the worst pair of clubs in the universe" in the first Alterniabound flash. Despite the fact that he has a top-tier weapon visible in his syllabus. Why? He's decided on Cherry Tapping her to death.
 * Made even worse when some fanartists take that term and make it...horrendously literal.
 * Even worse: Gamzee could be so powerful that he could turn a Joke Weapon into something dangerously lethal.
 * The Tumor is associated with black and white, and also red and blue. What else is associated with red, blue, black and white?
 * It's right there in the trolltag, even.
 * Where?
 * twinArmageddons
 * Also, "Sol" and "lux" mean sun and light in Latin.
 * While this may be more of a joke and coincidence, a mere bit of trolling on Hussie's part, and this being somewhat of Wild Mass Guessing, the more I think about Nic Cage's message in his secret flash in [S][A 6 I 1] Karkat: Mental Breakdown, the more horrified I find myself. The flash is simply the actor's line of "That was the plan... to give you a boner... and you got one!", slowly slowing down, with the image of him degrading in a very SBaHJ esque way, but doing so that it starts to appear that his face is green. While mildly disturbing at first, you then start to realize something: when he's refering to 'You', he's looking at, and refering to, Us. He says that the plan was to give us a boner. And who, quickly upon his release, was quickly launched up to a total Memetic Sex God rank, having, apparently, given the fandom a boner? Jake English. You may Oh Crap now.
 * This is perhaps reading too much into it. The simpler explanation is that Hussie is teasing the possibility that Nic Cage is Lord English (notice the familiar rainbow pattern around Dark Cage's chin). Which is an Oh Crap in itself, especially if you're familiar with Cage's body of work (Face Off, Kick-Ass, Vampire's Kiss, Ghost Rider, Peggy Sue Got Married) and some of the memes linked on his trope page.
 * The simpler explanation than that is that the trolls and humans have met for the first time and with the whole bucket incident immediately prior and, indeed, the flash which links to darkcage which strongly hints towards Dave/Terezi (not that that wasn't apparent already), are so absurdly sexual that the reader has been "given a boner".
 * Word of God is that he received this bit at the end of the sound file for Karkat's breakdown (without asking) and just threw it in there after the fact.
 * Seeing how Bec was ectobiologically fused with a dog, its only natural that his vocabulary would be confided to "Bark" "Woof" and "Arf", but...what of Doc Scratch? He was fused with Lil' Cal and the cue ball, yet he can talk perfectly, meaning Lil' Cal could talk the whole time.
 * Actually, the cue ball is what gives him his intelligence. It can also say whatever it wants to - such as "YES", "I WILL EXPLODE IN YOUR FACE" and eldritch gibberish - so his speech isn't exactly a stretch.
 * The troll culture is never portrayed in a positive light, and the comic consistently shows it to be a harsh, ruthless Crapsack World. But at least it isn't real, right? Surely the real world would never have such an over-the-top dystopian civilisation, and no one's ever been through a world like that. Well, read up on the Spartans some time - many elements of troll culture, civilisation, and practices were really part of the society of Sparta. That's right - that whole business about culling the weak, mandatory drafts for all able citizens, and all that? It was really happening to real people in Greece thousands of years ago. They even had something similar to the hemospectrum with the treatment of helots. Now, have fun trying to watch 300 the same way again.
 * Not only that, but the entire paradigm of motifs seem to be taken from Greek and Roman mythology. The Troll's symbols? All based off of the ancient Greek zodiac. The denizens? Based off of ancient greek gods and monsters. Some of the characters chumhandles have references to greek history as well. (timaeusTestified) And what's more, read up on 'myth of the metals', and compare it to the entire concept of the Troll's blood caste. One would think Hussie invested alot of time in making his themes and motifs fit.
 * There seems to be plenty of evidence that the Alpha kids will not prototype their kernelsprites before entry. (Both moons have no prototyping towers, both queens have no pearls on their rings, and the White King's scepter is in the White Queen's hands instead of on the Battlefield.) This brings up three points of Fridge Horror.
 * First, is the kids' session doomed? If their Battlefield never transforms, will it always be barren? Will the damaged and cancerous Battlefield from the Beta session really be enough to fix things?
 * Second, what happens to the White King and the Black King? If they are doomed to continue their eternal stalemate, are they aware of it? Are they trapped in an eternal And I Must Scream moment?
 * Problem solved.
 * Third, what about the White Queen? In the Beta session, her and the White King were clearly a couple that loved each other. How does she face knowing that her king will never be free to live?
 * When Doc Scratch was introduced, it's stated First Guardians exist to help a planet fulfill it's ultimate purpose. Alternia's ultimate purpose was to destroy the universe and summon Lord English.
 * Rose specifically states that null sessions vastly outnumber productive sessions. This means that there are potentially innumerable sessions in which their players fought their hardest only to fail and "live out the rest of their days in a dead end session". Now consider that some of these players will have successfully gone God Tier and cannot die unless they die Heroic or Just deaths. Now consider that there stands a very real possibility that these null sessions are no longer populated with enough creatures to allow either sort of death to occur. Now consider what that means. You want to know my theory on what the Gods of the Furthest Ring really are? Well, I think you can guess.
 * Since the Reckoning doesn't happen in the Alpha session, the important meteors in the Beta session are simply redirected to the Alpha session. However, that must mean the Frog Temple was also imported in from the Beta session. You know, the frog temple with Bec Noir in it.
 * Rose said that the Frog Temple would come from the Alpha Session some other way.
 * If you really think about it, the trolls' romance shenanigans in general can fall into this. Remember that partway through Hivebent, it was revealed that drones regularly visit troll adults to collect black and red buckets of DNA from them, and that they will kill the troll if they have nothing to give. That said, while our trolls aren't likely to had been approached yet, what looks like teenage romance squabbles (such as Karkat desperately trying to get Dave into "quadrant vacillation" or Eridan's usual antics) could actually be, subconsciously or not, treated the same as a life or death situation once you remember this detail. After all, for a troll, not being in a relationship equals possible death. In other words? There's a good reason why the trolls seem so fixated on romance.
 * At first, it looks like Terezi's crying here, because it's recently after her eyes were burned, and she was blinded. Except she's actually BLEEDING out her eyes.
 * What exactly is Gamzee peddling in this flash? The blood of the trolls who died before they left their session. Advertised as magic motherfucking elixirs.
 * Gamzee quite literally stuffed Vriska and Tavros in the fridge until they became relevant again.
 * The Dersite-looking Carapacians that broke into Roxy's lab a few hundred pages earlier are even more terrifying when it turns out they might have been her neighbors, especially when she likely tried helping them in the past to survive.
 * It turns out The Condesce had access to various psychic powers such as controlling animals. Now one must think how much of the trolling/jerk-like actions of God Cat were really because of her using those abilities.
 * In a way, God Cat is also forced to serve Lord English as well. He's that bad that other First Guardians are powerless!
 * But wait, isn't Jade part First Guardian/Dog?
 * I think the abilities only extend to full animals or won't work on someone who is part human/troll (especially a god tier player).
 * Being a Hero of Time has a lot of responsibilities as it's one of the key elements along with that of Space, such as the Beat Mesa, fixing events so it doesn't go to hell, and other shenanigans. Unfortunately, they get the worst out of it compared to the others. While a Hero of Space just has to deal with the Forge and Genesis Frog, a Hero of Time in a typical session will witness the most misfortune falling down on their friends. While it is rather easy to fix, it isn't going to help that they do remember that they witnesses their fellow players die repeatedly, which isn't going to help with their mentality or psyche. Perhaps this is why the Time element is (theoretically) associated with Derse.

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