*dons reading daggers*

This is BlastYoBoots (he/they), also "byb", "boots" or bladekindEyewear. I apparently still run this semi-personal Homestuck Theorizing & Romspec blog, plus the (also hiatusing/defunct) Homestuck Joke Blog. If you're not caught up with Homestuck or Homestuck^2 Beyond Canon, please don't browse around my blog, because spoilers everywhere. Click here for my old Theories! (No, seriously, click that link if you want to quickly find any major theory or post I've written, including class and aspect charts, or want to know which tags to search. Do it now.) Discord: BlastYoBoots Twitter: @BlastYoBoots Bluesky: blastyoboots.bsky.social Feel free to contact me at any time! If I'm online and visible, I am open to random pesterings. ASKBOX NOTES: First, if you have a long post/idea, instead of submitting it, post it on your own blog and send a link (with periods and colons replaced with asterisks) into my ask. Second: Disagreement is more than welcome in my inbox! However, if it's vitriolic, you will not get a response unless you are not anonymous. (I am absolutely non-retaliatory; this just gives me a chance to discuss it privately with you before airing any sanitized conclusions on this blog! My followers don't deserve to see more than academic contention.) Check if I've covered a topic first by google searching my blog!

[bladekindeyewear]

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[bladekindeyewear]

HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2026-07-25

(Previous post - current page 1097)

Yet another Beyond Canon upd8 pretty quickly! We're approaching Entry, I don't think there's any doubt.

Unrelated side thing before I launch in-- in case you missed it, if you're caught up on everything Deltarune Chapter 5, I posted a Deltarune theory, which I don't normally do. On to liveblogging the update:

===>

PCHOOO

Fitting! Ly'lac's back home, and Bobo (totally probably Bowie as everyone has been saying for quite some time at this point) would've already set down the Shurb devices.

Although I wonder, will Shurb hold some noticeable mechanical differences from Sburb/Sgrub, and not just in the session goals/structure? The equipment like the Alchemiter already seems like it could be construed as a fusion of Nymph magic/alchemy and Satyr technology, going along the lines of my old theory that this is "the most important session" because it creates The Game in the first place, so I wonder to what extent the Nymph and Satyr players might have to "roll their own" stuff? Assuming I'm at all on track, anyway. And nothing keeps all the equipment from already being invented via stable time loop anyway.

===>

Oh THAT'S how. I'd always assumed the horn was stretching but apparently it was launched through the ground. That works. Oh, and leaves the horn possibly to be ensnared soon enough by the Kernelsprite, which could both bring Mr. Narwhal back as an advisor and give the game's Enemies a more limited, consistent physical attribute to copy.

I can see the Lathe deployed right there, too-- convenient expansion of a platform around the top floor.

===>

Spinny spinny

Wait, we're at page 1100 of the story. It feels like they might not want to miss the chance to put Ly'lac's Entry animation on either page 1108 or 1111.

===>

Oh hey, auto-partying Ly'lac robot! Didn't see that coming. Slightly TC got things going here damn fast before he got cursed asleep. Slightly disturbing that the Shirt Symbol on Ly'lacbot is almost Aradiabot/Equius blue, and not even TC's purple color, but that coincidence is pretty understandable if... oh y'know... TC IS A FREAKIN' VOID PLAYER LIKE I'VE BEEN SAYING

Ly'lac, why do you look consternated instead of happy like you were a bit ago? Did they just not have a happier sprite-mode face to use handy? (And is that giant Narwhal horn going to land nearby enough to get prototyped pre-entry? SOMETHING is probably getting prototyped pre-entry, though it's not mandatory. We saw what SEEMED like four prototyping towers on Derse (unless doubled due to our poor viewing angle, but I doubt it), which would mean most likely either two of the Nymphs and two of the Satyrs prototype pre-entry, or NONE of them do and all the Candy Kids prototype pre-entry, which I think is far less likely.

Oh cool, Ly'lac might be having their possibly-first-ever LIVE back-and-forth with Vrissy! Hopefully it's going well, maybe the consternation will just be from confusion over all the weird machines and lack of TC-instruction on them. (Also, fun to see she's trying to catch up with the BeyondAnon's webcomic in another window, though in the third window I'm not exactly sure what Ly'lac's searching for.)

There's one more very important person you've left on read and you're running out of excuses to avoid talking to her. But she's probably busy. She definitely probably has more important things to do than talk to a sap like you. Definitely. Probably. For sure. The most respectful course of action, at this point, is to- OH GOD IT'S HER.

Oh, maybe she was just nervous about catching up on whatever messages AA left for her, and the consternation-visage was pre-surprise.

COME ON I WANNA SEE THE VRISSY/LY'LAC CONVO LET'S SEE THEM INTERACT LIVE I BET IT'LL BE AWKWARD BUT STILL FUN

===>

Oh my goooosh she's so nervooous it's adorablllle!!!!!! SHE'S SO SHY THAT IS SUCH A CUTE IMAGE AAAAA. (Again, reminder, all of TC's robots went into Party Mode because he fell asleep, this one included.)

-- adamantGriftress [AG] began pestering gavageCunctation [GC] -- AG: Heyyyyyyyy, took you Long Enough! GC: hi. AG: … yeah, hi? AG: Welcome 8ack! AG: Are you done Killing Monsters? GC: i don't know… AG: Wrong Answer! AG: You're gonna have to kill a Whole lot more!

Yeah Ly'lac is about 10,000% nerves right now. (Killing monsters? Vrissy couldn't be talking about the monster Meemaw iced for her; it seems more likely Ly'lac was asked by The Narwhal to put him down, and Vrissy misinterpreted the scene.)

AG: 8ut it's good to finally talk. GC: ha ha ha wow alright…! GC: i'm sorry for acting weird. talking to you like this is a little crazy for me… AG: It's okay. AG: Sorry I said your Head was weird earlier. GC: it's okay i know my head's normal. GC: do you mind if i ask you some questions…? AG: Weeeeeeeell, depends on how many. AG: We don't got All Day!

I really can't get enough, in pretty much any story, of characters with WILDLY different assumptions and information trying to reconcile that information and relay it to each other. Seriously, I lap that up like crazy, I'm addicted.

GC: i only have two. GC: one is weird though so... AG: I can handle a Little weird. AG: Lay em on me. GC: why are you using the adamantGriftress handle? AG: Oh, were you messaging me on the other one? AG: I guess I just outgrew it! AG: Didn't feel it suited me anymore. GC: wow. GC: way back when AA told me you'd only respond if i messaged you on this account i honestly thought she was being just weird and annoying and bizarre as usual but i might have to pay her an apology...! GC: ugh wait nevermind i can't ever let her know that listening to her actually paid off.

Hold the heck on, Vrissy had a plot-relevant past chumhandle that she switched from??? That sounds familiar (John). I'd guess she copied old-Vriska's "arachnidsGrip" but that feels like a cop-out, something else would be far more interesting. Somewhat unsurprising to know that the Prospit-dreaming AA was able to help Ly'lac and Vrissy stay temporally and extradimensionally pester-connected, much like Jade did by connecting her friends together back on Earth A.

GC: ok sorry im rambling can i ask you the weird question, vriska? AG: Shoot. GC: what's it like in the cartoon world? AG: Wow, you already know a8out that?

HAH!!! This is one hell of a misunderstanding! Vrissy would understandably believe after all she's heard about the Candy Side's precarious state and wild mood swings that it was "cartoon world".

It sounds like this isn't going to be fully cleared up in this conversation and Ly'lac is going to be mildly disappointed in the future that cartoons aren't quite literally real. As far as we know, anyway.

GC: heh well, you could say i know a thing or two about that... AG: I have to say, you and TC seem A Lot less surprised to talk to us than I was expecting! AG: Sort of anticlimactic? AG: We kind of figured you guys would 8e completely in the dark. AG: 8asically hapless sitting ducks without us. GC: i mean we might not measure up to your standards but me and my friends love us a lil chaos. AG: Yeah, I can see that! AG: You 8lew that horse thing's head Smooth Off! GC: ha ha ha... you were watching...? omg...

Yep, that was the earlier Killing Monsters misunderstanding.

AG: It must have said something to Really Upset you 8ecause, like... what a way to Go. AG: I guess it was Quick? AG: Honestly I had to look away. GC: not really what i'd consider quick, with all due respect lol. GC: this new wand has kind of been throwing me off... GC: Beam Of Death usually arranges a speedy meeting with the cousin of sleep but he just got really really really sick and then exploded. GC: and i'm glad he blew up when he did, it was starting make me feel bad ha ha... GC: i'll get the hang of my spells again once we're in the game though lol don't worry. AG: I'll hold you to that!

Yep, Ly'lac's spells with The Latchkey are still causing possibly-Life-based(-through-Doom-stealing?) cancer-splosions instead of what she expects. Damn, I'm VERY sorry The Narwhal had to go through THAT.

AG: On that subject, I'm glad you're done 8lowing up monsters 8ecause as I'm sure TC mentioned to you, we have a Lot of Game to get to! AG: And I know he was 8eing Super Gentlemanly a8out letting you t8ke your time getting set up 8ut we are sort of Seriously On The Clock! GC: yeah i'm shifting into speed mode right now... AG: Is that a thing you guys do? AG: Like, a Squiddle Thing? AG: Never actually watched that show. GC: what is squiddles? AG: Some 8ullshit cartoon my mom liked. AG: Sorry for kind of indirectly calling you 8ullshit just now. GC: nah it's ok i don't give a fuck... i'm bullshit adjacent. AG: That's Cool!

Maybe I should have realized that being Rose Lalonde's adoptive daughter would make Vrissy learning at least a bit about what Squiddles are/were somewhat mandatory. Kind of funny they're making that connection now, it's like they're both meeting cartoons.

AG: So what's like, your guys' Deal? AG: You're seadwellers? GC: yup, mostly. AG: Right. AG: And you all Kill monsters a lot I guess? GC: from time to time... AG: Alright...! AG: Um, AG: You're a girl nymph right? GC: what do you mean?

Oh my gosh we're already broaching the potentially Nymph-foreign topic of sexual dimorphism, depending on the wildlife. XD This is awesome.

AG: Haha sorry I know that's a pretty 8lunt way of asking. AG: I know if someone asked me that I'd lay them Right Out, 8ut it feels #Unwoke to assume. AG: Can nymphs even 8e girls? AG: Do you have that here? GC: lol vriska, yes all girls are nymphs... AG: All of them? GC: yerp. AG: Wow! So there's Never Even 8een a 8oy nymph before? GC: nope... GC: oh actually no, there was one. AG: Oh damn, what happened to Him? GC: i just killed him a bit ago, you were watching... AG: W8, that was a Person???????? AG: What the hell! GC: nooo lol it's chill, i've euthologized nymphs before i so didn't really mind doing it. AG: I meant for It! AG: Him. AG: Him? Him.

Vrissy stumbling the fuck over trying to not be #Unwoke is both hilarious and fitting. Also I love "euthologized" instead of "euthanized".

GC: he asked for it... GC: honestly it's my bad for putting it off all this time. GC: but i'm a busy nymph, you know what i mean...? AG: What, he's just 8een sitting down there Asking you to Kill Him? GC: pretty much. GC: i got decent at ignoring it, with all my slimes and whatnot... GC: sometimes it was hard to tell if it was him psychically wailing "kill me" down there or if it was just me thinking it, ha ha. AG: That sounds Fucking misera8le. GC: girl, you don't know the half of it... lmfao...

Well that certainly explains what the conversation with The Narwhal was about, and those dreams that annoyed Ly'lac so much. Just them urging the nearby Doom player to off them, though however much knowledge of future events The Narwhal had, or communicated to Ly'lac down there who may or may not have been fully listening, we can't quite say. Ly'lac might be the most prophecy-abjuring Nymph we could possibly meet.

GC: what's funny is it turns out that guy was actually famous? GC: this whole time i thought the narwhal was some ancient loud annoying granny but it turns out he was never even a granny at all... GC: he was like. GC: a male grandma... GC: i know it sounds crazy lol.

This alien stumbling understanding of the concept is so cutely written.

GC: but i'm burying the lede here because what i found out is...! GC: the narwhal...! is...!! the uninymph...!!! GC: i mean was. GC: ha ha ha wait i just remembered my maroon hg told me this a while back but we all largely ignore what she says so...

You didn't even put it together???? Ly'lac, you have like... made an art form of ignoring really important shit that even you'd specifically find relevant. No wonder you're our John Egbert stand-in!

AG: ... wow. AG: Who???????? GC: right, you're not big on non-vriska history lol.

That is a very true statement about Vrissy even without the dimensional gap excuse.

GC: so basically there was this prophecy foretold about a nymph with a horn whos death was supposed to bring misfortune to everyone around him and also end the whole world right. so the council of high prophets had people looking all over and under every ocean for this uninymph but nobody could ever find them and then like out of nowhere some satyrs came and told the council where he was and they were like he'd been living with them at some satyr monk school or whatever them shits are called and when they got there they say he was basically just straight up full on satyr like hooves tail hair the whole shebang and then they hauled his ass back no pun intended locked him up and kept him pumped full of ink to keep him alive forever i guess and he did NOT like that shit so we all honor his noble sacrifice and i think that's pretty much it... GC: and then i killed him.

Well hot damn. So maybe the Uninymph's utter mistreatment at the hands of Nymphkind and the rest of the world was mainly a matter of postponing apocalyptic prophecy, and the anti-trans bigotry was just a side-bonus. That at least slightly recontextualizes things... and speaks volumes about the lengths Nymphkind has been willing to go IN GENERAL in terms of blatant personal injustice for the sake of prophecy and the "greater good", which is a sad mirror to how Rosebot has adapted to the role Dirk manipulated her into until she took to it so eagerly. (Interesting that from the Beyond Canon team's original concepts for The Narwhal according to the Commentary, they switched tracks and instead of their blood-ink being used as fuel, the pipes were pumping blood-ink INTO The Narwhal to keep them from dying. Pretty brutal-- and also a reminder that when we read very old concept descriptions for characters that the writers and artists reveal in Commentary, it isn't necessarily true to what's been decided by the time it hits Canon.)

GC: AA could explain it better than me... GC: ha ha maybe i should ask for her interpretation of the legend rn... brb. AG: NO! Wow, No. AG: That's nice 8ut No, we have a Lot of work to get to if we're gonna get you out of here in One Piece and I don't think there's a lot of Time to W8ste 8la88ering a8out some old guy whose Head you Violently Exploded.

Quit capitalizing One Piece, we already had a Page of Breath in Homestuck 1.

GC: you're right...! GC: wow vriska i am hyped...!!! AG: You should 8e! AG: It's gonna 8e a Hell of a ride, Ly'lac, and I can't pretend I'm not a little nervous a8out it myself, 8ut you guys are in good hands! AG: We've studied this kind of thing 8asically all our lives, don't worry. AG: And I've got a little 8it of a Sneaky 8ce up my Sleeve! GC: ha ha yes! GC: vriska's classic ace up her sleeve... AG: 8ut for Simplicity's Sake, we can keep it to just the 8asics for Now. AG: For starters, check this out: -- adamantGriftress [AG] sent a file Oper8ion_Ri88it_Revolution.jpg --

What the heck did you just send Ly'lac? Some master-plan scribble about, I dunno, the entry order? (They're not showing us the file yet.) Obviously Vrissy still thinks from her parents (and corroborated for us by the presence of a Frog Temple near CT, frankly) that whatever Shurb is going to entail will involve Frogs at the same critical level of importance, but something Vrissy may NOT yet understand (depending on what older-Vriska may understand about the meta situation and pass on) is whatever Dirk Strider and Rosebot have planned for the purpose of this Session that's going to take things off the rails.

AG: Entry's gonna 8e a piece of cake! AG: And TC seems to Really know what he's doing, so you should 8e good to go in No Time. AG: ........ hey, do you think he'd Mind if I called him 8o8o like You do?

Vrissy. I know I'm fearfully extrapolating wildly from a single line but my sister in Christ are you already sweet on aliens. I know this is a Shurb session but seriously none of you have even entered yet, this isn't a speedrun.

GC: ha ha well, that's kind of our thing but i guess it could be cool for the three of us! GC: and you could call me ly'ly...! GC: yeah! GC: as soon as bo'bo wakes up it's party time! AG: Yeah!!!!!!!! AG: That's the Spirit! AG: W8, AG: W8kes Up? GC: ha yeah he's out like a light. AG: HE'S WH8?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Whoops! The Void player is out like someone flipped the Light switch off. (Del'fi, it was Del'fi who did.) (EDIT: Unimportant, but I forgot to note my amusement at Vrissy being predictably certain to type out exactly eight "?!"s here despite the time constraints.)

AG: Oh my GOD, HE IS. AG: HE'S NOT W8KING UP! AG: Ly'lac, that's SOOOOOOOO 8AD! GC: he's probably fine... GC: you wouldn't know it from all that junk he's on lol but he's actually the image of good health. AG: Oh my God. AG: We put the Game on your 8rand New Computer! AG: We're ON THE CL8CK! AG: Fuck!!!!!!!! GC: is that bad...? AG: IT'S REALLY, REALLY 8AD, LY'LAC! AG: He's supposed to 8e your Server Player! AG: Okay, FUCK, I have to Figure this Out. Talk to some People. AG: Ughhhhhhhh!

Hey, it's not that bad, as long as things are already started from TC's computer and they've deployed all the equipment it's probably kosher. Right? What steps are you even missing? Also you can pull a Dave from Homestuck 1 and just use another Shurb copy to connect to Ly'lac and do whatever's missing. Not sure what the big deal is, feels like we're missing something. Unless Rose never bothered to relay that part of their session's story to Vrissy because it was seemingly irrelevant and ridiculous, which wouldn't be surprising. I don't think this is going to mess with the Entry Order, but could it?

AG: Alright, it was gr8 to meet you, 8ut Listen Up: AG: Stay RIGHT THERE. GC: yes ma'am. AG: Seriously, DO NOT MOVE. GC: i won't ever move... AG: Okay well get READY to move, 8ut Don't move right Now. GC: i won't ever move until it's time for me to move. AG: Right.

The most obvious setup possible for unexpected Entry-related shenanigans.

AG: Shit, Okay, we can Fix This! AG: Ly'lac, again, gr8 to meet you! GC: omg really...? AG: Seriously! AG: It's all gonna 8e okay! AG: We will NOT let you die! GC: thank you! :D -- adamantGriftress [AG] ceased pestering gavageCunctation [GC] --

Literally the next panel is going to be Ly'lac belatedly realizing, seconds after the conversation ended, that her dying was actually on the table, I'll bet five bucks.

...Okay I probably already lost that bet because there's no Next Page link which means we're probably going to cut to someone else. I'll toss five bucks into a Money Hole somewhere.

And is that giant horn going to land nearby or not????

We'll see what they decide to show us next time!

[bladekindeyewear]

Deltarune Theory: What is Ralsei? (Ch5 spoilers -- unified Horns/Summoning theory)

Okay I know I've told people at several points that I'd rather leave most Deltarune theorizing to the experts, folks who have done more digging. And I'm not nearly the first or only person to propose a variant of the theory I'm about to suggest. It's just that, after some legwork myself and searching around... I feel like it's underserved enough a theory that I'd like to plant my flag in it, and bring it together with some other theories/evidence to present it as a more unified whole. This theory contains Deltarune Chapter 5 spoilers; on Tumblr, those will be under the Read More, but I'll talk freely about earlier Chapters until then. If you're not at least mostly caught up on Deltarune, please stop reading and don't spoil yourself!

So, to preface, there are already plenty of plausible theories about--

But isn't Ralsei just a Darkner made out of the Red Horns that Kris wore around as a kid?

Well... yes. Almost certainly. I love that theory, it's just that now I think there's also more to the truth than that.

The circumstantial and thematic evidence tying the oddly-pink-horned Ralsei to the conspicuously "Oh, you wore it for months! Whatever happened to it?" Red Horns headband from Kris's younger days is too persuasive for me not to be convinced by it. (And in the low chances it's a red herring, the Horns are probably ERAM or some other significant entity.) Pretty much every mysterious movement "between Dark Worlds" that Ralsei makes COULD very plausibly be explained by a cooperative Kris and the same hidden Inventory where they hide their Knife from us, the player. Every time Kris left Ralsei behind with Susie and/or Castle Town, they simply left the Horns in the Supply Closet, or whichever Dark World. Every time Ralsei mysteriously showed up, Kris had worked together with Ralsei by stashing the horns in their hidden inventory, where the horns returned to their Darkner form upon Kris entering the next Dark World. It's all perfectly accomplishable with mechanics Kris themselves has shown us, no other spooky business required. Nothing Ralsei has done on- or offscreen is provably impossible given what we already know about what Kris is capable of hiding from us.

But you think you have a better theory than the Red Horns?

No. I think I have a compatible theory, whether or not Ralsei is also the horns.

Quit dancing around it and spit it out!

I think Ralsei is only pretending to be a Darkner, or at least only a Darkner. I think they're actually a DEMON. Specifically, the Demon that Kris summoned in a ritual when younger, subserviently bound to Kris and their desires and commands. Not nefarious, not at all-- regardless of what potentially-Soul-related price Kris paid, or to whom, which is outside the scope of this theory. (People are generally of the consensus that it may have had something to do with Kris losing control of their Soul, or even it getting stained red, and I think that's all likely but is confined to the ritual's cost, not its results. People invoke Demon Sunmoning rituals to GET something in exchange, however Faustian— what did Kris WANT, and what did they actually get, regardless of payment??) No, I think the "Demon" Ralsei was likely formed from nothingness/voidstuff by the ritual like a Tulpa, shaped into an outwardly-male Asriel-like character by Kris's imagination and/or explicit wishes, infused into a vessel... and was maybe commanded, perhaps from the moment of summoning, not just to keep Kris company but to help them fight the Darkness.

(3 content edits (text search EDIT), most recent edit 2026-07-28)

But the Prophecy said Ralsei was a Darkner?

No it didn't. In Ralsei's telling, it called them "A PRINCE FROM THE DARK". In the Church, it was "THE PRINCE, ALONE IN DEEPEST DARK". And we all know that "Prince of Darkness" was always a loaded term, as are symbols like horned goats, red horns in general...

But how could Kris and Ralsei have interacted way back then, if Ralsei had never met anyone else before Chapter 1?

Ralsei never said they'd never met anyone before Chapter 1.

They said they'd never had FRIENDS before Chapter 1. That they'd spent (essentially) their entire life "alone".

* I've been waiting alone here... * Um... My whole life for you two to arrive.

(EDIT 2026-07-28: They follow it up a bit more specifically than that, it's not as open-and-shut as I thought: In that same conversation they say "It's ever so wonderful to meet you!" to Kris and Susie, and then "I'm really happy to meet you" to Kris alone. So, I'd have to argue that Ralsei was being somewhat deceptive, or perhaps if not so, they may not have considered their encounter in their original form "meeting". That may contradict with "Greetings" from the Demon text from Undertale's code further down though... I apologize for thinking this was one of the cooler trick premises to open this theory with for dramatic effect.)

I thought you said this was compatible with Ralsei being the Fake Horns?

Isn't it?? Why couldn't a Demon be possessing an object-- inhabiting a convenient vessel, and what more fitting vessel than devil horns? Okay, listen. The Red Horns theory might be true or false, and this Demon theory might be true or false, independently of each other. But I think there's a good case to be made that they actually work pretty well together.

Sounds a little... convoluted?

You look convoluted! No, look, I promise. There's good reason to believe that whatever Ralsei is, whatever strange abilities they might have between Dark Worlds or perhaps even in the Light World as a Demon, they may still be confined to an object:

Because they were left alone for years in the Supply Closet.

If Kris succeeded in summoning a demon, but quickly got scared -- by the reality of it, by how it appeared or what it could do, by what it DID -- and it was confined to an object they owned, what might they do with it?

Perhaps, throw it into the back of a dark Supply Closet at school where it could never reach them again. A Supply Closet which, even if Kris were part of some sort of Dark-World-related conspiracy with Mayor Carol, Kris might be confronted by a Dark World of and be scared to enter!

I know it's not the only way to explain these characters' behavior or how events unfolded. But, think of how it could shape Ralsei's attitude to fit the narrative SO WELL up to this point! A Demon, born from nothing, "gifted" with a name and appearance and preferences (and gender!) that suited Kris's requests, a Kris who may have already been missing Asriel's company or attention perhaps before he even left town-- only for this Demon to be ABANDONED by them, buried away for years... lonely, lonely years in which Ralsei refined their appearance and behavior, their "preferences" and "abilities", in order to seem as kind and likeable and innocuous and nonthreatening as possible in order to avoid scaring away the two they knew were prophecized to arrive, to avoid ever being abandoned again. To prepare the perfect Game to please Kris and give them a starring role. No action taken without the personal excuse to themselves of "it's what Kris might want of me".

* I don't really have any hobbies, or interests. * Baking, sewing, singing... those are all just... * Things I thought to do... for you two.

Ralsei always talks as if Darkners should be content being objects, tools, nothing more than playthings to make Lightners happy-- because even if they're a Demon, especially if they're a Demon, objectifying themselves and framing their own desires as irrelevant or even blasphemous to have in the first place might be natural to them. But here's a huge inconsistency to consider: NO OTHER DARKNER WE'VE EVER MET has shared Ralsei's attitude! ALL of them have had opinions! Likes! Dislikes! Granted to them by the imaginations of Lightners before they became Darkners, possibly, but they still had them and PURSUED them. Ralsei acts like that's forbidden for themselves, acts like it's almost unthinkable, and as it begins to happen, Ralsei has to privately ask Kris IF THAT'S OKAY.

* But recently... * I'm starting to feel like... * Like I'm developing my own opinions. * My own likes. * My own dislikes. * My own desires. My own... fears. * ... please... tell me... * Should I... * Should a... Darkner... be feeling like this?

Note the hesitation before "Darkner"! And the heavy implication that if Kris allowed us to tell them "No" -- instead of going against our option to say "Of course not" to instead say "Of course" -- Ralsei would have listened. Because what does being a ritual-bound summoned Demon mean, if not that Ralsei is perhaps RESTRICTED to doing what Kris says they should do? Such as, if at the end of Chapter 4 you misread the choice (or were a total monster) and told Ralsei "Good. Keep smiling" instead of "It's okay not to smile", Ralsei pitifully responds:

* Of... of course! You can count on me! * I'll... make sure we... * ... have a wonderful adventure tomorrow! * The next day, too... * After all, that's what you want, isn't it?

It might not just be that Ralsei imagines the idea of disobeying Kris and their desires as unthinkable. It might be that Ralsei literally CANNOT disobey. That all the freedom Kris has allowed them to indulge a will of their own is (to Ralsei) novel, frightening, and even uncomfortable, widening the bounds of what is -- or should have been -- a tight leash.

Why'd you decide to put all this together and blab about it now?

If you've played Chapter 5, you doubtless saw a few things that add fuel to this theory. But even apart from that, I was recently lured to some old Undertale secrets and hidden file content, and something I'd doubtless read before on datamining content sites stood out to me when it hadn't before, some variables in Undertale's files after one of the earliest updates to the game:

self.demona= "Greetings."; self.demonb= "You have made yourself completely clear."; self.demonc= "Understood."; self.demond= "I, your humble servant, will follow you to the utmost...";

A deferential, wholly subservient demon. Not the calamity of Chara, not the capriciousness of ERAM. Given how many details hidden in Undertale's files/secrets and added to them in updates intentionally allude to Deltarune, this section -- and a sincere interpretation thereof -- stood out to me as not fitting ANY prior conception we'd had of Kris's old Demon Summoning ritual or anything else in Deltarune or Undertale I'd seen discussed, until I finally asked myself if Ralsei might fit the bill.

I've read far down enough this post that I don't mind Chapter 5 spoilers, quit prefacing already and spill all your evidentiary findings!

Yeah, yeah, might as well get to Chapter 5 stuff since it has the meatiest evidence. Warning for CH5 spoilers beyond this point. I won't be covering Ralsei Is The Red Horns evidence because much more accomplished and thorough Deltarune theorists have already covered all that ground; I'll just be covering old-and-new evidence for the Demon Summoning and Ralsei's strangeness and how it all fits together, details hidden behind Chapter 5 options you may have missed, and maybe speculation on some of the future consequences we could see in Chapters 6 and 7 if this theory happens to be on the mark.

Evidence Part 1: Kris Did a Demon Summoning

Kris's involvement in a Demon Summoning ritual in their earlier teens was well established in earlier chapters, though Chapter 5 gives us the final confirmation. (Using the Deltarune text dump extensively here.) First off in Chapter 2:

* You unconsciously clicked on a popup about demon summoning classes for teens.

Chapter 3's song game lyrics:

WHEN THE DEMON HEART IS CRYING

Several in Chapter 4 that stood out much harder, like Catty talking about Catti in church:

And, like, shout out to my little sister, Who couldn't make it here today. IDK what she's doing, communing with demons or something? LOL Yeah, she like, DOES that. LOL. So cute am I right???

Susie mentioning if you try to pay attention to the sermon instead of digging through pockets for fun:

* (Jeez, look at you acting so holy.) * (C'mon, don't think I haven't heard the rumors.) * (Y'know... when you and Catti were kids.) * (Didn't you try to summon a demon?) * (I'm surprised they even let you in here... heheheh.)

And finally the huge confirmation we got in Chapter 5 if you talked to Catti BEFORE interacting with the Eyeball Bowl:

* (K... Kris...?) * (How could you. Let Noelle go. With the purple beast...?) * (Is this... revenge... for all the way back then?) * (... I told you. I already cast apology spells...) * (I admit. I was weak. The fear took me.) * (... I left you. To complete. The summoning alone.) * (Do you really still. Curse me for that...?)

Okay, so it happened-- but when? We can't guess exactly, but there's some reasoning we can apply to guess relatively when-- or rather, when it probably DIDN'T happen.

We can't be sure, but it would be very strange if Catti never connected the Demon Summoning she ran from with "The Incident", with "That Horrible Day", the day that got Asgore fired from his job as Police Chief and which may or may not have something to do with Dess's disappearance.

It's still possible that the incidents happened at nearly the same time, and Catti never added it up. However, it would also make plenty of sense if the Demon Summoning happened BEFORE or AFTER the Incident.

BEFORE the Incident, if the Demon's influence or actions had something to do with the events of That Horrible Day. Or AFTER the Incident, if Kris felt the need for a Demon's power to grant some wish of theirs instilled by the aftermath of what happened.

Which might fit given Ralsei's "purpose":

Evidence Part 2: Ralsei's Lying About What They Are

(Flowery:) * Don't you LIKE serving humans...? (Ralsei:) * YOU... are NOT! A HUMAN! (Ralsei:) * You're just... pretending to be something you're not! (Flowery:) * Oh? Ralsei, wanna tell them what's wrong with that?

Ralsei might have some influence over their own appearance, as has been richly demonstrated with their original cloak and hat... but at NO point has Ralsei EVER pretended to be anything but a Darkner.

* That's because you're alongside the Lightners, Lancer. * Our purpose - Darkners' purpose - is to assist them. * It's the only way we can feel truly fulfilled.

So why exactly would Ralsei be bothered by Flowery accusing them of pretending they're something they're not? Ralsei's changed their appearance several times (as comfortable as they've become with going hatless), so why would they be stung so hard by the comparison?

Flowery had constantly been posing as Human and putting on an illusory Mary-Sue-like appearance since he showed up, all to appeal to Asgore to the MAXIMUM extent, with cringeworthy obsequiousness. Wouldn't it make the most sense if Flowery bothered Ralsei so much, in part, because Ralsei was also posing as something they weren't for maximum appeal to a specific someone, manipulating their stats and the whole Dark World around them to make the perfect Game to make Kris have fun and feel special, and seeing Flowery's over-the-top attempts to do the same for someone else... perhaps that plucks directly at Ralsei's insecurities, like seeing a mirror that's holding a knife? (Not my metaphor, just a favorite.)

* I-It's... * It's your PURPOSE to be a flower! * You... can't run from that. * OUR purpose... is to stop the darkness.

Ralsei has two "purposes", one stated and one unstated-- the only barely unstated one, repeated many times across the chapters, is their desire to do what Kris wants, blatantly moreso than Susie even, though they do give in to her. Much like the end of Chapter 4, there's a moment early in Chapter 5's Castle Town where Ralsei comments on their evolving wish to try different drinks:

* I... I kind of want to try all sorts of different drinks. * Tea... coffee... juices... and see which ones I like.

And you're given the choice to override Ralsei's will in a particular suspicious way, given the choices to say either "Sounds nice", or "You like tea". Why would Kris have such strong opinions on how Ralsei should be that would warrant giving them such an order about Ralsei's own preferences, unless it's part of a character Kris specifically envisioned for Ralsei? A shape they may have become proud of eventually, but one that was originally dictated by Kris?

When you pick "You like tea", Ralsei responds:

* You're right... sorry. * But I... * If you... if Kris makes the tea for me by hand... * I wonder if there wouldn't still be... * ... something a little personally special about it?

Weakly seeking connection with and affection from Kris, but at the same time INSTANTLY conceding their own will and nature to whatever Kris desires. And also in Ch5's Castle Town, if you climb the Darlings tower in a good enough time and DON'T have Starwalker in your save (meaning many people who got Starwalker in Ch1 couldn't see the full scene), you get a scene with a couple options that's one of the MANY strong indications throughout Chapter 5 of Transfem Ralsei, or perhaps of Ralsei only identifying as he/him because it's the character Kris originally envisioned for them:

(If "Nah bro..." to princess Ralsei, who then looks visibly disappointed) * Umm, okay! I suppose I do have more experience being a prince... * I hope that will be sufficient for you!!

(If "Of course!" to princess Ralsei) * Really!? Oh, I'm so excited! * I've been a prince for a while, but I haven't been a princess yet. * I suppose the only difference is how you present yourself... * But, it's fun to try new things, isn't it...? * ... as long as it's... what other people want, of course!

(Don't debate the Transfem Ralsei interpretation with me by the way, I'm not taking arguments. If you disagree with it, disagree somewhere else.)

Chapter 5 keeps reiterating Ralsei's opinion that almost anything is okay as long as it's what Kris wants:

(Ralsei:) * You know, if this was our first adventure... (Ralsei:) * Susie probably would've destroyed this bread by now. (Susie:) * Yeah... now, I wouldn't just do something like that. (Susie:) * Kris'd have to ask me first. (Ralsei, happily:) That's right!

And even in the long confrontation in the Hot Tub where you can ask to talk to Ralsei about the fact that they know Kris created the Dark Fountain, they ADVISE Kris that they believe that creating these Fountains is very, very bad and that Ralsei doesn't understand why Kris is doing it... but that they'll still choose to believe in Kris's actions even if they disagree with them.

All of this comes around to the other main "purpose" Ralsei is explicitly following, "to stop the darkness". We can't be entirely sure, but IF Ralsei always does what Kris wants of them, then what if Ralsei's dedication to stopping the darkness is something Kris wanted of them in the first place? In the case of this Demon Summoning theory, the ritual Kris participated in could have been motivated by Kris wanting to stop something horrible caused by an earlier Dark World, possibly related to The Incident? More saying so as speculation than proof.

What else haven't I covered... oh right!

* You know, if I let myself go like you, I could * I could burn you down in an instant!

* ... no one can do the impossible. * Says the impossibility himself.

Obviously, there's the fire magic. Definite circumstantial demonic associations there, especially how suspicious it is Ralsei wanted to hide it. However, there's also Ralsei's impossible existence, and how the whole chapter Flowery relentlessly teases Ralsei in basically every way to try and get them to BREAK THE "RULES" and do what would make them happy instead.

And Ralsei's response:

(Flowery:) * Instead, just seems like it made you jealous... (Flowery:) * ... that we don't have to follow your silly little rules. (Ralsei:) * Sh... (Ralsei:) * SHUT UP already! (Ralsei:) * You wanna know what happens... (Ralsei:) * If I don't follow the rules!? (Ralsei:) * EVERYTHING! Will fall! Apart!! (Ralsei:) * You... (Ralsei:) * YOU THINK I WANT IT TO BE LIKE THIS!? (Flowery:) * Then what (Flowery:) * DO you want? (Ralsei:) * I... (Flowery:) I'm just trying to help you, Raly...

There were always implications that the meta of the "game" itself could break down if the illusion were disrupted too much, from the way Ralsei panics about breaking it (for Susie specifically, taking our (and/or Kris's) knowledge of the meta for granted). However, consequences for breaking the rules COULD potentially play into a Demon Contract too, that there may be serious repercussions if Ralsei goes against orders, or the terms of their summoning, or something like that. Again, very circumstantial, not solid proof; I'm just covering all the bases, and also I've been writing this post for enough hours that I've more-or-less completely lost my train of thought.

Part 3: Other Demon Summoning Explanations

Yeah, I admit that Ralsei isn't the ONLY possibility for this Demon Summoning now that we're sure it happened and could have had some sort of real effect. I want to briefly discuss a couple of the other options:

Kris sold their Soul to Gaster or something?

Again-- not entirely incompatible with the Ralsei theory! Most of what people have focused on regarding the cost-- on it causing the Connection, of it possibly staining Kris's soul from Aqua-colored to Red and surrendering their control of it-- and that may have still happened. Classically, the Demon is the one offered one's Soul in exchange for service, but that's not always the case mythologically.

(People have also popularly considered that if Kris's Soul being controlled by us or the Connection was the cost of the Demon Summoning, then WE, the player, might be the Demon, and it's definitely a fallback option but I don't think it's the most interesting possibility.)

Deals can be brokered, and Ralsei-- especially with their existence tied to "nothingness"-- could have been a servant formed from nothing as payment for Soul rendered, with no classical intention or hunger for the Soul on Ralsei's part (as already seems unlikely). To pursue that idea further...

Ralsei IS a Demon... but has no real-object body, and is PURE imagination?

Quote from the Deltarune data files on what Noelle would say if you could give her Ralsei Tea:

There's nothing in here!

The way Noelle seems to have almost entirely glossed over Ralsei's existence beyond a single mention, despite them being beside the others all along:

* (Who's that person she's with, anyway...?) * (It looks kind of like...)

--also loops back to a very Homestuck-y view of the ties between Darkness, Nothingness, and Irrelevance in a way that makes Void beings a little more difficult to correctly perceive. The way Ralsei has often talked about themselves like they're nothing, like all possible relevance comes from the Lightners, all smacks to me of the idea that whatever Ralsei is, the idea that they're "constructed from nothingness/darkness" resonates with me even if it's conjecture. If the Demon theory isn't true, I have some strong hopes for the theory many others have expressed that Ralsei is actually a Titan, bound up somehow by a shell of rules to keep an inherently destructive nature under wraps. Whatever ends up being true for Ralsei, it's extremely likely that rather than Darkner or Lightner, they're almost certainly a Secret Third Thing:

* (Kris's other friend...) * (It's strange. At a glance, they look a bit like Asriel...) * (But, the longer you look...) * (The harder it is to tell if they're a monster at all.)

In the Light World, in reality... Lancer is just an average playing card. Queen... is just a laptop. In other words... when the lights come back on... This world is no longer "real". The places you go, the people you meet... none of them are. Even I, the one telling you this... I too, am...

("Not real", by Ralsei's standards, sure, but what exactly? Ralsei wants the others to think of them as equivalent, but are they more, too? And they could be possessing the Red Horns, but as a Demon it's even possible -- especially with the "nothingness" of their alluded nature -- that Ralsei might be the only Darkner WITHOUT a "real" Light World form, giving them the freedom to travel between Dark Worlds at will, et cetera, because no "real" matter is actually being moved!)

Yet another theory to consider:

The Demon that was summoned is ERAM?

ERAM certainly acted in Chapter 3 as if they were, in a very twisted and subversive way appropriate for classical interpretations of a Demon, working on Kris's behalf to help enable their worst instincts and let their Id free. A "servant", but with a loose evil-genie way of determining what Kris might want and enabling them. They "can see in the dark", they insist that part of Kris is enjoying the destruction and murder even if Kris flinches at it... whatever ERAM is or wherever they came from, they've made it very clear that we haven't seen the last of them.

There! That's what I wanted to see! Flickering red, like pretty little flames... Your eyes can't hide it, Kris. Without play... The knife grows dull. Haha... well, enough of that! We both have work to do!

(Personally, Demon or not, I've long thought it possible that ERAM might be Kris's Knife.)

Part 4: So What The Heck Happens If This Demon Ralsei Theory Is Right?

It's very difficult to speculate on the implications of Ralsei being a "Demon" when we don't have any strict canon rules to work from, yet, of what a Demon actually is, what they're capable of in either the Light World or Dark World. If it happens to be the case, though, the foreshadowing and evidence around Ralsei combined with the very fact of a Demon Summoning point to a few plot opportunities we might not have explored thoroughly yet:

Ralsei's potentially enormous Dark World abilities--

...are explored and hinted extensively enough in Chapter 5 that they don't really rely on this theory being true. Ralsei's true abilities are already implied to equal and FAR outstrip everything Flowery was capable of-- all of the typical obstacles in the Dark World were optional for them when they wanted us to follow Susie in Chapter 5 past the spikes, like taking Kris through them, exploding the block puzzle if you don't turn Ralseis off, etc. Just like Flowery, Ralsei can instantly dispatch Darkner enemies no matter their quantity or strength but has just been (mostly) careful to do so offscreen. When Ralsei desperately offered in Chapter 4 to do all of the fighting and puzzles for Kris and Susie if they'd just agree to avoid the horrible truth, Ralsei wasn't kidding-- we can now be absolutely sure they were COMPLETELY capable of fighting everyone except possibly The Knight on their own, and the only reason they let things remain a challenge was to preserve the balance of the Video Game that keeps Kris, Susie, and The Player invested in continuing.

Demon Ralsei theory isn't necessary for any of that. But what it may make possible is...

Ralsei may be capable of SOMETHING supernatural in the Light World.

Nothing so far has indicated that Ralsei has any direct influence over the Light World whatsoever, and although they have uncanny knowledge of the Light World and Lightners as well as the Prophecy, other Darkners have displayed extensive knowledge about the Lightners who have interacted with them. Still, that IS strange if most of Ralsei's "life" was spent in the Supply Closet, unless they were, say, the Red Horns presumably worn to Church and around all these people earlier in Kris's life. Demonic possession of an object might make Ralsei something of a fusion between Demon and Darkner-- much like Pink Mew Mew, a combination of entity and object which might have memories of the Red Horns' history before the Demon was even summoned into it.

I admit the above idea is an area where the Demon Ralsei theory doesn't stay together entirely cohesively... Ralsei has displayed almost none of the plurality or warring instincts that we see from the likes of Pink, and we've been watching Ralsei evolve for quite some time across the story. There could be some crazy shit we couldn't expect going on though, if you want to bring plurality into the mix-- such as if ERAM, the out-of-bounds possible-servant of Kris's who exists in places Ralsei acknowledges they have no knowledge about, the very fact-of-which unsettles them... if ERAM could be some coin-flip side of Ralsei's existence which could hide from them and act independently??? Nah, perhaps that's too weird.

(After sailing up past where Tenna blocked you from going in the Video Game board, if you did so with Susie and Ralsei still with you:) (Ralsei:) I feel kind of... glad we're going back. (Susie:) What, don't like the cold? (Ralsei:) ... I guess... not. Haha. (Susie:) Just cool thinking what might've been there. (Susie:) A little past... what would we could see. (Susie:) ... were you scared? (Ralsei:) I just didn't know... what was over there. (Ralsei:) It could've been... trouble.

But anyway, if Ralsei were a Demon capable of something in the Light World while in Kris's possession, what COULD a Demon accomplish there that we haven't seen yet? What happened in the past after the Demon Summoning? Would a Demon Ralsei be capable of something in the Light World having to do with fire? Something violent? Poltergeist-like abilities? Would they enable Kris's body to be able to do something they couldn't do on their own? What would that even be?? Could Ralsei have left the Supply Closet at any time, just not with a body, and just refused to consider the option so as to comply with Kris's wish to throw them away???

(EDIT 2026-7-20: It occurred to me, especially given Kris’s earlier association with Catti, what Kris’s wish could have been. If they wanted power, what Kris might have invoked a Demon Summoning ritual to ask or trade for… could have been for MAGIC. The ability to perform magic as they imagined it, as might once have been possible for some in this world. And Ralsei could have been the vehicle through which this wish was granted, a bound Demon which could perform magic at Kris’s command. Imagine younger Kris putting on the headband and wielding Fire Magic in the Light World— and imagine what disaster could have resulted to make them throw the headband away. I think we might have something here, something that could have Kris finally putting the headband back on for a particularly dramatic moment.)

Unfortunately we have so little information on Light World impossibilities as-of-yet that it's difficult to speculate. Future chapters will have to show us the rules.

Speaking of rules:

Kris ORDERS Ralsei to do something -- possibly without their Soul inside them so we can't get in the way -- and Ralsei HAS to obey.

I think this is one of the most interesting possibilities that could come out of this theory in Chapter 6 or 7. Kris's true self has been taking a somewhat antagonistic role, working at cross-purposes with the "Heroes'" side, and we know from how Kris flinched and backed away at Susie noticing that they were near the back door of the Flower Shop when the Fountain was created that Kris is sensitive about being found out by Susie that they've been working for both "sides", especially when the Knight has put people Susie cares about (including Toriel) in danger. If Susie finds out about this and has to confront Kris in the Dark World, then if Ralsei is Kris's bound servant, Kris might be able to demand that Ralsei stand in the way, and Ralsei might be powerless to disobey. Kris might be able to demand Ralsei do something else that favors The Knight's side in a crucial moment, too, if something comes up that forces Kris to drop the façade to reach their true goals.

(EDIT 2026-07-26: I didn't properly include that Ralsei does nominally "disobey" if you choose to Fight instead of Act during Flowery's boss battle (best way is to view a video of the Fight option), but part of how Ralsei does so is by denying you their interface option so you can't "choose" to Fight with them anymore (and healing if you continue to alone). There may be limits to how far Ralsei's "leash" goes if they were to be given a direct command that doesn't rely on interface options Ralsei has the power to intercept, especially if the loyalty turns out to be to Kris moreso than the Soul we're controlling. To which parts of "us"/Kris Ralsei's loyalties lie is still a little up in the air, I believe, with hints in both directions, but I'll take any specific evidence you can find for me that might rule out one or the other.)

Ralsei "breaks the rules", and the consequences are destructive and dangerous.

I'm not really counting this because it's so likely it's nearly a certainty, regardless of whether the Demon Ralsei theory is true. Whatever Ralsei's nature, they've made it clear that letting loose like Flowery did is going to come with incredible consequences. It's a Chekhov's Gun, and unless Ralsei paints us a clear picture of what "breaking the rules" would look like and how everything would fall apart only to choose instead to avert it, it's practically inevitable that we'll see it fired at some point.

Ralsei hath some kickass firey Demonic true forme?

I mean, no clear plot implications, but. It'd be awesome, right?

If Asgore is unfrozen wherever they're being held captive, and gets a clear look at Ralsei (especially if Ralsei has some cool True Form to expose), he might recognize them from The Incident long ago.

This is something else people have widely speculated about, though it's PARTIALLY contradicted by the fact that Ralsei is shocked to learn that The Knight was involved in a long-ago Dark World:

* It was left... at the... original scene... * And... matched with... the... * ...? ((Shock on Ralsei's face.)) * And... computer lab? [...] * I... don't know. This doesn't make sense. * The Knight... I thought they only showed up... * ... alongside the heroes... right? ((Uneasy look on Ralsei's face.)) [...] * ... why didn't I know about this? * Wouldn't it be... important...?

It doesn't preclude Ralsei from having been involved in that Dark World, or knowing that it existed long ago-- all the evidence shows for sure is that Ralsei doesn't seem to know about the Knight's personal involvement in that long-ago Incident, however much knowledge Ralsei is hiding. It does make it a bit less likely that they were in the same place at the same time, though. Which is part of why I somewhat (but definitely not exclusively) favor the supposition that Kris's Demon Summoning ritual may have taken place after the Incident that Asgore was involved with, an Incident that may have given Kris reason to seek power.

--

Other than that... I really wish I had more interesting speculation on the future consequences for the story of this cool Demon Ralsei idea, but I'm kind of stumped trying to think of any when we have so little information on... well, Demons. I can't even draw on my Homestuck knowledge to BS something up that Toby Fox might have been inspired by. Feel free to draw on this theory and try to come up with other possibilities as to where it might lead. Heck, I think I'm more excited for the character-design implications for Ralsei than anything specific that might come of this. Although I have to admit, I'm always a sucker for traditionally negative tropes like "Demons" turning out to be benevolent forces... which makes plenty of sense in a story where the heroes' goal is to BANISH THE ANGEL'S HEAVEN.

I'll go ahead and try to crosspost this to Reddit too under my ID /u/BlastYoBoots. (EDIT: Posted it on the r/DeltaruneDiscussion subreddit, in part because I probably won't post enough on Reddit to have the karma to post it on r/Deltarune itself. Please do alert me if that was a bad idea.) Sorry for typing your ear off, and I'm so excited for Chapter 6!!!

[bladekindeyewear]

Blackstar is also the name of David **Bowie**'s last album, just fyi

Ahhhhhhhhhh.

[bladekindeyewear]

HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2026-07-18

(Previous post - current page 1096)

Quick turnaround on a new Beyond Canon upd8! They're also working on the upcoming animation in the background I know, by the way, since there have been a few tiny art previews in the Patreon that I haven't had any cause to comment on. (Oh, also life's doing much better much faster than I expected, so don't worry about me.) Continuing on with (presumably!) more preparation and leadup to what I mostly assume is a long-awaited upcoming Entry animation but could always surprise us:

===>

Oh.

Huh.

Seems like Ly'lac and the Narwhal DID definitely have their talk, and Ly'lac is... unexpectedly chill with subsequent Narwhal interactions like this, considering she was complaining about that "damn narwhal again" in her dream earlier and--

Wait, that's weird. I'm getting a completely different hit web-searching for Narwhal in Beyond Canon's text history that I absolutely missed, from WAY back when Ly'lac was first talking to (er, being talked to by)

AA: But fate's furious fist does indeed approach with intent to kill. AA: To kill thee, in particular. AA: As sure as the narwhal's finale is said to fall on "deaf" ears. AA: (The translation is oft debated) AA: (Though, I should know better than to tell thee of all nymphs.)

So uh. Just how much about the Narwhal living imprisoned under where she was living did Ly'lac ACTUALLY know about earlier? Certainly she'd been plagued with visions of The Narwhal before, but was this really her first time meeting him? Had she researched him before because of her dreams, or known/unknown proximity? All of this is heavily unclear, especially with Nymphs' prophecy-rich culture.

I hope we get more clarification in this naglog, but I'm not holding out too much hope! I expect this entire relationship between Ly'lac and Narwhal to remain infuriatingly vague until at least after Entry into Shurb. And I highly doubt The Narwhal will survive Ly'lac's Entry but I can at least hope he gets prototyped, it'd lend some very consistent and appropriate factors to prototyped-enemy design so it's extremely viable, and more sources of Ancestor commentary will always be great now that we know the Nymphs' Ancestors are accessible, likely unlike the Satyrs' unless they have some quite ancient SACRED URNS lying about somewhere, which isn't impossible I admit.

Anyway, on to the conversation! I love to see Ly'lac so consistently cheery lately by the way, it's such a welcome change for however long it'll last.

-- gavageCunctation [GC] began negging tinnitusChakra [TC] -- GC: hey brobro. GC: guess who got her freaking orb fixed... TC: well. TC: if i had tø hazard a hunch... TC: if i had tø wiggle my damn hunches... TC: ready tø fucking pøunce øn an answer tø yøur LATE AS HELL reply... TC: i'd have tø guess it was yøu, dude!!! GC: heh exactamundo. GC: the worlds greatest detective at it again... TC: veritably, my dear fløtsam.

Gosh, they're cute.

GC: however bo'bo slice i gotta remind you that a nymph is never late. GC: nor is she early... GC: she always arrives precisely when she feels it. TC: raw. TC: raw magical realness. TC: spit that mystical shit.

Adorable.

GC: watch out, i'm spitting all over the orb rn... GC: better get some glasses. TC: sø i can drink it up? GC: you sick fuck... TC: pøssibly the sickest. GC: ha ha ha you and cc both being nasty as fuck today. GC: one of these days we need to lock you nasty freaks up... TC: funny yøu shøuld mentiøn that...!

Okay that's uh, yeah. TC not afraid to be tactically unsettling. Generally that seems to be a Thing I really love about (presumably) Void players, FYI. (I'm definitely not Void-aligned, but GOSH do I LOVE Void players, I can't think of a single fictional character with a Void vibe I haven't thoroughly enjoyed, it's definitely an under-served character type (as is appropriate for the aspect).)

TC: but høpping back øn the detective wave før a mømø, nøw that i've cracked the cøde and deduced the absølute shit øut øf the case øf the missing birthday bitch via my incredible pøwers øf waiting før yøu tø get yøur wøbbly-ass head in the game... -- tinnitusChakra [TC] sent a file HAPPYMORPHDAY_EUPHORICYARDSTYLEREMIX_VIP.mp3 -- TC: CØNGRATS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GC: oh fuck yes. GC: lemme get in on this...

I have to wonder if one of the actual song titles being prepped for either Entry or World Intro is set to show us something presumably like this track TC just sent Ly'lac.

Okay there's about a page of cute dialogue about them realistically batting back and forth about this song they're vibing to that I have to skip past here instead of pasting verbatim because it's just adorable and not plot relevant, beyond possibly being a source of more soundtrack titles. I mean, I REALLY enjoy this cute dialogue, just, no need to clog the liveblog post with it all. Moving on:

GC: some real bizarre shit just happened... TC: lay it øn me, dude.

Woooo! Time to talk about actual plot stuff!

GC: cartoons are real.

Pffff. That's a very Ly'lac way to put these new revelations. It's pretty interesting that not just her personal fantasy, but perhaps one of Nymphkind's various fantasies and genres of escapism in general, could be "cartoons are real" in a way where a Nymph teen would say this with serious awe, given how much Technology and Magic and Prophecy is already real all around them-- it kind of makes a surreal degree of sense, y'know? But maybe Ly'lac's just (adorably) weird like that and I'm reading too much culturally into it.

TC: yeah man, art is pøwerful as fuck. GC: no dude... GC: vriska is real. GC: like she's a real person... GC: she freaking messaged me. GC: called me rude and said i looked crazy which is how i know it's her... TC: øøøhhh. TC: yeah, i knew that. GC: what.

(Got a chuckle out of the line I italicized.) Time for TC to lay out (at least some of) just HOW much of this mess he's helping orchestrate he knew about up front well before Ly'lac had confirmation! This was definitely due, though I'm not sure how much of the full truth TC is ready to share.

TC: she hit me up like right after i hit yøu up! TC: as if yøur mørphday wasn't stacked enøugh, nøw we're getting visits frøm fictiønal ass femme fatales. GC: what the fuck bro you gotta keep me updated on shit like this...

I... am not sure if TC is being entirely truthful, here. He certainly ACTS like he knew a whole lot more about this apocalypse-causing Game they're about to play than any of the other players did beforehand, and whether or not he knew the Candy Kids were part of this until recently is--

Wait, god damnit. I have to tag this post Satyrical A/O/B because I just put together something stupid obvious. Previously I derided the idea that Satyrical "omegas" should be connected to the previous notion of the "Omega Kids" I hurriedly discarded the term for in favor of "Candy Kids" as soon as Satyr Romance was hinted at to be Omegaverse stuff. However, later one of the Patreon Commentary bits had the creators specifically referring to the invading four from the Candy side as the "Omega Kids", which did strike me as something that was interesting to have stuck with the authors in that way, but I didn't read further into it. However, if I DISCARD the romantic angle from Omega and re-read its description to apply it to the Candy Kids' potential role in the Game's dynamic:

The role of the OMEGA can be summed up as the role of the CHALLENGER. An omega exists as a galvanizing force within his harras that keeps it from calcifying, provoking his partners and daring them not to become too comfortable, ensuring that ideas and power flow freely between its members. Traits traditionally considered omega are indomitability, creativity, and spontaneity.

Applied narratively I have to admit that this is extremely vague, as-of-yet, but it could be considered some of the meta influence that the Candy Kids are going to have on the group dynamic of the 10 players, or something.

Wait, did someone Ask me about that in my Inbox? Now I'm getting deja-vu, I distantly remember someone submitting an Ask to me with at least a somewhat similar gist, but I didn't post my response, PM'd because at the time I hadn't agreed with their conclusions. Dammit, I don't remember! Just in case, consider all the above Omega Kid talk to have not been my original idea at all. Not that I think I'm likely to be the first to have drawn the above conclusion to be a possibility, I'm just really late to the party.

Okay tangent over, where were we. Right, I'm skeptical as to how open or not TC is being with Ly'lac as there are HEAVY hints that, at the very least, he knew that Shurb was going to spark off the end of the world, and Ly'lac didn't seem to.

TC: yøu can save that shit før sømeøne whø wasn't busting his biceps making all kinds øf last minute arrangements øn yøur behalf while yøur sneaky ass ducked my messages! GC: ha ha ha true... very true. TC: besides. TC: i think yøu're gønna be able tø find it in yøur hearts tø førgive me when i lay døwn my next mørphday gift, sø last minute even i didn't knøw i was giving it tø yøu MYSELF until just tøday. TC: that cartøøn? TC: she's gønna be real-life in-persøn actually før truesies TC: LEGIT TC: jøining us før tøday's gaming sesh. GC: yeah i knew that. TC: 8D GC: dude do we know everything...? TC: everything except i guess what it feels like tø be an uninførmed ass ignøramus! GC: ha ha ha bet it sucks major haunch fat. TC: all slurping øn it like mørøns. TC: "øøøhhhhh i døn't knøw shit frøm shit...!" TC: "guess i'll slurp!"

I know they're just being playful and riffing on each other, but given that TC is almost certainly hiding a ton of important shit from Ly'lac about this game, less as a "surprise" and more to have secured her continued cooperation up until now in Orchestrating the End, I'm not sure TC realizes how the people he left in ignorance are going to feel about him having done so once the truth comes out, and he's going to have to emotionally reckon with that. Good character trial for a Seer of Void too proficient in and absorbed in his role, much like early Terezi Pyrope.

GC: poor hapless goofs... almost makes you wanna cry. TC: nøt really my rødeø. GC: that is just too real.

TC isn't one to cry, hm? Perhaps touching on latent trauma there.

TC: but hell yes, sø yøu're up tø speed? TC: yøu're løcked in? TC: TELL me yøu're løcked in, i need yøu løcked in. GC: i'm popped, i'm locked, and i'm doing the opposite of dropping… GC: feeling pretty good honestly. GC: feeling like i was congested for tides and tides but after sitting on my head i finally yanged out a thick lump of sedimentary bile out of my supranaval cavity and i can finally breath again… TC: hellllll yes.

Yeah I mean, Ly'lac does seem pretty locked in right now compared to her intro. Good mood for Entry, regardless of the optimism. Hardly surprising given all the important shit she just learned like her favorite fictional character being her real friend she's going to meet, etc.

TC: what have yøu even been up tø? TC: i had tø get a drøne tø set up a bunch øf stuff at yøur place. GC: oh i got blown up. TC: that is sø yøu, ly'ly. GC: woke up on some purple planet and spoke to some weirdos... GC: caught up with my homegirls. GC: got a new wand... GC: killed some shit. GC: had to eat meemaw actually... GC: digest in peace to her. TC: :( TC: that's a bummer. TC: she was øld as fuck, wasn't she? GC: as fuuuuuuuuuck...

There might not be anyone in Homestuck quite as good at unintentionally understating events they're recounting that happened to them. Like, people like Dave can intentionally, humorously abridge things to "shenanigans", but Ly'lac doesn't even know she's making things sound so humdrum, like she did when describing her Derse dream to CC.

TC: well i'd pøur søme øut før the øld gløbe but it's wires all the fuck øver the place right nøw and the ønly fløørspace i even have tø spare is DANCE FLØØR DESIGNATED, sø i'm nøt abøut tø gø intrøducing any møre tripping hazards all up in my sanctum. GC: your old ass caretaker would probably appreciate fewer tripping hazards lmfao. TC: LØL. TC: yøu'd maybe expect that from a guy whø's been arøund that løng but the exemplar is super spry when he's nøt crushing øne øf his certified cøma-naps.

Huh. So there's the for-sure confirmation-- TC has literally been overseen by The Exemplar for at least the most recent part of his life. I wonder if that was after his earlier-life trauma or the cause of it? Dirk Strider doesn't have a very good parenting track record, and the ideals he's trying to bring about with his race of Satyrs and whatever the immense importance of this particular Game is... would have varying effects on children with different constitutions, especially one as strange as TC's. If he's indeed as Void-aligned as we surmise, I expect TC's choices and actions to be a huge surprise and blind-spot for Dirk despite having, presumably, directly taken a part in raising him.

These coma-naps of his... is Dirk using technological or narrative assistance to hibernate for varying stretches of years and years at a time, waking at strategic points to shape and assist his race? Is Rose Lalonde doing similar, and whether or not she is, is she using the same method? It'd be quite interesting and appropriate for them to take very different approaches, and for Rose in particular to have taken a very hands-off, behind-the-scenes, and Seery initial-setup-for-later-consequences method of helping orchestrate the history of her race, a very Derse-player-analogue approach as opposed to Ultimate Dirk Strider's transformation into taking a very Prospit-player-analogue approach. Dirk in the Light, Rose from the Void.

TC: yøu already knøw i'd catch suuuch a lecture før it thøugh, seriøusly what is it with øld peøple and nøt shutting the fuck up? TC: løve him thø. GC: you're a good kid bro...

Dirk giving TC long lectures sounds correct, and TC tuning a good bit of the self-important rants out while making sure he looks like he's listening also sounds correct.

TC: yøu tøø ly'lac... i knøw yøu ate meemaw up sø admirably, i bet it was hønestly awe-inspiring. GC: the guy watching didn't really have anything to say about it but you're probably right tbh. GC: which, looking back is funny because he talks sooooooooooooooo much usually... GC: at least he used to. TC: :ø ? GC: it's lowkey complicated as fuck... i'll tell you later.

Just how fucking much has The Narwhal spoken with Ly'lac before??? Yeah we're definitely going to be drip-fed this info out over a good stretch of the comic. Ly'lac doesn't come across as someone heavily influenced by the rants of an ancient prisoner, but, I guess she wouldn't be the type to appear that way, would she?

GC: just know there was a guy... TC: was, eh? TC: bet. TC: yøu're like søme kind øf prødigy at øld-peøple death-adjacency.

(Extremely Doom line there about Ly'lac, though Ly'lac DOES live in an old folks' care area.)

If The Narwhal died at the end of the conversation she had with him, how is she currently riding his drilling horn up to the surface??? Probably some weird Nymph thing. Nymphs are weird. Maybe if Ly'lac was too full to eat The Narwhal, she's instead following some of his instructions and like... hmm... did he transform his body toward some only-quasi-alive physical purpose sort of like The Great Combiner seems to have? Did he convince Ly'lac to prototype him by the horn instead of doing away with his body? Lots of questions here.

GC: old people die, it's basically the only thing they do. TC: ønly øld dude i ever kick it with døesn't seem tø cøncur but he's definitely an øutlier...

I misread this at first-- yeah, living with an immortal is definitely a bit weirder, especially in contrast to the Nymphs who despite their apparently incredibly long lifespans often seem to define themselves by mortality and inevitable demise.

TC: writing this shit døwn thøugh... TC: "øld... TC: peøple... TC: die." TC: there, cønsider it scrawled. TC: i'd pøp it in the ~PTH før pøsterity but yøu've gøt it at the møme. TC: actually it is just straight up alsø already in there, LØL. GC: those murderous psychos really thought of everything... TC: i'd like tø believe we perfected it thøugh.

(Ancestor Nymph/Satyr pair mention.) Also, I wonder if this should count as ominous foreshadowing for the older original-Homestuck crew sailing in to interfere with things, and/or Dirk and Rose?

TC: øn the subject øf their grand and unfathømable mysteries, get yøur hydrøstatic ass back tø yøur røøm sø we can reap the rewards øf øur audaciøus genius! TC: we need tø get øur game øn, knøw what i'm saying? GC: yeah. GC: fuck yeah!!! GC: it's freaking game time. GC: wait actually i'm mad...! GC: dude why'd you make me go first now vriska's mad at me.

Vrissy's probably just impatient with you for not having started yet, and Vrissy is always impatient, if older-Vriska is anything to go by. Well, pre-therapy, at least.

TC: økay well first øf all yøu're the mørphday girl sø she can just deal, this is øur shit she's all interløped up øn. TC: even thøugh she's welcøme tø løpe. TC: but secønd øf all she's hønestly møre støked and ready tø get this game gøing than like, actually MAD. TC: she's cøøl! GC: whaaat you've been talking? like talking talking??? TC: she hit me up øn cha.OS literally secønds after i depløyed it publicly! TC: which was naturally a fascinating little mystery in and øf itself, but løng støry shørt her and a few øther buddies øf hers cruised thrøugh and they're sliding intø øur sessiøn. TC: we've been scheming tøgether øn the particulars før a bit nøw. GC: wow that's. GC: that's freaking awesome…!

Hmm, so maybe TC at least hasn't been hiding that his involvement with the Candy Crew is incredibly recent.

GC: ha ha you wouldn't try and leave me behind or some shit right...? TC: be seriøus. GC: lol i wasn't serious.

She was definitely, understandably, at least a little bit insecure inside.

TC: well i cøuld say a whøle løt møre, but every secønd yøu spend nøt gaming is a secønd yøu spend nøt being able tø hear this shit frøm me, AND HER, in PERSØN, yøu fuckin gøøn! GC: fuuuck… GC: idk. GC: i'm not ready yet… GC: can you kick her out the game. TC: real shit? TC: aight høld øn øøøne sec. GC: don't do that.

Good joke, nice banter.

TC: listen, døn't even fret yøur frønds, it's nøt like yøu're gønna see her right away! TC: there's a very particular ørder tø the link-ups and yøur first ørder øf business? TC: kicking it ridiculøus with yøurs trøøly cøøly. GC: oh thank the fucking sun...

"Thank the Sun" seems like a kind of weird saying for a Nymph of all people to regularly use... but then again, it IS emblazoned across the Seer of Light's uniform. And on The Great Combiner's forehead, and doubtless countless other places throughout Nymph civilization despite the race's clear Void alignment...

Interesting confirmation of entry order that Vrissy apparently is going to be Ly'lac's Server player, and TC at least semi-reliably (credibly enough to have startled AA) claims TC is going to be the second player in, with Ly'lac as HIS server player. (Whoops, see a few paragraphs below.) Which, given the way sessions go, may or may not come to pass as he expects, although his word seems suspiciously Seer-like reliable, though it could just be the way he talks (and others talk about him).

We could easily have a double or triple daisy-chain situation going on like the Hivebent Session did, even if the entry order TC gave is correct, just to speed up everyone making their way into the game with so many players.

Also... TC and Ly'lac seem glad to bring each other into the Game first, but Ly'lac is also sitting on a SECOND GIFT from AA that she seemed certain would make sure that the Nymphs could potentially enter alone. Which, as little as I believe her... could be some sort of surprise element to cause at least a bit of entry order chaos. Well, no doubt actually that whatever AA's second gift was, it will no doubt cause SOME sort of chaos. It might even be something Ly'lac ends up prototyping? Something related to a different Ancestor? Who knows.

GC: how long is it gonna take to get all this shit set up? TC: yøu knøw i wørk fast as fuck, sø barring a few fun bits i wanted yøu tø have a chance tø dø yøurself, it's already ready! TC: and yøu'll have the smøøthest server player in the dørm guiding yøur every step. GC: ha ha ha yes bo'bo!!! TC: ly'ly, i think that's gønna have tø be a FUCK yes.

Ah, all the premade Shurb stuff has been deployed in Ly'lac's place already?

Wait, I need to correct my earlier self. TC was NOT saying that Vrissy would be Ly'lac's Server player and the last to Enter, he was saying that HE would be Ly'lac's Server player, leaving Vrissy's specific entry order unsaid. Apologies, I needed to reread a bit of the earlier stuff. That's-- yeah that falls in line with expectations, when we haven't even SEEN this TC's living situation it feels like it would be a little weird to have him enter second. His whole mastermind situation and privileged upbringing seems primed for him to be last to enter, not second, it didn't feel quite right the other way even though I believed what I thought I was reading.

TC: this is gønna bbbbbbbbbbnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

--Ah! That would be CC's Nightmare Curse forcing TC to fall the fuck asleep. It wouldn't be a proper Shurb session without a Server Player out of commission at the most inopportune time possible. (But luckily, with everything deployed so that Ly'lac can hopefully figure it out on her own.) Go have some extremely long and important magically-induced dreams, TC!

-- incoming automated message from BOBOT [BB] -- BB: IT APPEARS THAT HE'S FALLEN ASLEEP. BB: HE IS SNORING LOUDLY.

Bobot???

Look, this COULD be a cute Roxy reference from Dirk Strider, and I have to admit there's a more than decent chance that's the reason. But I don't think Ultimate Dirk really WANTS to make cute Roxy references. Not intentionally, at least. And this sounds too intentional. I know I could be wrong, but my bet is that TC named this automated system, and having independently come up with Roxy's Bobot term in yet another Void Hero hint for the TC classpect pile. --Oh, right, TC's nickname's Bobo, too!

BB: ALL BLACKSTAR REMOTE UNITS HAVE BEEN SET TO [DANCE MODE]. BB: PLEASE AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTION.

"Blackstar", huh? Hell of a corporate name for TC to be intertwined with. Lots of significance there, obvious Light/Void duality ties.

BB: I AM OBLIGATED BY MY PROGRAMMING TO REMIND YOU THAT I AM AN ARTIFICIAL, UNENSOULED NON-ENTITY, AND THAT ANY AND ALL COMMUNICATIONS FROM ME ARE SUBJECT TO THE MYRIAD FAULTS INHERENT TO ARTIFICIAL "INTELLIGENCE", AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSTRUED AS CONVERSATIONS.

Now THIS reeks of Dirk Strider's particular influence, eager to prevent any sort of repeat of Lil' Hal.

-- automated message from BOBOT [BB] concludes -- GC: heh, too many xans i guess. GC: don't forget to ping me first when you wake up, party boy!!! -- gavageCunctation [GC] ceased negging tinnitusChakra [TC] --

Interesting that downer drugs would still be called "xans" given the branding associations with Xanax but, really it's probably because there's hardly any other shorthand they could have used that the majority of readers would have recognized; more people are familiar with that specific drug's market name than broader, more technical terms like Benzodiazepine drug class.

I wonder from Ly'lac's remark if TC's done stuff like this before, gone to sleep on her (probably less abruptly)? He might have a looser leash on the chemical regulation of his system than he seemed to imply, at first; I expected him to be an unexpected master of his Stallion Intendocrine System, a master of drugs rather than drugs mastering him as might suit someone who truly Understands Void and can navigate its dips and temptations to regulate himself without succumbing to the draw of substance abuse, but perhaps there's a nuanced line to be drawn here that the story will elaborate on later.

Anyway, very dense for a one-page upd8! I hope these dense little tidbits keep trickling out so fast. See you for the next one!

[bladekindeyewear]

HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2026-07-12

(Previous post - current page 1084)

Life has SUCKED for me so let's cheer up and read more Beyond Canon! Reaction to the fresh upd8 under the cut.

Last month's Patreon Commentary caught up with the last upd8 if you missed my reaction to it.

Are we continuing with Ly'lac? I'd be interested to see that but this is also a well-phrased sorta-gag for a sudden cutaway. Maybe even to the Time/fate-obsessed AA.

> Accept fate.

Oh, Swiss.

Oh, the "blood" prank again. REAL mature, guys.

Well that's not good. We have gouge-marks clearly from claws and lots of silver blood, and before there was that creature with the huge trunk, and the cutaway earlier in Swiss's early sections to all that blood on the busts in his room in the future when--

Hey, wait a fucking minute.

That was RED blood in Future Swiss's room. We now know that Satyr blood is silver and Nymph blood is black ink. So this is clearly the blood of some sort of wildlife creature. Before there was a loose tie between the surprise CT had in store for him and whatever's happening here, but that seems to line up a little less with everything we've learned. Why would CT, a professional masked gladiator, have sent some sort of dangerous wild animal to the vicinity of Swiss's frat that has the ability to likely cut down his Academic Advisor offscreen? Something with different causal factors is probably going on here.

If the Academic Advisor who was at his door is dead, which seems likely given CT's coach is also dead under a boulder, we're following a Troll-like Slain Guardians pattern for these Satyrs and Nymphs more likely than not. (Though Ly'lac's Caretaker has yet to befall Meemaw's fate.) That could be very interesting for AA in particular, who was already likely to lose her "sisters" in the apocalypse besides, and if TC is being watched over by Dirk Strider / "The Exemplar" himself that seems like a way for one of them to buck the trend. Or maybe like Jade, TC's lost guardian was earlier in life and part of his past trauma.

Too many questions, too little information just yet. Moving on:

===>

Nice top-down view of the Frat. From comparison to the last image, Swiss's house is the second from the bottom-right.

Well at least it's quiet now. The Advisor must have taken that pranksome rabble away for disciplining instead of stripping you of your rank and dignities, leaving you broken and shattered. All this sweating and perhaps you were never his target in the first place.

Swiss must have been holed up and panicking pretty hard to not hear something that caused enough mass panic to evacuate the entire premises.

> Swiss: Reconsider life.

Life, huh? Aspect or no?

This puts things into a new perspective for you. Your boys are always warning you about your penchant for the dramatic. They say, Swiss, all you do is make yourself miserable. And for the first time ever, you're almost willing to consider their words on the matter. You've spent so long chugging down a steaming pot, when was the last time you stopped to taste the honey?

I'd insist that's definitely more a Light player's perspective, especially the "penchant for the dramatic". His anxieties require a level of overthinking and catastrophizing that has him extracting way more Meaning out of situations than is warranted, rather than a Life or Doom player's more close-at-hand or in-their-face anxieties and... wow, I think I'm too tired to thoroughly ramble about Classpect stuff. Yeah, sure sign I'm depressed from recent life stuff. (I'll be better in a few weeks, don't worry.)

I really doubt Swiss is actually going to switch to Decaf like it says here, as good as it'd be for him.

> Swiss: Switch to Decaf.

Oh yeah.

WHOA, that looks fucking comfortable. If everyone else is hearing about the meteors, not to mention whatever animal disaster made them take shelter, Swiss might just be the most relaxed man on campus right now.

Let's see that change.

===>

OH NO!

Oh it's just some cartoonishly freaky Humanimal thing. (Really leaning into the Andrew Hussie's Humanimals side of too-human faux-furry uncanny valley.) It's not even that big. I'm not sure why I'm so incredibly disappointed. (Funny Swiss is still wearing the silver grills, even while he was sipping coffee.)

Is that Jake or Jane on the console? Probably Jane, she was tracking him earlier:

> GOOD HEAVENS WHAT IN THE HELL IS THAT?

At least the art team is enjoying themselves! Dirk Strider, what the fuck did you do to this planet's wildlife you asshole.

This imposing asshole is Honeyfall's own mascot, SENATAUR WINNIEFRED STICKYPAW. Who, obviously to anyone alive in the world, should not exist. Unfortunately, it's impossible to ignore the fact that he does. This nasty fuck is one of the few remaining SATANIMALS not sequestered off from polite society, and the only one you've ever had the profound displeasure of meeting. He tends to get out like this once or twice a lap, occasionally taking some lives and often wrecking your beautiful campus. It's tragic, but it's also a school tradition implemented 200 laps ago so there's no way that's ever going to end.

Ah yeah, school traditions, I know what that's like. "SATANIMALS" is a better name than Humanimals for them, too. I'm glad these things both are already nearly and are about to be apocalyptically extinct. (Swiss you'd better not prototype this thing's corpse I swear to god.)

Oh that's definitely probably Jane Crocker on the console controls, displaying some very good sense:

> KILL THAT FUCKING THING NOW!!

If you were allowed to, you'd erase this thing in an instant. That's not your call to make though, considering he is technically school property, and a government-protected endangered species besides. Even as he grinds his grundle all over your perfectly curated dorm, you're powerless to intervene.

Oh of COURSE it is. I should've fucking known.

Not that this is a thought you'd ever think, but it would be nice if for once the rules actually worked in your favor.

I TOLD you he's more Light than Life! Light and Doom are the Aspects willing to be married to systems of rule and order, or opposite/stolen permutations thereof like the Thief of Life's (Condesce's) regime which enforced order and restriction (Doom) on everyone else while giving herself total personal power.

Instead you'll just have to fend it off until whatever asshole fell asleep on the job chooses to wake up and wrangle the beast back.

Oh, this next command DEFINITELY shows it's Jane Crocker at the console, I love Jane being flabbergasted by things:

> WHY DOES IT LOOK LIKE A PERSON??????

No one knows! There's no exact consensus on the origin of SATANIMALS, but despite their myriad wretched forms all of them seem to exhibit some degree of satyrical anatomical features, or rough equivalents to them, and they're occasionally disturbingly genetically proximal to satyrkind. Everyone pretends this makes them special and worth preserving but you're of the opinion that they are hideous mistakes made by god. Unfortunately, the Exemplar seems to adore them, so they get to continue their shameful existences frolicking and rampaging across gorgeous national parks and nature preserves that would be much better suited to the frolicking and rampaging of satyrs.

GOD DAMNIT DIRK STRIDER WHY do you have to share so much of Andrew Hussie's sense of humor????????

Beyond that, they're left well enough alone. Satanimals aren't high on the research docket, understand- Wait.

GOD DAMNIT SWISS ELYSI don't you dare consider a Term Paper on Humanimals to elevate your standing!!! (That's very Light-over-Life behavior if it's really what he's contemplating.)

> SWISS DON'T LOOK.

EW BIG GROSS SNEEZE

Sorry you had to see this, Jane, I know you're already getting very invested in poor Swiss.

> No no no no.

Wait, WAS Jane really at the console, or is this command from Swiss's subconscious? Does she understand Swiss well enough already to know he's about to lose his shit, break the law, then lose his shit about having broken the law? (Or she just cares about the bees that much?) The origin of these commands is getting confusing with this:

> NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

RAAARARRAAUUUAAAAUUAGHGHGGHGGGGHHGH!

Pffhahahah, love this panel.

Wait, so it IS Jane and she's just being especially compassionate? Gosh it's great to have Sane Jane Crocker back:

> I'M SO SORRY!

They look a little busy.

-- cloisteredConnoisewer [CC] sent supa_secret_lylac_present.zip to gavageCunctation [GC] -- -- cloisteredConnoisewer [CC] set their status to bizayzay -- -- gavageCunctation [GC] began negging cloisteredConnoisewer [CC] -- GC: hey! GC: omg??? GC: you fixed my orb! GC: tysm!!!

Oh cool, I didn't know CC was able to fix Ly'lac's cracked orb remotely like that, I was worried it'd require a delivery! That's kickass, now she has a working computer to enter with.

Wait, I wonder if Ly'lac's going to get around to addressing the metaphorical-and-literal Narwhal in the room she should've just spoken with.

GC: wait. GC: delfi wtf is this...? GC: DEL'FI??? GC: how did you get this??? GC: ... GC: ... GC: THANK YOU??? GC: omg omg. GC: THIS IS CRAZY!!! GC: wow! GC: this has just been the craziest day...! GC: del'fi you are probably the best nymph i know.

Yup, Ly'lac received the signed artwork from the Beyond Anon! A really thoughtful gift can go miles to get you back in a friend's good graces.

GC: hey actually… GC: if you get unbizayzay'd later would you wanna play this game with me later. GC: AA and TC are playing too also btw… GC: and um. GC: a new… friend… GC: friends apparently…? GC: i guess lol. GC: you're still really slicing and dicing huh ha ha.

Ly'lac must be pretty excited to be inviting them to play the game right now, and no wonder, too. Also, I forgot thanks to the way these Orbs work that Ly'lac can observe what CC is busy doing right now.

GC: omfg get back on so i can tell you about all the craziness... GC: ykw funny is it's kind of related to this mday gift. GC: ominous right...? GC: i bet that makes you wanna ask me what i'm talking about.

(Since the game plan entails Ly'lac meeting the "real Vriska" and the art is of fictional Ly'lac and Vriska if that wasn't clear.)

GC: ... GC: ok i'm not gonna freak out but ANYWAY. GC: it'd be cool if you played! GC: i'm always telling TC he's the second smartest person i know... GC: come help me prove it lol. GC: and it'd be chill to have more like... GC: nymphs in my circle playing with us! GC: the number of randos is making my vellum itchy... ha ha GC: can you come save me lmao. GC: ... GC: jk anyway i'll untwist my way out of your tendrils for now. GC: thanks again hit me up soon!!!

(Vellum is a clever Nymph term for skin, given their blood is ink!)

Those are some seriously sweet and tender sentiments coming from the moody likes of Ly'lac!!! I know she probably gets in friendlier moods like this more often offscreen, but this is probably some of the sweetest we've seen her act.

And to pile on, that's a seriously sweet and mildly-shippy edited GIF. The file's even titled "LooneyLyfi", that's gonna fuel people for a little while.

-- gavageCunctation [GC] ceased negging cloisteredConnoisewer [CC] -- -- gavageCunctation [GC] began negging cloisteredConnoisewer [CC] -- GC: don't die. -- gavageCunctation [GC] ceased negging cloisteredConnoisewer [CC] --

D'aww. Gosh, the writing team must have had so much fun writing such a cute conversation as this.

Looks like that's it for this upd8! I don't have too much to add. Ly'lac's sitting on whatever momentous conversation she just had with The Narwhal in typical Homestuck obfuscative fashion, almost like a Denizen meetup; maybe we'll find out bits and pieces of it sometime later. I need to rest; talk to y'all next time!

[bladekindeyewear]

7-2026 artist/writer commentary

June’s combined post of Patreon commentary for the end-of-June [S] upd8 is up. (Homestuck^2 Beyond Canon) Same as last month, I'll be covering this in a very abridged format to do a better job NOT spoiling fun bonus content you can get 60 days early by subscribing to the Homestuck Patreon. Bulleted-list format, only my plot-relevant takeaways as I read, mostly paraphrasing, etc. Respect the paywall and fund Beyond Canon if you have the financial leeway and willingness! (Or wait for the public unlock.) But if you want my takeaways and some plot-relevant tidbits from the commentary regardless, see my impressions under the cut. (It's also worth noting that the latest HS:BC Bonus Comic on Patreon (visible if you’ve paid to unlock it or in 57 days otherwise) gives us more information and context on what we saw in the latest [S] page, and I’ve edited in details about it to the end of my latest liveblog post. The Bonus Comic is also alluded to in this Commentary too.)

Of course, they're combining the artist and writer commentaries this time because the update in question is "pretty short, but stuffed to the gills with meaning".

Omfg there's great concept art of the Nymph Babies here. EXCELLENT concept art. Like there's a confused Yiffy playing with one, it's so fucking cute.

Birth and impending death in the same frame. (Definitely some meaning in that juxtaposition, especially in likely-Doom-player Ly'lac's proximity IMO.)

It was going to be a pretty goofy nothing Flash until they decided to bump up the drama and stuff more in, but they kept the goofiness alive in the first half. (Personally, I think it was a wonderful bait-and-switch IMO, my only practical complaint is that I had to watch that long goofy first half of the sequence SO many times rewatching the flash to make sure I caught all of the last part.)

Omfg there's a bunch of great unused concept art.

Into the flashback: The commentary is giving us a LOT of explicit context into the likely history of the matter, alongside some riffs of course.

They're using he/him pronouns for the Uni-Nymph. So that was intentional historical pronoun-use by Del'fi.

His ears and hooved feet might have been more of a permanent thing, less shapeshifted-on-demand like Del'fi does.

.........................their prayer/devotion self-hugging gesture is meant to form the shape of Dirk's glasses across their chests. God damnit.

No answers on the mysterious pillar spy, just a wink and a nod.

The pegatulp's arrival, confirmed to be connected to the Barley Frat as alluded to by both Del'fi and by Swiss's bookshelf. They were going for much more happy than ominous. (Though I think they managed to accomplish both.)

I'll direct quote here because this is crucial: "MILES: Floral got into this already a little bit in the previous 4koma [Bonus Comic], but it looks like this pegatulp and the Narwhal were very, very close for a while.  He’d never stand for this kind of betrayal, but his struggles were in vain...  Also, if you look closely, you’ll see his wings resemble those of an albatross!  Wonder what that means..."

I'm pretty sure that the background in that one panel of the Abyssal Anchoresses taking him into the sea was showing the Dirk Strider Moon in the far back, but they don't give any specific clarification in the Commentary, so they probably didn't think we'd misinterpret it. (The glasses-shape DOES poke out of the sides in a way a glaring Meemaw face wouldn't, thinking about it they would have drawn it differently, so I'm even less confident in my earlier theory; they would have mentioned it here if Meemaw was even a possibility.)

HOOOOOLY SHIT. THEY'RE SHOWING US ORIGINAL CONCEPT ART FOR THE YOUNG NYMPH ANCESTORS, AND ARE SHOWING US TWO OF THREE (the third is blacked out for now), both very similar to and somewhat different from what we eventually got!!! Even some excerpts from their initial backstory concepts.

Their backstory gives the Ancestors full names, blacked out. Unknown if they have "Last Names" or just the obfuscating Epitaphs hiding them, or both. The first name of the one who put The Great Combiner to sleep is blacked out-- short enough that it COULD be Rose, but I'd still put heavy odds on the Third Nymph Ancestor being the culprit.

The backstory concepts list The Great Combiner as the head of the "MALEFIC NORTHWESTERN POLYCRUEL", a pun which I think reinforces the (in-my-opinion) Blood-like idea (possibly Thief-of-Blood) that everyone subsumed into her was considered part of an enormous relationship, as well as Instrumentality or whatever other analogues there were.

Even more later concept art and fanart, including a cropped art piece showing all the kid Nymphs and ancestor Nymphs together.

The spiral horn poking out of Ly'lac's Shubhurb actually IS The Narwhal's horn, trapped through the ground. The concept art shows the logistics of how this makes sense.

"Haven: Unfortunately Meemaw’s fate was determined before Ly’lac was even finished being designed." T_T Haven insisted on the one-munch gag which I agree was super fucking funny.

"FLORAL: It’s so funny people realizing she never had eyebrows." I'm glad they're amused that we caught that.

"[ANDI:] Nymph morphology is a result of their environment", and The Narwhal's evolving form is influenced by his upbringing, his confinement, and his nymph nature all together.

Regarding the ink-filled pipes we saw, "He’s already being used for his blood as a type of fuel, an energy."

I was pretty explicit on much of the relevant text minus some non-relevant lore details and gags, but they still have value to read for yourself and the concept art is FASCINATING and revealing, if you want to take a look once the Patreon post is unlocked (or if you pay to unlock it early). Talk to y'all next time!

[bladekindeyewear]

((EDIT: the latest HS:BC Bonus Comic on Patreon (visible if you've paid to unlock it or in 57 days otherwise) gives us more information and context on what we saw in the latest [S] page, I've edited in details about it to the end of my latest liveblog post.))

[bladekindeyewear]

HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2026-06-29

(Previous post - current page 1076)

Goodness it's been a long month between upd8s. I'm almost glad Homestuck has been so quiet to give us all time to breathe with TA:DC and Deltarune CH5 and such. I've been a bit worn down much of the month and still am, some illness/recovery (and some good HRT effects!) but I'll be doing better as time goes on. Definitely Tiredposting right now.

Last month's Artist/Writer Commentary caught up with present Beyond Canon, and now we have an update continuing from this conspicuous Baby Is You reference. Coverage start. ((EDIT: Slightly more information has been revealed about what we saw in the latest HS:BC Bonus Comic on Patreon, added to the bottom of my post.))

===>

Oh, are we moving on from Del'fi at that dramatic pre-battle standstill? I expected a scene-change but-- wait, from the next link, this may or may not still be Del'fi-- or wait, maybe Ly'lac, I didn't recognize her home arch and spires here at first, right next to Ly'lac's home:

> Be the baby.

OMIGOSH IS THAT A BABY NYMPH?!??!????

Did they seriously make proto-baby-squiddles even CUTER than squiddles??? Of course they did, oh gosh they're geniuses.

You cannot be the baby. Why in the world would you want to be a baby? Especially one so unfortunate to be born during THE GREAT LOSS.

Oh, something bad might also be about to happen to this baby, especially because now that I think about it we don't know any with brown upper-organons yet. And this says it's happening during "The Great Loss", which is... lemme check the previous mentions of it:

(p819) Recently, the mere mention of it triggers a major vibal nosedive, and vaguely reminds you of the PROPHECY FORETOLD REGARDING YOUR "BIRTH". Something about a global calamity, THE GREAT LOSS or whatever. (p1075) Some simply desired to be a part of something greater, while others saw it as a way to possibly circumvent prophecy; if only a few were destined to endure THE GREAT LOSS, the subsummation of their species all but guaranteed their participation.

Okay, so "THE GREAT LOSS" absolutely refers to The Reckoning coming down on Deltritus, and the meteors on the last page and this page are present day meteors. Meaning this is a present-day doomed baby. Ouch.

We've really gotta be closing in on our first Shurb Entry fast with the meteors getting this conspicuous. Isn't Ly'lac ages away from her house, and AA's present she still ought to retrieve from it somehow? Wait never mind, I'd forgotten that the second present landed right on her and she captchalogued it without opening it. So considering she already prepared for a long journey, Ly'lac might end up Entering from wherever she can next get to or concoct a computer that lasts long enough. (And Meemaw's definitely coming with, I hope, as a Kernelsprite or Guardian or otherwise.)

===>

Holy shit those doomed babies are so adorable.

What the fuck is that conspicuous damn Narwhal horn doing.

Her sisters seem to have unanimously agreed to take a doze in the middle of their shared birth. And on such a calamitous day! Not that they have many thoughts about current events. The lone fry, faithful to her instincts, makes her way to the sea, even as it begins to ache from the first percussive impacts of the song that will end the world.

Whoa holy shit, an [S] page!!! We couldn't be getting her entry so soon, could we? Unless that other present contained a working Farsphere or she has a spare unexploded computer at home and makes it there? Is she going to be carried back up from the depths on a Narwhal's back? Fuck, I'm nervous-excited, I'm not sure I'm awake enough to react to an [S] today but I'm gonna do it. No wonder the tweets said there was a newspost but I couldn't see it on the main page, it might be about the flash, unless this whole [S] is for a cartoonish drop sound effect.

FUCK IT WE BALL LET'S GOOOO

> [S] Ly'lac: Descend.

Oh my fucking god, her freaking out about this now-leisurely Meemaw descent is so fucking adorable.

Oh, is she falling asleep? Dream sequence upcoming?

WHOA, UNINYMPH BACKSTORY WHAT? METEOR CHILD CONFIRMED???

WHO THE FUCK IS THAT FLYING PEGATULP FIGURE OF CHAOS

WHY DOES THAT LOOK LIKE A STRIDER-GLASSES MEEMAW-ALIKE ASCENDING OUT OF THE OCEAN ABOVE THE NYMPH DELEGATION

WAIT THAT'S THE CAGED UP OVERGROWN UNINYMPH AFTER ALL THESE YEARS ISN'T IT? THE NYMPHS MADE A DEAL TO TAKE HER HIM BACK AND THEN LOCKED HER HIM UP IN THE NEARBY DEPTHS ALL THESE YEARS.

Holy shit that was a beautiful little flash. Let me grab some screenshots...

The uni-nymph grew up incognito among the Satyrs after being given a headdress with fake (or actually not?) Satyr ears and tail. A spy that looks winged, possibly a Nymph (unless it's the later Pegatulp with grinning eyes, preparing to make an entrance having found out the secret), is hiding behind a pillar, presumably verifying his location for his further abduction. (I forgot until I checked back that Del'fi described the "Uni-Nymph's chronicle" using he/him for the figure. Possibly just the depiction of the figure in "OURAN GYMNASIKKOU HOST CLUB" and the actual figure used different pronouns, but from the wording of the page I assume Del'fi was talking about the actual historical figure.) There's also a Light aspect symbol highlighting this ancestor in this one shot, whether significant or not, possibly referring to his secret being observed or his truth being divined from afar alike. Could Rose have been involved? Would she orchestrate something so cruel? I don't particularly think so-- I'd assumed their race had simply been left to it. Light symbols are bound to be used in preponderance surrounding the race that Rose created, even as deeply connected to Void as the race may be, as per the allure Void has always held for Rose.

And then there's THIS ASSHOLE. It's clear from the cadence of the flash that this cheery Pegatulp, probably an Ancestor of one of our Satyrs, sparked off the announcement of the presumably mutually agreed deal between the Satyr and Nymph factions to capture the Uni-Nymph back into Nymphkind's custody-- from Del'fi's abridged retelling:

Despite being a largely popular anime, the show was ended after only one season, though a part of you was grateful for that. There's no way she could have translated The Council's "reclamation" of the Uni-Nymph and the slaying of Barley Frat in a school AU.

From the way this figure is flying in as a dark, cheery avatar of descending death, I'm also reminded of one of Swiss's book covers:

--Oh shit, and BOTH mention the Barley Fraternities!!! So that possibly-upside-down flying asshole in the top of that book cover is definitely the SAME Pegatulp asshole. For some reason the [S] Peruse Librarium page isn't loading properly for me on any browser, so I'll pull the text of Swiss's description of the book from the Wiki:

Rise and Fall of the Barley Fraternities The Fraternity System, historically, has been composed of 3 tiers. Honey tier fraternities are the highest-achieving, highest-funded, and highest-power communes your society has to offer. Oat tier fraternities are one tier below, but still quite respectable institutions. Some of history's finest have been oat-tier dark horses. Grass tier fraternities are... well. You want to keep things diplomatic, so you'll just say that if you were only able to make it into a grass-tier fraternity you'd have to perform steppuku. For a brief period, there was a fourth tier; a reclusive, monastic order of socially anxious isolationists. They spent the majority of their existence in unremarkable obscurity, contributing basically nothing, but their final decades were marked by a profound change: a commitment to revelry so infectious that it went on to fundamentally change the nature of satyr society, prompted by the appearance of a man who flew across the sea from the uninhabited Cursed Land, Australia. He catapulted their order to the highest echelons of power and influence, which you always found weird because he was just a savage degenerate. At any rate, that didn't last long, because at some point their so-called "revolutionary" danced them all into the sea. So you guess maybe he wasn't such a fucking cool guy after all.

Connecting these two sides of the same historical events, it's unclear EXACTLY what the Pegatulp's appearance had to do with selling out the Barley Frat to be dragged into the ocean and drowned by the Nymph Council, and whether he was culpable or as much of a victim as the rest of the Frat, though the [S] we just watched definitely implies some sort of culpability. (Pegatulp-ability.) Though the hidden Nymph from the earlier panel implies The Council already had eyes on the Uni-Nymph before the Pegatulp's arrival. Did the Pegatulp trade the Uni-Nymph away from Satyrkind and sacrifice the Barley Frat for the sake of further fame and influence with Satyrkind in general? Was undermining and destroying the Barley Frat perhaps an intended goal of his, even?

Whose ancestor was the Pegatulp? (Tentatively "The Revolutionary", or was that more sarcastic?) He was too important to not be one of them, and was smiling too wide to be a disguised Dirk. In the running are Swiss's (catapulting their order to power and influence), and TC's (always shown in shadow, giving into mirthful revelry, hailing from an unknown/isolated land, Australia being "down under"). Insubstantial, possibly specious ties, frankly, not enough for firm conclusions. Either one sounds weird, as these Ancestors were clearly VERY different from their descendants, even if there's a chance they share an Aspect like Del'Fi and The Great Combiner seem likely to do-- we don't know enough of the story of this Pegatulp ancestor to say for sure, nor have enough hints of the other Ancestors to narrow it down. We know The Grey Rain was brought about by a Satyr "tyrant king" and Nymph "enchantress" working together, who now that I'm looking for mentions of the same terminology is possibly the same one who brought down The Great Combiner:

But when all seemed lost, the neptunian golem of a certain long excommunicated enchantress appeared. Then apparently she just wagged her finger, shooshed her to sleep, and tossed her back into the freaking ocean.

--and is certainly the same pair of Satyr "omnicidal madman" and Nymph "megalomaniacal heretic" who invented the ~PTH programming language together. This gives the Grey Rain pair parallels to Ly'lac and TC which may mean the Tyrant was TC's ancestor, not this Pegatulp despite the mirthful characteristics. I wouldn't be incredibly surprised if the ~PTH/Grey Rain ancestors weren't precisely Ly'lac and TC's, though. We need a little more information to suss it out.

I know for a fact people made the Grey Rain Couple -> ~PTH Couple connection earlier, but I wonder how many made the Barley Frat / Uni-Nymph Incident one since a couple updates ago, tying it together with that Rise And Fall bookshelf book? Either way I'm glad I've at least belatedly hit on it now with these more blatant hints.

There was another screen that showed the one member of the Frat shaking hands with a Nymph to seal the deal while other frat members who hid him amongst them being subdued and pinned to the ground, but I'm not fetching every frame, and in terms of what I want to analyze... On to the last big relevant screenshot of something that went by too quickly:

Is that the Dirk Strider glasses-moon in the distance visible above the shoreline, or a darkly-glaring slightly-less-ancient Meemaw? Or maybe even some Orb-like robot of Strider's / The Exemplar's overseeing the events? It's genuinely difficult to tell. Also the Nymph guards leading the Uni-Nymph back to the sea look just like the crystallized Abyssal Anchoress, which makes me wonder how they all got their Upper Organons in that shape or if they're wearing some sort of Shell over them; their "hair" below the helmline actually looks like hair more than tendrils, in this shot, though I'm probably reading too much into that.

Then Uni-Nymph's betrayed eye, teary.

Finally, no need to screenshot it, but we ended the Flash sequence on the present-day absolutely gigantic Uni-Nymph behind bars, his Narwhal-like horn thrust so high that the tip is obscured by the ceiling and possibly drilled into it. It could even be drilling and thrusting up and out of the ocean somehow, though if that's the rising spire on the previous page it'd have to be even bigger than I thought. Oh, and he's DEFINITELY awake and observing Ly'lac and Meemaw's arrival, which makes me damn well hope Meemaw wasn't the one in that earlier screenshot overseeing his "reclamation".

Gosh we got so much more out of that [S] page than I was expecting, especially in proportion to its length and complexity. Incredibly well done. Now then, on to the next page:

===>

OH HAHAHAHAHAH OKAY MEEMAW IS WIDE AWAKE AND KNOWS THIS MIGHT BE BAD NEWS UH OH XD

Fucking hilarious. Gee, I really really hope you weren't a part of that delegation, Meemaw! You don't want to be made all dead and Kernelsprite-Ready so soon!

Gosh I never expected the Uni-Nymph to get so much relevant play so soon as to be ACTUALLY RIGHT HERE about to be discovered. Never saw that coming.

===>

OH GOODNESS. She died of shock!!! D:

Those Xs above her eyes-- were her "eyebrows" her upper organon's extra eyes all along?

Poor, sweet, dear, precious, Meemaw. She was so damn old. All that's left is to honor the deceased with a tradition that's been passed down for generations.

NOOO, DON'T EAT HER YET! KERNELSPRITE, KERNELSPRITE! Augh, none of you have any way of knowing about that yet! D:

I hope the Uni-Nymph is going to interrupt them before, well, feasting is done. Though Ly'lac looks a little too small to eat an entire Meemaw in one sitting, so maybe that'll save her for the kernelsprite (I want Meemawsprite so bad).

===>

OH COME THE FUCK ON

I miss Meemaaaawwww!!!!!!! (T o T)

(It's so Homestuck to mix such a tragedy with such an ace visual gag, I'm upset but I'm also dying this is too perfectly hilarious.)

On another dark note that just occurred to me... I wonder if creating an entire race who immediately eats their own dead was, in part, a morbid way of reflecting Rose's childhood-bred distaste for Funerals by averting the practice altogether.

> Ly'lac: Turn around.

THE NARWHAL wants to speak with you.

As suspected from the flash/[S], Ly'lac's long-dreamt-of Narwhal and the imprisoned Uni-Nymph are one in the same. I suppose he's taken a "seahorse" form in Nymphian wild adult-build variety. Holy shit.

That's all! What a banger update!!! Holy shit that was... SO good. So many disparate pieces coming together, so early, and giving us just enough of a taste of the lore to be craving even more to come. I'm still busy mourning the loss (barring regurgitation) of any Meemawsprite chance, but The Narwhal being (potentially!) prototyped would lead to some significantly more visually interesting and intimidating prototyped monsters.

Before I go I ought to find that news post they tweeted about...

Yup, I should've expected more warning and explicit preparation before the Big Probably Ly'lac's Entry Flash/[S]. Oh, and cool, they'll be offering more Patreon benefits than just the monthly Commentary and Art, possibly some streams?? Asking people to contribute if they can so they can do more for us and with the comic. Happy Pride, etc-- you can read the news post yourself. If they post any bonuses on the Homestuck Discord like they promised there, feel free to tell my askbox or replies, or even maybe add me on Discord and let me know. (The Homestuck Discord gives me a headache so I prefer to check only when absolutely necessary, get content exported from there to me by others in screenshots instead of natively, etc.)

See you for the likely beginning-of-month Patreon Commentary that'll likely go into even more juicy details on the flash we just watched!

((EDIT: I won't embed the image of the latest HS:BC Bonus Comic on Patreon, since you have to either pay to unlock it now or see it publicly once it's been 57 days since release, but it shows The Narwhal / Uni-Nymph still looks back somewhat fondly upon the absurd always-grinning character that was the psychopomp/Hermes-dressed Pegatulp "revolutionary", which may or may not point against intentional betrayal on his part. It also shows The Narwhal experiencing the tragedy of losing his fingers into hooves as he reached advanced Nymph age and transformed into a locked-in form.))

[bladekindeyewear]

(Went back and considerably softened the language I used in my post about which pronouns I'd be using in my blogposts for Del'fi.)

[bladekindeyewear]

(SAW THE AMAZING DIGITAL CIRCUS FINALE IN THEATERS IT WAS FUCKING GREAT NO NOTES MY LIPS ARE SEALED)

[bladekindeyewear]

6-2026 artist/writer commentary

May's posts covering the artist and writer Patreon commentary for the April AND May 2026 pages of Homestuck^2 Beyond Canon are up. As I alluded to last month, I want to do a better job NOT spoiling fun bonus content you can get 60 days early by subscribing to the Homestuck Patreon, so this is going to be even more abridged than usual. I'm going with a bulleted-list format where I'm ONLY going to cover my plot-relevant takeaways as I read, trying for paraphrasing as opposed to direct quotes wherever possible, and skimming even more lightly than I typically do in my Commentary liveblog coverage without describing what else they show off or what else I'm looking at. I was already trying to respect the paywall to encourage people to fund Beyond Canon, but I want to take that respect a little more seriously than I was doing before.

Maybe I'll decide that this actually advertises the Patreon content worse than my previous abridged-liveblog format of it did, but I want to try it this way for at least a month or two of Patreon Commentary and then if it works for people probably stick to it. It'll also be easier and more relaxing for me I hope. Let's go! Also I'm switching from the "Satyrical ⍺/β/⍵" tag to the "Satyrical A/O/B" tag moving forward.

Artist commentary takeaways:

Oh, they wanted to do Second Life for Trench2Peak screenshots but instead worked with modders to heavily mod Sims 4 for screenshots. Hilarious. There's lots more raw screenshots in the Patreon post.

The BINDING CURSE was originally art-conceived as binding Karkat's wrists to Jake, putting their hands together rather than their whole bodies. It just turned out easier to reuse the terminal panel and their sprites. Still on-theme Blood of course IMO.

The creative quirky coding style for Del'fi's use was inspired by LOLCODE and they put a lot of thought into making the subject of the code relevant, the Ion Cannon resemble famous DDOS tools of yore, etc.

The hand-around-the-head mantle for the Great Combiner was wanted early on. (Great design choice!) Merged with the idea Haven had for "an undersea nymph city that was on/inside a massive sleeping nymph, for a child who lived literally inside their caretaker."

The night sky theming all around Del'fi's home architecture, the stars and moons et cetera, is to environmentally reinforce the theme of "(HAVEN:) Del’fi waiting for a morning that will never come. Which paired with the child's blanket/crib mobile to allude to feelings of arrested development."

The intentionally-styled "drool" line on their sleeping caretaker is actually a gap cut in their lips. Confirmed the body is (they think) "(HAVEN:) largely vestigial [...] a body-shaped dilapidated pulpit for the Lightstone".

Next to a sketch of the baby Great Combiner they refer to her as "baby GC", which I didn't realize fit the kid shorthandle pattern, further amplifying the chances this is a Meteor-sent Nymph ancestor.

Writer Commentary takeaways:

Trench2Peak intentionally further advances the theme w/ Del'fi of "(MILES:) the aforementioned need to use the internet/online space as a way to learn more about things that you might not really be able to encounter or act out in your own personal life." Mentioning the Outernet and Uppernet aren't flush with each other but rather have a "vaguely interconnected frontier-like nature of the interstitial zone that bridges the two separate satyr and nymph internets [which] leads to spaces like this becoming small oases of mutual understanding between two cultures that are otherwise almost entirely cut off from each other". They note that the drive in young people to seek these spaces out, IRL, is properly reflected here and in Del'fi and means a lot to the creators. Gosh, I love that the Beyond Canon writers care so much about these themes that are so close to the original Homestuck's, the ways we grew up and connected to each other as kids online, the motivations and struggles behind and inherent to those ways. (Y'all should really read these Writer Commentaries, they're consistently great.)

Satyr Romance and Values. They wanted to avert some Omegaverse traits like making roles biologically determined, "experience-based" rather than another layer of gender/sex/race which is already quite a busy space in this Deltritan story. A "mandate determined from birth" wasn't as interesting for them. (I'm also guessing this is part of why Betas aren't excluded from the mpreg of the relationships, etc.)

They go back to Swiss's shipping chart and mention how unlikely it is that Swiss actually ends up being an "obvious alpha", which all of us could clearly see anyway. They mention it's "(FLORAL:) a welcome difference from quadrants because it’s less focused on unconscious emotions", and it "feels very true to the new age of yaoi we are in that is very focused on playing with expectation/dynamics [...] playing with the idea of dominance and desire outside of simply dom top and sub bottom." They have a lot more to say on this and how the writers were educating each other on tropes in the (rapidly evolving) traditional omegaverse space, while also outlining how their A/O/B formula creates an inherently different sort of space with its own nuances that, unless I wanted to quote it all, you're probably better off reading from them. (Either by subscribing or reading in two months when it unlocks!)

Note about Dirk they make: "A lot of how satyr society is set up is a fairly telling portrait of a busy, ambitious desire for things to Work Out, Make Sense, and Feel Empowering. There’s a very utilitarian and goal-oriented fixation [...] personal ambition [...] productivity-minded-positivity[...] seems like the kind of thing a certain someone would really be into."

There are some backstories for the Beyond Canon Inside Beyond Canon cast that Del'fi drew about. Lots of funny stuff here, but to stick to the potentially relevant stuff... Calliope's "favorite food is twin", Alt!Calliope/AL is "Lunch that packs a punch", and Roxy is Rose's "greatest rival". Jade is not even mentioned, even though Kanaya IS even though she isn't shown yet.

Davebot MIGHT have just needed more balls and chains because he's stronger, because Haven mentions: "[T]he only real design note I had going in was they [Aradia and Davebot] needed to both be Alkyrins. [...] But each shackled metal ball added to Davebot made me laugh harder and harder. I had to stop myself from adding a 5th." This doesn't rule out that they might have had some sort of Jade is the balls-and-chains symbology going on here, or at least the SINGLE ball-and-chain for Dave initially, but it does make the extended metaphor of Davebot having "more baggage" in Jade-or-family form represented by the multiplicity of chains potentially less likely.

The biggest portion of the Writer Commentary is about the TC / Del'fi conversation, which they have SO MUCH to say about. I'm only going to touch on a few of the things they say.

The invasiveness of what TC is doing here is of course highlighted, as is his request and how he's trying to seemingly "speedrun" what he may see as a "natural friend[ship]" between himself and Del'fi. And they've intentionally left it ambiguous whether or not he even picked up on the fact that his overture didn't work all that well. (My own thoughts, TC identifying with the one of them who's secluded in THE ABYSS and darkness, not to mention reclusive hacker etc, is also very Seer of Void.)

Mirrored themes in TC and Del'fi of a "real dissatisfaction with their circumstances that’s reflected in very different ways".

Del'fi telling TC "dont ever tell me what to do" in harsh terms met with TC's "that's the fuckin spirit dude!" as: "(MILES:) genuine delight of not only seeing Del’fi stand up to meet what he sees as circumstances trapping them both, but Seeing Del’fi, period." FLORAL: "It’s almost as if to TC being seen could only be liberating." (I think this adds further points to my Seer of Void theory, or at least him being any sort of Seer, but especially one who understands and loves to understand who people are IN SECRET under their layers and masks.)

The conversation unsurprisingly also reflects the Satyr/Nymph cultural mindset difference of striving vs fatalism.

Mentions TC's invasion is, as much as he seems to appreciate 'seeing' Del'fi, "(MILES:) with very little thought for perspectives outside his own."

That despite admiring Satyr culture, the writers note that readers have noticed that Del'fi still has enough internalized skepticism about interspecies cooperation to reflexively reject the idea of ACTUALLY coming together as TC proposes, that (FLORAL:) "despite admiring parts of satyr masculinity, Del’fi’s feelings aren’t so simple as we may assume".

They go into The Great Combiner as Caretaker for Del'fi, noting their relationship is much like "(HAVEN:) Knuckles' relationship with The Master Emerald." Also talks of the Combiner as having "a childhood bereft of attachment" leaving them to grow up so disturbed, which again, explicit Blood language being used.

The apathetic generation that saw The Combiner's childhood seems to have been recovered from somewhat: "(HAVEN:) AA’s earlier comment about Nymph Culture makes it seem like after this very scary era [that almost led to the entire planet's destruction(?)] they tried to make a big turn around, and that’s the culture she’s been proudly raised in." Even though they know the prophecy still has to come true sooner or later, which colors much of their society still.

They also cover the danger of knowing in advance that only a drop of their race's ocean will make it off-world, because if all Nymphs know that, then it makes sense that many would conspire to BE one of those Nymphs, perhaps by joining into The Great Combiner or such.

They keep referring to the Great Combiner as "GC"!

HAVEN: "A few things here sound familiar. And the language used seems quite specific. Let’s keep this in the back of our minds, chums." Yeah we have to keep the language in mind to be sure of exactly the person being referenced here, in case it's an Ancestor Nymph and not Rosebot, because even though it sounds a whole lot like Rosebot we have to cross-reference it with other examples that'll use the same language to be sure. And it'll be an interesting detail if it were to turn out that ROSE were indeed "excommunicated" from her own race, willingly or otherwise.

Okay, so reading back I... certainly used a lot of quotes, though still only a bare fraction of the full articles... and I may not have typed substantially LESS than I did in like, the supposedly-larger Artist/Writer Commentary posts I used to make. But I liked this format, and that just shows you're not losing much! Again, if you love Beyond Canon like I do, consider supporting the Homestuck Patreon and reading these for yourself! :D Talk to you next upd8!

Do I need a tag for The Great Combiner? I'll add one just in case.

Feel free to let me know in the replies what your opinions are on this more-abridged Patreon-Commentary-only paywall-preserving liveblog format moving forward?

[bladekindeyewear]

HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2026-05-27

(Previous post - current page 1063)

New Beyond Canon update, which isn't just a Beyond-Canon-inside-Beyond-Canon update! Back to the show! Liveblogging under the cut. (EDIT 1: Figured out a title/nickname I realized what was meant by, edited in right near the end.) (EDIT 2: Another clarification on re-read about that character.) (EDIT 3: Added info from @shoutyourporpoise in the replies!)

The tweet said "øpdate" so I wonder if we're getting any of TC this time. I suppose Del'fi was about to finish back-hexing him...

===>

This is... they invented an entire old internet pseudocode language that sounds like Del'fi. Having a whole team lets them really go all-out on each upd8 doesn't it.

Anyway, you don't have to think about that anymore because it seems like the leet hex finally managed to get a few hooks into cha.OS! Wait... what are all these hidden functionalities? Full remote viewing? Temporal tracking? This is... really advanced. And really, really invasive. Ugh!

Yeah, if it has a Trollian-like viewport, Del'fi has every incentive to find a way to block that function for themselves before they get into the game together. Not that Del'fi knows they'll be "in" the game together.

===>

What's even the use for these?

Is that-- no that couldn't be Rose, it's not a match even for her Candy haircut and she's still either a robot or something transcendant of it... is that Dirk Strider from behind? No dog ears or Satyr ears. It's not the strictest match of any Dirk's silhouette we've seen so far. Harry's hair seems like it'd be more curly from behind... does Roxy have a new haircut we haven't seen yet?

Honestly the closest match is Tavvy's hair swoop, maybe it's black hair that the viewing glow just makes LOOK like white from this stylized angle. But it's definitely brighter than Vrissy's hair was from a similar angle. Because it's reflecting a white human face in front of it? ...Yeah it's... probably Tavvy despite the discrepancy making it unclear.

===>

UGH, he's SO… speak of the devil.

TC's chat bubble appears, and a Hazelog! Looks like now that he's outed, the very-possibly-if-my-earlier-guesses-were-right Seer of Void might want a chat.

- tinnitusChakra [TC] began hazing cloisteredConnoisewer [CC] -- TC: whats pøppiiing! TC: cøuldn't help but nøtice that yøu just snuck thrøugh the first gate øf cha.OS' waterfall! TC: that's sø sick. TC: nøbødy's managed that in the whøle 2 day histøry øf the prøgram, pretty sweet møves. TC: i've been fucking arøund with leethex myself and i think i'm really starting tø get the hang øf em, but tø see them depløyed sø expertly... TC: that's wassup. TC: hønestly, keep up the gøød wørk. there are a few deeper layers of psychersecurity i think yøur current hex might have søme trøuble with but hey, if yøu can break it yøu can take it. TC: always gøød tø get anøther pair øf eyes frøm sømeøne whø actually appreciates the delicate interplay between the løwer mysteries and high løgics.

Waterfall gates and locks as like... a metaphor for layers of the afterlife or something. I'm shit at mythological references, but I've seen fictional series like Abhorsen that dealt with that, huh. (EDIT 3: As @shoutyourporpoise points out and I somehow didn't realize in TC's previous conversations, he talks a lot like a surfer as a personality characteristic-- so continuing to use Oceanic and water-rich metaphors like Waterfall gates, along with his association with ~PTH and surfer-ness, has FURTHER symbolic Void associations with water and the pull of the ocean depths, like the Fallingwater house Mom Lalonde owned and many other associations with Ocean-plunging and irrelevance or dislocation throughout original Homestuck.)

TC: aaactually, høw many eyes dø yøu have? TC: twø? TC: møre, right? TC: it's tøugh tø tell thrøugh the webcam! CC: oh hai!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! cc: how keeee~wl CC: can u even c mah lit sign TC: hell yeah i can! TC: and in turn alløw me tø raise yøu a particularly righteøus shaka. TC: if yøu wanna see it, gø ahead and hack my cam back. CC: hehehehehehehe CC: no thats ok CC: so didya get ur uppernet hooked into our orb tech? CC: i waz wonderin wat lylac waz helpin u cook up but she must of been rl helpful for that TC: øf cøurse! TC: she øpened up a whøle new wørld when she intrøduced me tø løwmys.

I know I'm biased as fuck, but even as much of a challenge it sounded like for TC to tell Del'fi to hack him back, this definitely sounds to me like a Seer who can't wait to expound on all his understanding.

CC: does she knoes ur using it to put ur lil horsey snoot all up on her homegrls? CC: kinda wack of her to leave me outta the peep party CC: a real misdemeanor on her part CC: is she mad at me? do she hate me badly? CC: shud i kms? TC: yøu shøuld chill yøurself. TC: my ly'ly wøuld never leave a friend øut in the cøld. CC: MY LYLY? CC: hahahahahahaha CC: except she ttlly would TC: løl! TC: true, she wøuld. TC: but nøt because she was trying tø harsh anyøne's vibes, yøu knøw what i mean.

Del'fi seems to be feeling this out, cautiously trying to determine just how much of a threat TC is and to whom, waiting for the other shoe to drop on what could be a potent blackmail situation among many other things... TC clearly has a lot of power over Del'fi and their friends right about now.

TC: yøu're øne øf her cløsest dørmies. CC: rlly? TC: ch'yeah dude. CC: ur so fr rn? TC: the realest. CC: idk... *kicks rock* TC: øh fuck yes, øur very first røleplay. TC: [i catch the røck with a fetløck and start juggling it like a høøfball.] TC: [after a bit øf høity høøfwørk i pass it back!] CC: dang CC: so anyways she doesnt know at all? TC: øh, she knøws. TC: øn the real i just døn't think she cares, løl. CC: i mean dats wat she says until she starts lobbin nades at u CC: u gotta keep a close eye on dat btw

Del'fi seems easily distracted by talk of their friend and how much Ly'lac cares... even though it's hard to read because, from Del'fi's point of view, this is definitely a hostage situation.

If Del'fi is indeed a Bard of Blood, they might be naturally doubtful of the true strength of their own relationships.

CC: i dont have to tell you how the trope goes CC: upstandin satyr givin in2 the call of mysticism CC: repercussions must b served CC: not hard 2 c how when u saddle ur seahorse 2 a grl who blows herself up CC: or turns on any1 dat gets a bit 2 bossy CC: r u a bossy alpha boy TC? CC: keepin command CC: smacking away our greasy sneak fingers from ur spankin new hybrid toy TC: i døn't knøw abøut greasy. TC: thøugh yøu knøw lac-attack always keeps that slime øn her.

So far, at every turn, TC is CONSISTENTLY deflecting any negative statement about any of the Nymphs, Del'fi included, and declining to frame anything SO FAR as a threat. He's being extremely positive and not OVERTLY threatening.

Void, however, is the aspect of submission, and getting people to know when they have to yield, like he did in his conversation with Swiss...

TC: anyway, the general scryware is limited tø admins (me), ør ambitiøus hexxørz (cøuld be yøu!) før nøw, but i get the feeling what yøu're really asking abøut is thøse advanced features i saw yøu scrølling thrøugh. TC: thøse are møre experimental. TC: hønestly, kind øf dangerøus, thøugh that's the fun part, isn't it? TC: i've døne my fair share øf playing with singularities but remøte spatiøtempøral quantumødulation is particularly tøuchy stuff, sø i løcked it før everyøne but an especially select few. TC: still, pretty neat, right? CC: me no know CC: is it? TC: yeah. TC: it is! CC: oh... CC: but bringing in strangers... CC: from da ITERNET? TC: frøm sømewhere! CC: oh noes CC: dats the worst place u can b from CC: i hates em

Right, it's unclear whether Del'fi has any real inkling that Ly'lac's "enigmatic fictional maiden" is real.

TC: they wøn't be strangers før tøø much lønger. TC: i mean, løøk at us. TC: we've been talking før twø minutes and we're basically like best brødeøs. CC: rite! CC: tru besties CC: tbh ive been wanting to talk to u 4evaaaaaaaaaaa~a CC: everyday i go to the bathroom and jus read up about u on social media CC: wonderin if ur also going to the bathroom CC: or wut brand of shampoo u use CC: putting mah hand to the mirror CC: dreamin of the day ud let a lil ole wretch like me kiss ur krusty stinker (//3^)/ CC: and then CC: the ink flows til the tubs black TC: yøøø. TC: that's different!

Sounds like Nymph reproduction is potentially pretty messy!

It's still so delightfully unclear whether TC's assertions of friendship are optimism or a dominance display.

TC: let's nøt talk abøut me anymøre, yøu flatterer. TC: let's get back tø yøu. TC: and what i need yøu tø dø. CC: oh... *SHUDDER!* TC: døn't shudder. CC: dont ever tell me what to do CC: understood? TC: that's the fuckin spirit dude!

Whiplash! Did TC deliberately provoke them, then give them props for not submitting?

TC: yøu mentiøned feeling left øut earlier? TC: well, i'm here tø fix that. TC: hasty-style. TC: there's a game ly'ly and i have been cøøking up før søme time nøw, which yøu knøw, and i knøw yøu knøw. TC: and i'm gønna need yøu tø høp øn. TC: yøu've been døwn there førever, and believe me i knøw høw that is. TC: all cøøped up, nøbødy tø rave with. TC: thing is, when yøu finally take matters intø yøur øwn hands and step øut intø the light? TC: fuuuck, it feels gøød. TC: sø that's what i'm asking yøu tø dø. CC: zang wow r we like kindred souls? CC: u got my whole heckin number tattooed on ur sleeve? CC: bro ur lyke crawling around n my head and we havent even nuptulized yet CC: get out of there!!!!!!!!! CC: cant a nymph keep sum secret dang

Ah I see TC's game here, he's using the blackmail he has on Del'fi to strongarm them into playing Shurb, smoothing things along. Quite smart use of secrets without being too bullying, though it's still extremely invasive.

TC: can yøu løck in før a sec? CC: UWAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. CC: but but but but but!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TC: hey, why døn't we level with each øther? TC: this game is gøing tø be fun, but it's alsø extremely necessary. TC: AA knøws that. TC: (super funny chica, btw, can't wait tø get intø søme mischief with her later.) TC: a few laps agø, i came acrøss søme pretty mindbløwing intel while i was scraping the øld man's servers før shits and giggies.

Which old man? TC is supposedly close to the Big Kahuna according to Swiss, but I'm not sure whether or not that would mean being in the presence of Dirk Strider directly or his servers.

TC: i wøn't børe yøu with the deets, because they're patchy and cryptic and required a løt øf extrapølatiøn and we frankly døn't have much røøm før størytime, but the løng and shørt øf it is that this game we're abøut tø play is all that stands between us and the cømplete annihilatiøn øf øur søcieties, øur species, and øur wørld. TC: if that wasn't trippy enøugh, check this shit øut: TC: we're MEANT tø play it. TC: me, ly'ly, AA, CT, AT. TC: and yøu. TC: he was TRACKING us. TC: well, tracking the satyrs, anyway. TC: yøu three were møre øbfuscated, but i was able tø intuit that yøu'd be cøming intø play eventually by kind øf like... triangulating via the blind spøts. TC: and there were a løøøt øf blind spøts. TC: i døn't knøw why he didn't just tell me, but i'm kind øf glad he didn't, because finding øut øn my øwn was way møre fun.

So TC found out that either Dirk Strider, or whoever his "old man" is in their parentless society, was tracking all six players. As would naturally be the case. But lemme roll back the conversation just a bit:

TC: yøu three were møre øbfuscated, but i was able tø intuit that yøu'd be cøming intø play eventually by kind øf like... triangulating via the blind spøts. TC: and there were a løøøt øf blind spøts. TC: i døn't knøw why he didn't just tell me, but i'm kind øf glad he didn't, because finding øut øn my øwn was way møre fun. TC: blind spøts are where i thrive. :)

ABSOLUTELY a Void player, a hundred percent. Whether my assertion of Seer or not, we'll have to see, but doesn't it fit better than much else so far?

TC: that said, meeting ly'lac was an actual straight-up certified cøincidence. TC: and thrøugh her, yøu and AA came intø the picture. TC: again, BY CØINCIDENCE. TC: is that nøt FUCKING CRAZY? TC: i think it's FUCKING. TC: CRAZY. TC: :D CC: crazy? CC: ... CC: thats a regular ole nymph tuesday CC: nothin moar special than wut i alrdy got goin on

Yeah I suppose Rose Lalonde's doom-foretelling Nymph race wouldn't find cosmic coincidences like Shurb arranges especially out of the ordinary.

TC: the shit we're facing is gøing tø make the grey rain løøk like a dainty little dewdrøp. TC: and anyway, what is it yøu actually DØ have gøing øn? CC: i save the world everyday CC: yadda yadda grey rain blahblahblah listen dude CC: i hang w the Great Combiner CC: surrounded by beautiful ladies CC: in my own city of riches CC: p grt by nymph standards hm? TC: yøu're surrøunded by ruins and echøes and sleeping cørpses and yøu deserve sø much møre. TC: that has tø be sø børing, man. TC: it makes me sad.

Who or what exactly is the Great Combiner? ...does it have something to do with the Alchemy magic Ly'lac practices?

TC: are yøu scared? CC: lmao CC: r u? TC: maybe? TC: i'm anxiøus, but dø yøu have any idea høw løng it's been since i had anything tø be anxiøus abøut? TC: it feels amaaazing. TC: we're øn the precipice øf sømething cømpletely beyønd øur science, beyønd yøur magic. TC: sømething NEW, past the banal tøtality øf wørldly knøwledge i've had møre ør less figured øut since i was five. TC: i føund ~PTH at exactly the right time, but it ønly just barely scratched the surface øf what's pøssible here, i can feel it. TC: we're abøut tø be free. TC: døn't yøu wan't tø be free?

It's true. And this thrill-seeking, it's the sort of thing someone who wants to Understand the Unknown might find irresistible. Even if it means a potentially dangerous fascination with something he may very well KNOW could be the cause of civilization's downfall as much as it is a way out of it, it's difficult to tell just how aware he is of that but the way he talked about apathy consuming him to the point that ANXIETY was EXCITING makes it sound like he'd find a sick thrill from this all being responsible for the inevitable apocalypse too. A Seer of Void can potentially be extremely dangerous, even in optimism-- he looks to view the good AND the bad of this to be so exciting he can't wait to see it.

TC: i dø! CC: "i do~!" shut up CC: there aint a prophecy or tech thats gonna give me wut i want TC: nøt if yøu never dø anything. CC: mang CC: its so cute how satyrs all think they matter CC: strivin and fightin to make a little dent in the world or whatever CC: but its just… so cringe too CC: so much struggle to do nothing rlly new or special CC: and then turning around acting all proud of urselves CC: totally unaware that all ur doing is exctly wut u were meant to do and unlike us ur too stupid to realize ur walkin a fixed path CC: its a sorry sight CC: u cant even appreciate how lucky u r CC: if things were different and nymphs were even a fraction as gullible as u guys r CC: we wld have wiped u out at the get go TC: pøint blank man i refuse tø accept there are ønly twø øptiøns here. TC: hide frøm each øther førever ør die screaming? TC: cøme øn. TC: that's silly. TC: we can dø better than that.

TC is talking about Blood somewhat, uniting the races, in a way it seems as if Nymphkind might be avoiding because of (potentially) specific (and true) prophecies that their cooperation would end the entire world in a firey apocalypse. Del'fi, perhaps more than Ly'lac, has embraced the Nymphian sense of futility of their situation and life in general. I wonder how Del'fi's going to act once they indeed eventually realize they've been freed from the prison Deltritus represented for themselves specifically.

TC: sømetimes sømething is sø cømpletely beyønd yøu that yøu'd never have a shøt at figuring it øut øn yøur øwn. TC: ly'lac shøwed me shit that changed my life førever. TC: SAVED my life!

There's some backstory here behind TC's seemingly-easygoing personality being hinted at here, something that what Ly'lac and ~PTH brought TC helped him out in a low point of his life.

TC: and yøu have sømething sø beautiful gøing with CT. TC: whatever the fuck it is. TC: dø yøu knøw høw rare that is før him? TC: før anyøne? TC: it MATTERS. CC: OML CAN U BACK OFF 4 1 SECOND U FRUIT LOOP CC: i dont get wut ur trying so hard to do rn!!! CC: i knew u were sum kind of sicko but this is jus somethin else

TC is trying to psychoanalyze and help Del'fi right now, and even if Del'fi weren't a Bard of Blood, at this stage of Del'fi's being and beliefs I'd know it can't help but backfire. At the moment, anyway. TC 'sees' a better future for Del'fi, but they aren't willing to accept that at the moment.

CC: i EXPECTED u were going to lord CT over my head sure CC: but this is GROSS!!!!!!!!! now he has 2 crappy backstabbers spittin on the bro code CC: playin in his face CC: n u dont even have an excuse! TC: what's wrøng with playing? TC: playing is fun as fuck, and cømpletely within acceptable brø cøde parameters if yøu ask me. CC: ur jus a bad friend TC CC: we both r TC: [i grab yøur face.] TC: listen. TC: yøu're nøt a bad guy, big d.

TC is actually calling Del'fi "big D" which could double for "Dagger".

TC: i knøw yøu CARE abøut him. TC: i've been actively følløwing the chrønicle øf the møuntain and dagger tartarus før søme time, and brø. TC: that kind øf hearts-wrenching cøllab døesn't just cøme aløng every day. TC: that's special. TC: it tøuched me. TC: deeply. TC: that private server yøu twø wørked intø the pløt? that's søme real multimedia artistry. TC: even if the security øn it was kind øf a jøke. TC: but let's put it this way. TC: yøu cøuld keep dancing arøund it and cøntinue yøur rp før anøther høwevermany laps, and it'd prøbably be super sick. TC: hell, i løve a gøød dance. TC: but aren't yøu ready tø MEET him? TC: that can HAPPEN. TC: that WILL HAPPEN. CC: wait CC: u read our rp doc? TC: yeah dude.

TC thinks that breaking into everyone's secrets, he can just expose how they really feel about each other and they'll be able to accept it, heal, and do what's best for themselves. But people don't work that way. When you crack them open for their secrets, no matter how badly you want them, you deal damage. When you lay out something inside someone bluntly when they're not ready to hear it, they can deny it and retreat further.

TC: yøu twø are gøing the fuck øff in there at all høurs øf the damn day ør night ør whatever sø sømetimes the backløg gets thick as all hell but the møst recent arc? the warden's gambit was sø viciøus, brø. TC: i løve høw yøu wørked in all these hints abøut it during the cøurt saga, that was fuckin CINEMA. TC: yøu guys are fantastic writers. TC: but just sitting at øppøsite ends øf the planet førever is such a stupid waste, før bøth øf yøu. TC: i'm nøt gønna bløw up yøur spøt and take that leap før yøu but i am gønna prømise yøu that it's a leap yøu need tø make if either øf yøu are gøing tø survive. TC: his life is in yøur hands. TC: … TC: yøur cam's glitching øut øver there and i've gøtta gø, but i'll leave ya with this. TC: if we døn't figure øut høw tø wørk tøgether øn this, we're all fucked. TC: but if we dø? TC: paradise. TC: the files are øn yøur ørbs. -- tinnitusChakra [TC] ceased hazing cloisteredConnoisewer [CC] --

He's not even threatening them! He's explicitly saying he isn't going to expose Del'fi to CT -- unconditionally -- and that they should all work together just because it's what's best for Del'fi if nothing else.

But he's giving a premature moral message of camaraderie to a, theoretically, Destroyer of Blood who clearly isn't ready to accept it this early in their character arc.

...While I was browsing the log for some earlier silhouette reference links I may have accidentally glanced at an upcoming link that looked like "React to this in a completely reasonable manner" or something, which is kind of tilting my analysis but like. Yeah, Del'fi-splosion would be a reasonable reaction... setting off some form of sick sabotage.

===>

He read it.

OH. Or... that. That part would be the part one latches onto, yes. Have I mentioned lately that cracked and broken glass is a Void symbol?

This is what I meant, in part, about the damage that breaking into people's secrets can do. Especially secrets one considers core to one's identity, whether one realizes it or not. Del'fi often OFFERED to share SELECTED logs with Ly'lac, or writings, mostly knowing she wouldn't accept or read them, but... having someone you DON'T KNOW having broken into EVERYTHING, read all your smutty roleplaying, even the stuff you never would have voluntarily shared outside your currently-only-CT-and-you comfort zone????

That's devastating. Brutal. Terrifying. TC is going to have to learn to do better by people than this.

And, there's that link title I peeked:

> Del'fi: Have a reasonable reaction.

Literally growing more mouths to scream with-- hey wait, Del'fi can actually lift their upper organon off their lower pair of eyes??? (Oh hey, does Del'fi usually go for eye-tongue instead of mouth-tongue like Ly'lac or the crystal-person?)

You've left him alone all this time for your friends' sakes, but this is too far. You have to make him pay.

Oh yeah, it's industrial strength sabotage time. Destroyer time.

===>

...AND THERE SHE GOES DEMANDING YOUR ATTENTION AGAIN! "WAH WAH WAH, intruder alert, come protect my lightstone, you don't have time to cast a death spell on that popular pompous prick!!!"

Oh god, Del'fi's out-screamed. Are those screaming mouths metaphorical or are the grasping looping hands that make up this sanctum partially alive??? Excessively demanding of a possibly-Caretaker.

YOU GET IT! FINE! FREAKING, FINE!!!!!!!!!!! YOU WILL CHECK THE PERIMETER.

Is this revenge interrupted, or will this be sufficiently out-of-the-ordinary to mean revenge indefinitely deferred? ...Even if they get in the game and they suddenly find themselves "free", I'm not sure it'd quench Del'fi's need for revenge over plundering and browsing their private RPs here, regardless of his praise.

> Del'fi: Scope out the situation.

Oh, wow. Ok, you see what her problem is now. That's actually a LOT of intruders.

Driven down to the far depths by the beginnings of a meteor apocalypse maybe? Or prophecies concerning such coming to fruition?

===>

You'll have to act fast if you hope to cast your DEATH CURSE in a timely fashion. Whatever you choose to surrender will have to be a SIGNIFICANT BARGAIN if you hope to pull off this level of vengeance. Unlike before, you see instantly what your only true option for this spell is.

Del'fi has to surrender things of personal value just to cast a Death Curse??? This sounds more and more like it happens to be a unique specialty to either Del'fi's nature or interests as a potential Bard of Blood, giving up that which they hold dear to catalyze Destruction.

They're looking at the Lightseed, though, aren't they? Aren't they protecting that for a reason? Or is their Caretaker also there to sacrifice, or something?

===>

After all, what could be stronger than LOVE?

Seriously, is anyone still going to tell me that Bard of Blood isn't incredibly likely here? "SEVER"ing bonds and proof of love?

I hope it's just those three dearly important artworks, and not like, something out of their own heart.

> Del'fi: Sever.

No, that'd be too far. You're still going to hit him with a little NIGHTMARE IMPRECATION, but you'd hate going to sleep beneath the space they'd leave behind. There are some things even you can't live without.

Oh phew, the beloved statuary instead. Del'fi's still bound by Blood, like Jack (the theoretical Prince of Blood) often was. But those cherished artworks are potentially a SERIOUS time bomb for Del'fi to detonate to power a curse sometime later in the plot. That or they'll be able to sacrifice something even more precious, like whatever/whoever their Sprite turns out to be or something.

TC is going to be cursed with nightmares, but given the way Dream Bubbles work, that could essentially be to the team's collective advantage.

You're a bit more like her than you'd want to admit.

Like "her"? Their Caretaker/Warden maybe? What? What does this mean? Being unable to sacrifice something that ought to be...? Couldn't sacrifice Del'fi maybe?

> Del'fi: Resist urge to think about what she did to you.

Wait, is that the Lightseed? With the stem propping it up, from this angle... it looks like a Sburb-generated near-Frog-Temple tower house.

You fail terrifically. To the point you can't help but recount the legacy of loneliness that tethered you here in the first place. A very long time ago, the wisdom of the tides brought about a cultural wave of nymph apathy, fueled by the knowledge that the entire planet would be wiped clean within a few generations, leaving naught but a select DESTINED FEW.

They know it's coming, to some extent, AND when. TC wasn't saying much about the incoming apocalypse that surprised Del'fi, even if they didn't know the shape of it.

This caustic lethargy led to large scale egg abandonment; hundreds of little frys dropped into trenches left to fend for themselves in the depths.

So Nymph eggs aren't always abandoned the way Ly'lac described or?... no, wait, rereading it... ah, they're usually laid on the BEACHES to give them hope, and SOME were cast into the depths due to this racewide spike of apathy Del'fi is referring to.

The lurid tangle of striping stars that surrounds you was sewn together by one of those sad little orphanites once upon a time. She was armed with nothing but a doctrine of unabashed purehearted nymph love and a terribly horrific weapon of mass destruction, callously cast away into the trenches like so much radioactive waste, corrupting all it touched; in this way, she and the weapon were very much alike.

OH. This "weapon of mass destruction" may very well have been carried down with Del'fi's caretaker on a meteor. Not necessarily, not quite. But this very well could have been their ectobiological ancestor, who could also have been a Blood player given all the holding-hands environmental design they engineered, a non-Destroyer potentially.

Not confirmable yet though, it's hard to say, what with the Gray Rain and ~PTH being presumably the work of ancestors too from the vibes we've been getting.

===>

WHOA HOLY SHIT

Hand hair! Hand throne! She grew all that! And a seed from her heart?!?

Unmistakeable Light symbol too, hair like a gripping claw around her face...

In her early fryhood she was alone, but as she bloomed with maturity she found herself surrounded by suitors and supplicants. She had decided that neither she nor anyone else would ever know the touch of isolation ever again. Thousands upon thousands came to her of their own volition, desperate for the safety of her bosom, her cruel tolerance, the lack of pretense in her all encompassing embrace. Some simply desired to be a part of something greater, while others saw it as a way to possibly circumvent prophecy; if only a few were destined to endure THE GREAT LOSS, the subsummation of their species all but guaranteed their participation.

I know there's a Light symbol on her forehead, but the whole race are Rose Lalonde's progeny. From the story of her history, this does read like a Blood-bound Ancestor, one who wasn't necessarily Destroyer-class oriented. (EDIT 2: Wait, they were SUBSUMED? Like the Subsumation Curse Del'fi cast in Cha.OS general chat earlier and has on their desktop? So amalgamated or eaten up? I missed that on first read, so this maybe-ancestor was eating everyone in some ways or incorporating them literally rather than just forming a community.)

Many, however, did not lust for assimilation.

I could be speaking too soon about the non-destructive part, but it sounds like the destruction probably was done UNTO her rather than FROM her.

Del'fi also just compared themselves to her and said they were "more like her than you'd want to admit", full of love and desperate to not be alone.

===>

Countless nymphs and satyrs alike were consumed in their intimate and tender grazing, and with them, their homes and history. All were made piecemeal and dragged into herself as she became a writhing museum of extinction. With each addition to her alluvial labyrinthine form so grew the power of her inkstone. It grew so incredibly dense and impossibly dark that it began to shine bright as the morning star.

Consumed? Grazing? What??? (EDIT 2: I'd missed "subsumed" and that the assimilation was literal on first read, as covered.)

So this city of their was like a roving, consuming city-state? These bonds she extruded into a city captured places they roamed over and conquered and fed upon? Was this potential-ancestor perhaps some sort of Thief of Blood, gaining power from all that she bound to herself? Is that's what's collected in her inkstone seed?

Drawn toward some unknowable peak, she and her supplicated constituents stretched west. They took to land, and took the satyr's capital with them. In a rare display of interspecies collaboration, THE COUNCIL OF HIGH PROPHETS, THE PLAYTORIATE, and THE EXEMPLAR himself combined forces in an attempt to protect what little world had remained after her passionate rampage.

"Playtoriate" like "horseplay" and "Praetorian Guard", or something.

For several tides they fought in vain, struggling helplessly against her love. But when all seemed lost, the neptunian golem of a certain long excommunicated enchantress appeared.

Rose wouldn't have been excommunicated... would she? Is this a different ancestor? Rose might get a perverse kick out of being in exile from her own species, but... the "golem" of an enchantress? A robot?

Then apparently she just wagged her finger, shooshed her to sleep, and tossed her back into the freaking ocean.

We actually know for a fact that Rose has exhibited this power, able to infuse dark/Void power into a ball of yarn to knock Dream Dave to sleep. As an Ultimate Self in command of presumably a wide spectrum of the Light/Void axis, putting someone to sleep is very possible.

Alternatively... if not for the 'neptunian golem' line, for all we know, it could have been Vriska, lending the pair a hand under some pact. Knocking someone asleep psychically with a boost from her powers and casting them down into literal dark oceanic depths is very Thief of Light -> Plunge someone Down into Void.

Where she's remained in this seemingly insurmountable slumber to this day, with the only notable action being when she grabbed a meteor out of the sky carrying a baby on it some several thousand tides ago, before promptly falling back to sleep. And that baby was you.

They couldn't resist the "the baby is you" phrasing, could they. XD

Chances of this being an Ancestor definitely ramped up with this deliberate act of hers. It's pretty wild that Del'fi actually KNOWS they're meteor-born, unlike (presumably) Ly'lac. I wonder who else knows? This is one of the biggest instances so far of Nymphkind proving their doomsaying/foretelling chops by having foreknowledge of this apocalypse within generations.

I can't say this is an Ancestor for sure, or that the Enchantress was Rose for sure (controlling any number of remote bodies of any given potential size as part of whatever plan she hinted at having to transcend her human-body-and-robot-body arrangement)... It could have been some other Golem-piloting Ancestor... and I definitely can't say what the Lightseed is capable of, what the weapon of mass destruction was or if it allowed her to extrude this city, or what any of this is capable of. This slumbering Nymph and her heart seem eminently Prototypable, and if they contain some sort of immense power they've gathered, what effect would that have on the enemies and structure of the Session? Is this the equivalent of prototyping Becquerel for them? Do Dirk and Rose have long-laid plans to use the Prototyping process to construct something out of key pieces they've seeded around the world like this? Wild things are bouncing around my head like the Lightseed becoming Skaia of all things, given AA doesn't seem to have noticed the Satyrs joining them in their session in Skaia's clouds for some reason, and my old theory that the purpose of this session was to create the workings of the Game in the first place. Hmm.

And I wonder if this slumbering ancestor IS Del'fi's caretaker, and part of how the rest of that otherwise "one munch lunch" disappeared is that the very STRUCTURE OF THE PLACE ate it! In fact I'm actually pretty certain of this, given the middle fingers she was throwing the Lightseed afterwards! She's giving orders to Del'fi and controlling the very bones of this place in her sleep! (EDIT 1: Oh... oh duh, SHE'S the "Great Combiner" mentioned earlier, that's the perfect name for her creating and such a place and is even more Blood-bound a name than I expected.)

I'm not sure I can say any more about this that wouldn't be even MORE wild speculation than I just threw around. We'll just have to take more as it comes.

See you for more Artist/Writer commentary start of the month (probably vastly abridged compared to my usual coverage of it), and then whenever our next upd8 is!

[bladekindeyewear]

HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2026-05-10

(Previous post - current page 1062)

Since last time, we've had an Artist/Writer Commentary unlock where I did a bit of extra liveblogging and I took an official shot at the Hero Titles / Classpects of everyone in the new HS:BC session so I can have the fun of being right and wrong. Let's see what's next for us:

((EDIT: Added some notes about characters missing from the scene and the unidentified scorchmark(?). EDIT 2: Added more to the end edits. EDIT 3: Also identified an odd shirt symbol or two. EDIT 4: Missed a minor Vriska/Terezi detail.))

(Do check out the start of that Artist/Writer Commentary reaction link if you didn't already, because I covered important stuff I'd missed such as the substantial Jake <3< Karkat evidence. Also, regarding the Beyond Canon Hero Titles post, I won't be editing it to add more evidence as we go because it's literally too big for Tumblr to let me edit, with too many hyperlinks et cetera, so if evidence evolves substantially I'll have to make an ADDENDUM repost or something.)

===>

Ooh, it looks like we're getting the Beyond Canon inside Beyond Canon updates finally!

Can we run it back on the prison break?

Classic. Notable that Vriska and Dirk are together though.

Oh my goodness that's almost everyone! Well, not everyone. Referring back to the Artist Commentary for when the inner comic appeared, that's (left to right first row) Callie, Vriska on Dirk, Jane Crocker, (2nd row left to right) Jake English, Dave Strider, Rose Lalonde, and Karkat.

So about half the cast, as John, Terezi, Roxy, and Kanaya are missing from the scene out of the ones we received sneak previews of the character designs for.

((EDIT: I'd assumed the blast was where I vividly remembered the Pumpkin exploding in a prior Jailbreak, but that never happened. I have no idea where I got that idea. We've had how many editions of Jailbreak, like Jack Noir's reprise in Act 6 (there was a transportalizer there)? Which one had an exploded pumpkin? None! I must be misremembering. At least it's not smelly pee mud or a pumpkin burial site. Well, it might be one of those things. See also potential note about Nymph Kanaya being missing at the bottom of this post.))

Anyway, Vriska rears up "Ride." style and:

Jane looks so done, even in doodle form, I love it. I shouldn't post all the images due to the upload limit, so Jane holds up a card hand and:

Oh, those are Vriska's dice thrown at her! Del'fi even knows about that! Vriska pumps her fist.

Jane gambling Vriska for the Dirk she found and captured.

That's a very interesting user suggestion, and I wonder if it'll have any actual relevance regarding Vriska and Dirk's interactions in comic. I had to assume earlier that they either wouldn't run directly into each other, or would perhaps remotely agree to a tenuous ceasefire to not act directly in the session and let their wards sort it out so as to not cause a huge ruckus with direct battle. Vriska has at LEAST learned not to go fight the Big Bad on her own again, if nothing else.

Then Dave is riding Jake and crying as Jane and Vriska keep gambling away.

Rose should kill karkat, leading Dave falling into the arms(?) of Jake

That whole sequence above seems like great bait for a Bard of Blood to have drawn, just gonna say. I don't think the user suggestion spawned comic options they chose here will for sure cause canon events, but, they can definitely be referenced, or be closer to what will happen than we might be comfortable with. This could definitely be used to just threaten us with the possibility of Rose threatening Karkat's life later, with the foreshadowing making the possibility seem more serious to us whether or not it gets fully executed.

Terezi splats Calliope opening up the door, Dirk turns to her while she's holding something behind her back...

Terezi reveals a dark secret

Judging by Jailbreak, is that pron?

Dirk learns about My Little Person

Scandalous!!!!!!

Splatted Callie is still alive (EDIT 3: Since I forgot to mention it, her shirt symbol is an upside down red version of her skull-head with X'd out eyes, meaning Caliborn is dead both literally and in influence on her), the window explodes, Roxy slips in as a snake-like Nymph shadow to ride Dirk, wave cutely to Rose and then:

Rose and Roxy Dramatic Wizard Battle. There are casualties.

Riding their respective steeds yes. Interesting to have Roxy colored RED and wielding red magic, almost AA-colored and looking like... actually auguryAside's Naglink avatar has a mostly gray hat. So, maybe there's some bleedover to how Del'fi thinks of AA or maybe not; maybe Roxy still has another fashion change to be red to contrast Callie's green ahead of us.

Roxy magically summons...

Oh what the actual fuck. Gamzee?! Aranea?! Some abominable fusion? She orders him off and:

"Nymph" Gamzee: Reject your role as the living weapon

Ohh, not only is he a "fake" Nymph wearing a stitched together Upper Organon, he's split along the head and organon in two as per how he was bisected and half of him went into Lord English back how the Stage-End fight unfolded in Homestuck.

Rose counters by summoning a... what the fuck?

That's a bust of... or maybe even a robo-bust of... someone I can't begin to guess with my bad-at-recognizing-celebrities brain.

What the hell is this prompt with a roleplayed typing quirk? Did a user come up with it or the team in whole cloth?

This has got to be like... a classic movie reference to a robot dude or something. I don't know who this user(?) is referencing. Maybe they even put their own OC in, I'm stumped. (EDIT 3: It's a real user submission, I can see why they had to put it in. Actually multiple posts.)

Callie walks out into the dark, and finds...!!!

Aradia, alt!Calliope (AL) and RoboDave! Wait... I thought Dave had a shackle around him just for JailBreak flavor, why does Ultimate Dave have four robo-shackles around him? Is there going to be some moratorium Dirk Strider imposes on Time Travel around Deltritus, or inside/outside the session? Something to lock down the incoming Meat Ship from interfering with how Deltritus's session unfolded and launched outside of the Exile Terminals would make a large degree of sense. Also, very interesting that regular Meat Dave is a Pegatulp but RoboDave is an Alkyrin. Aradia is an Alkyrin too... that means Alkyrin equates to Ultimate Self for Del'fi's imagination.

Well, "not dead" is sort of debatable, I'm honestly not sure. AL's sure been hauntin' bodies.

What is that weapon she's given Aradia? A whip, like her old specibus? One of Dave's turntables? Hard to tell in doodle style other than it's Red Spiral-y. ((EDIT 4: Someone pointed out it might be a black whip with a red glow, making more sense of the hand positions. Perhaps even the BQ/Snowman’s Black Inches then.))

Hilarious. I'm glad Del'fi's glad.

Dirk: Trot in a little circle.

hee hee

(Does this mean he's working to keep the two of them apart though? There was some artistic liberty in interpreting that command to have them both onscreen between him before the trot... maybe that's not insignificant...)

Dirk: Tenderly lick saltblock

heheheheheh

((EDIT 4: In this frame Vriska walking towards Terezi while Dirk is distracted is in the background, potentially indicating that he’d have to be distracted from narratively causing them not to meet before they can reunite. That or this whole thing is just another tease and the reunite at that door that was knocking is already happening, soon to be in our perspective next intermission or addendum, we can’t be sure.))

Lasso'd?!

Interesting color scheme on Nymph John Egbert! I haven't been able to discern a clear rhyme or reason to why certain people are Nymphs and certain are Satyrs other than the fun it'd be to draw them that way, much less some of these off-colors besides Vriska's renewed ties to Red.

((EDIT 3: Thanks again to @coinagefission - the yellow is from the poison Golden Tooth still embedded in the middle of Meat John's body! As best seen in this frame I'd previously omitted--))

John pulls Dirk close and:

"Ok BYE." Yeah, I guess she'd lose patience with that. Being a Yaoi fan doesn't mean you don't have your own tastes-- and/or what with June and all, maybe Del'fi senses it wouldn't be proper BL! I'm kind of surprised that there weren't more m/m relationships in this upd8 but Del'fi IS only SECRETLY the Beyond Anon and I got the sense that they're keeping their tastes at bay to avoid giving themselves away to the likes of Ly'lac.

Having finished the sketches, you immediately post them to your website so you don't have to look at them anymore. In truth, you're glad to be rid of them... you almost regret asking in the first place. You guess you shouldn't be such a jerk about it, and you're sure the fans are just happy to be able to interact with the comic in this way, but is this seriously what they want to see? This is barely any better than the stuff you were posting to deliberately piss them off! Predictably, your readers immediately start eating it up. Sometimes you despair for art.

Yes, we are very grateful.

And that's the end of the upd8. What have we learned? Uh... well, Alkyrins carry a similar connotation to Ultimate Selves (aside from hornse Dirk), some further suggestion that Aradia is an Ultimate Self too (even though she basically said so, "we are both an infinite number of years old living countless lifetimes at once") and Aradia might be alchemizing/getting a cool whip back or some other artifact/weapon before she enters the fray (even if just as a mundane weapon), and... well, other than that, not much of consequence! Just a bunch of silly stuff to be referenced later, or not. It was a pretty fun exercise with the community regardless!

I feel there could be a crumb of something in John (June) Egbert being a wrench in Dirk Strider's plans, but we knew that going into this, the lasso bit is just Del'fi being bonus prophetic. Practically a given. And those Ball-and-Chain (Blood??? Maybe???) shackles around Dave and RoboDave are... I'd be surprised if those ended up representing nothing, that's going to mean something but we probably can't guess exactly what, unless it's my No Time Travel Allowed Zone narrative restriction guess. If not that... hmm.

((EDIT: Also, Kanaya is the only one missing from the full set of people we've had depicted in the Artist Commentary preview, start to end, and there's a scorchmark near the window, so maybe that's an ominous sign especially since it wasn't in anyone's suggestion. I'm not sure how well it would serve the plot for such a thing to happen, unless it was an Aradiabot-like fakeout where Kanaya only appeared to die because she's going to Quest Crypt ascend circumstantially simultaneously?))

((EDIT 2: Thanks to @coinagefission - Jade was missing from both this entire set of events *AND* the Artist Commentary of the "characters of Beyond Canon" inside Beyond Canon! One possibility is that Jade is bound to be excluded because AL, alt!Calliope, intends to be possessing her while she's in range of Dirk's narrative sphere to counter him. (At least until she arrives in her other body with RoboDave and Aradia?) Another is that she's represented derogatorily by Yaoi fan Del'fi as the gay Dave's "ball and chain" (unwanted wife), and RoboDave has had multiple lives with multiple Jades... unsure what to believe of the absence for sure though. There are further Jade is Dave's Balls (heh) theories on the Forums which detail that Ultimate Dave has known four Jade Harleys onscreen (Meat, Candy, Pre-Retcon, and Masterpiece (AL's current body)) who he may have unresolved issues over weighing him down (Blood), or even might suggest a more literal way Meat Jade is trapped or neutralized besides AL, and points out Dave hit his head on the ball and died (which I missed). Again, though, we are viewing through Del'fi specific bias here and for a gay male character to be held back at all by a straight paramour does make sense to me as being derogatorily depicted by Del'fi as weighing him down, so I can't be sure one way or another.))

One more administrative note: I know the first five tags count for everything on Tumblr, so should I move one of them out for "Beyond Canon", even maybe the main Homestuck tag so it doesn't spam people who aren't readers of HS:BC? Or do you think it's fine as-is? And should I replace the occasional "Satyrical ⍺/β/⍵" tag with "Satyrical A/O/B" to fit the comic's new nomenclature and make it so I don't have to copy/paste those unicode symbols all the time? Or keep it fancy?

TTYL! If y'all think there's any other connotations or meanings I missed, or recognize the robo-head for instance, feel free to put it in the replies?

[bladekindeyewear]

Homestuck^2 Beyond Canon Hero Title Guesses - 2026-05-05

Folks who have been watching my liveblogging have been helping me dissect the environmental evidence for the "Omega Session's" classpects for months and months now. I'm damned certain (but could still be wrong) about all of their Aspects, and now that we have reasonable Class guesses for most of them, I figured I might as well shoot my shot before any of these Titles get officially confirmed and lay out most of the accumulated evidence for each character in a single gigantic post:

Harry - Heir of Heart

Vrissy - Witch of Mind

Tavvy - Page of Life

Yiffy - Thief(?) of Rage (Least certain of class; could be Maid, Mage, or one of the others like Knight or Rogue if we got other folks wrong.)

auguryAside - Sylph of Time

championsTirade - Prince of Space

Ly'lac - Rogue(?) of Doom (2nd least certain of class)

Swiss - Knight(?) of Light (3rd least certain of class)

tinnitusChakra - Seer of Void

Del'fi - Bard of Blood

If you're unfamiliar with my blog, even though my guesses are somewhat subjective, it's not all just vibes or personality-tests-- there's a whole lot more direct circumstantial and textual evidence than you might think, and I want to arm you with it. Granted, much of it relies on a continually updated theoretical framework of what Aspects represent, but it's important to notice that the Homestuck^2 team will absolutely have been hiding text hints and visual symbolism for every character's Title throughout the story, and we just need to sniff those out and interpret them correctly.

I'm gonna try and lay out the ENTIRE evidence heap under the cut, including some of the evidence for competing theories. I'd also like to note that there's no clear evidence (yet) that any of our players are experiencing Role Inversion (see title'd section) before the session has even started, but I could be wrong about that, which would mess with our predictions.

-

The Candy Kids

By the End of Act 1 of HS^2, we had as much evidence as we're likely to get for a good while of each of the four Candy Kids' (Omega Kids'?) Aspects and likely Classes, other than the process of elimination we've been getting from having the Nymphs' and Satyrs' likely titles.

A Hero's Title, as per the theoretical Answer to the Ultimate Riddle, represents one's "Calling", the way one is best suited to affect Reality around them. The Aspects are the twelve vectors through which Reality unfolds, and the Classes are the methods with which one is most suited to leverage a given Aspect to shape Reality. We've come a long way since my guesses last year at the Candy Kids' titles, at least glimpsed our entire 10-player cast of characters, confirmed by Derse moon and power-tower counts, giving us characters to contrast to, more titles to reserve for others and help us figure out by process of elimination, et cetera. Out of the Candy Kids, the one with the most evidence dumped on his head has been the only one we received a full Room Introduction for:

-

Harry Anderson Egbert - Heir of Heart

Heart is the Aspect theoretically concerning the Inner Self and personal expression, roles and identities, the Soul that spans timelines and makes an individual and their story unique. (Said cross-timeline Soul is what one gains full access to by becoming an Ultimate Self or Sprite Squared.) Among its many symbols and signs are Hats, unique Shoes (as in, walk a mile in another's), roles to play and the adornments thereof like how Nepeta traded accessories with Equius to imitate each other as one might expect from a Rogue of Heart.

Now let's cut back to when Harry received his room intro:

Accessories litter the room. His handle is "thespiansGlamor", the accoutrements an actor dons to embody the role of a Character.

And FUCK, one might say, does he like MUSICAL THEATER. He has been in his fair share of school plays, but he has LOFTY ASPIRATIONS to STAR in bigger and better productions.

Harry seeks a career where he's given roles to play on stage. There's a poster for the live-action adaptation of CATS carefully hidden behind all the other posters in his room. Why all the effort to hide it? Perhaps a Nepeta reference.

The boy who is not yet here has also been known to dabble in ACCESSORIZATION. He could be described as a COBBLER ASPIRANT, a NEOPHYTE MILLINER, or even a BIT OF A WHIZZ WITH A NEEDLE AND THREAD.

A Cobbler makes Shoes for people. A Milliner makes Hats for people.

His mother got him his first SEWING MACHINE when he was 10, to keep him from using hers all the time. His looks are HAND-CRAFTED, often IMITATED, but never DUPLICATED. His COSTUMES appear in various AMATEUR PRODUCTIONS, the devising of which takes up most of his FREE TIME. His friends are usually LESS APPRECIATIVE of his attempts to dress them up than he would like, though.

He creates unique, inimitable looks for himself and others! He makes costumes for people to play roles in stageplays!

And the word Heart, or even its concept, immediately started being tossed around surrounding Harry to a level that rivals Dirk Strider:

HARRY ANDERSON: so sorry it took so long. HARRY ANDERSON: can't rush a heart to heart, you know how it is. VRISSY: You actually had a Heart to Heart with your dad? How many times did he Cry? HARRY ANDERSON: none, actually, i think he got that over with when he was talking to my mom. HARRY ANDERSON: but god, it was a mess. i had to keep talking to keep him from looking at his phone or turning on the radio. HARRY ANDERSON: i may have told him more about my deep passions and emotions in the last hour than the whole rest of my life combined, just to keep him from hearing the fucking news.

He talked about and shared his inner self as an action tactic, even just as a distraction from something else! Methods of action are especially important for determining someone's Class, as the Class shows us how a character leverages their Aspect to affect how reality unfolds.

There's plenty more little hints we caught and documented across my liveblog posts at the time, but here's some more mentions coincidentally surrounding him:

Not far away, another human kid is attending human school in the heart of the human kingdom.

You figure it's another LONG-WINDED HEART-TO-HEART about their POST-DIVORCE WOES.

TG: i've had my fill of awkward heart to hearts with adults so it'd be really nice if i could see you right now.

TG: she doesn't care, dude. TG: about us. TG: or anyone. TG: or material possessions, for that matter. TG: she trashed up my room and stomped her gross red shoes all over my awesome costumes! TG: i put my heart and soul into those, man...

His strife specibus is allocated to Scissorkind, to create garments for others-- particularly a bright pink pair of scissors that even LOOKS like a heart! So does the Cherry on his laptop for that matter.

So Heart seems a lock, one of the most clearly telegraphed Aspects for a character in the story so far... but what about the Class? Less clear, but I at least have a guess.

Back when I misunderstood the Page class to arm others with their aspect, I thought "Page of Heart" was the best title to suit him. Since then, however, we've gotten the real definition of the Page -- "one who fights to preserve their aspect" / with their aspect. According to the Canon class chart, the Heir is one who gives their Aspect to others but doesn't necessarily have as much of it themselves, theoretically inheriting it from those around them instead. An Heir son of an Heir! This fits how John, the Heir of Breath, gave purpose to others while receiving direction and quests in turn, and Harry seems to be serving a similar technical role for as a nexus for the Heart aspect. The exact pages escape me, but his shared interest with Vrissy in helping with her fit and getting posts to go viral fits an Heir of Heart role too, as well as how excited he is to redesign John's God-Tier outfit.

JOHN: they are just your basic magic pajamas at the end of the day. HARRY: and it didn't occur to you to, y'know, magic them any bigger? HARRY: you just look like, well, a grown adult wearing clothes for a kid. HARRY: it's kind of embarrassing to look at... JOHN: blargh, you're right. [...] JOHN: when we get a moment, maybe the two of us could brainstorm a redesign? JOHN: no pressure though. HARRY: !!!

Helping listless, directionless John (June) create a new identity for herself, one she can finally be satisfied in and proud of being, one of the most important things for John's entire character arc in Beyond Canon:

JADE: no matter where you go, john, youre still going to be... this. [...] JADE: and... looking at you in that old outfit makes me nauseous.

--would be the sort of purpose that would call to Harry's purpose as utterly necessary. Perhaps the hints that we'll get June somewhere on the Meat side of existence could even incorporate Harry having a role in resurrecting and reinventing the version of John who's dead there in a way she'd appreciate.

Harry is one of the most passive characters, clearly moreso than Tavvy so far, making plenty of sense of how he may be the most passive standard Class.

There's one last bit of circumstantial evidence that not only fit Harry to Heart, but started us off on a course to diagnose his peers' Aspects properly too. It was the theory that page 214 held background colors for each character which -- since they didn't fit their typing colors -- hinted at their Aspects, just as Vriska was dropping hints that a new Game Session would be in store at some point in the future for these kids:

The pink behind Harry isn't an exact match for the Heart aspect, but it's clearly the closest Aspect, and Tavvy's colors are closer to Breath than Life even though they DO represent the Cyan of Jane using her powers (and Life's colors would have been too much of a giveaway, would've clashed too much in this image composition). Back to Tavvy later. The real inspiration we got from this panel was how very oddly, very distinctly Mind aspect colors appeared behind Vrissy:

-

Vrissy Maryam-Lalonde - Witch of Mind

This raised the incredibly interesting possibility that despite every possible version of Vriska Serket that could have existed in Universe A being flavors of a Thief of Light, a genetically identical individual in a different place and different circumstances could grow up to have a DIFFERENT optimal method of interfacing with Reality to bring about change... and as the story continued, Vriska started to NOTICE Vrissy was different.

Vriska says nah this is definitely where we wanna be. She says between the two of you, you've probably got enough luck to take this whole place off the map if you really wanted. You ask her what the fuck she means by that. She says you know like with your Thief of Light powers. You tell her you don't have anything like that. She says huh, weird!

AG: It wasn't a 8ig deal. I pl8yed the hand I was given, and I'm Fine. I wanted to prove to her that I can handle these things Myself. AG: And I Did. AG: She Pressed me to try out my Mind Manipul8tion, and it turns out that was all I Needed!

VRISKA: I’ve already tried respecting you for making me the 8est, 8ut you know what I’m realizing? VRISKA: I didn’t have to go through aaaaaaaall of THAT to 8e strong. Vrissy didn’t! VRISKA: Even growing up in a f8ke world where no one has a spine, and with 8arely any guidance, her powers can do things mine can’t.

Vrissy's powers can do things that a Thief of Light can't. And one's natural abilities and one's Hero-granted powers, which one has a degree of access to before God-Tier and even before the game itself, are two sides of the same coin. Vrissy has different natural inclinations, different priorities, a different focus. And I believe the evidence the writers and artists have laid out for us hint at Mind, Terezi's aspect, as the most likely candidate.

Mind is theoretically the Aspect of the outward self, Heart's flipside pair. Lies and façades to Heart's inner truths-- the logical choices one must confront, the five senses that interface with the world. Where Heart is who you are in the dark, Mind is the face that you keep in a jar by the door. We can expect a Mind Aspect manipulator to play with various fronts and disguise her intentions to achieve her goals, or perhaps even the fronts and lies of others. I believe there were at least a couple of instances of this during Beyond Canon, including how carefully she creates her online profile and posts for popularity, but I'm having trouble searching up the exact conversations that led me to believe this... let's see what we can find. (I don't think we have to go all the way back to the Epilogues, though my memory is way too fuzzy as to where I recall spotting it to be sure.) There isn't much, but this is what I can find on short notice:

(VRISKA): Yeah, I'm not feeling very parenthetical. (VRISKA): I'm gonna need to 8e Vriska again. VRISKA: Fine 8y me, 8ut we can't 8oth just go around 8eing Vriska. VRISKA: If you want to keep Hanging Out, I mean. Which I assume you Do. (VRISKA): Duh!!!!!!!! VRISKA: That's the Right Call. VRISKA: So, Nickname me, 8itch. And make it Cute. [...] VRISKA: Nice to meet you, Vrissy. VRISSY: Fuck yeah, I Love it.

It's not a sure thing, but it's definitely not nothing that she's ordering someone to help change her outward name. Then immediately forcing everyone else to roll along:

VRISSY: Hey, it's Vrissy. TAVROS: w,, who, TAVROS: Vriska? VRISSY: Yeah, but Vrissy is a Thing now. Roll with it. TAVROS: Okay, uh,, Vrissy,

VRISSY: The OG Vriska is in town, and she and Tavros and I are driving around trying to find somewhere to stash Gamzee's corpse. VRISSY: Vriska killed him. VRISSY: Oh, and call me Vrissy, now. HARRY ANDERSON: fuck, vrissy, that sounds a lot cooler than precalc.

--I admit, other than the psychic powers and explicitly-named "Mind Manipul8tion", that's not the HUGEST pile of evidence given the veritable mountain we got for Harry, and I'm almost tempted to cut the above section, so let me press forward with the more circumstantial:

Vriska was long jealous (as a child in original Homestuck) that Terezi could manipulate people's minds even without any fancy psychic powers. It'd be fitting and interesting for a version of her raised by a loving Rose and Kanaya to have the emotional stability to properly develop the talent her nature idealized.

Vrissy and Harry make sense together as a power-couple, Heart and Mind together. And the way Vrissy takes charge and dives into the fray indicates a class likely at least as active as a Thief.

But... you might've noticed that despite the lack of specific hints besides her Psionic demonstration and a conspicuously colored background image, I seem pretty committed to the idea that Vrissy is not only a Mind player, but a Witch of Mind specifically. Why is that?

Mainly because I've been burying the lede of the biggest evidence we received in the comic so far: Ly'lac's very first onscreen conversation with her, which was also full of classpect hints for a bunch of different characters to help crown the confirmation that they'd be playing a session together:

GC: anyway, i think today is the day i fuck everything up. GC: i'm messaging you now to see if you might maybe... GC: change my mind or something.

There had been a conspicuous lack of indications of Thieving behavior of any kind from Vrissy... and all of a sudden, this drops. As far as we've been able to deduce, CHANGE is the operative word that belongs to the Witch class, the most active class: One who can change and control their Aspect.

I could be jumping the gun at that because of my bias at how much that Operative Keyword ("Change") resonates with my old Class framework. I mean, adamantGriftress does sound like a more acquisitive pester handle than one might expect from a Thief or Rogue, and it's difficult to tell which parts might be a holdover from the original Vriska and which are indicative of her personal uniqueness. In the absence of other Aspect hints, with the CLEAR indications from Vriska that she's different and probably not Luck-associated at that, we can be almost completely certain that Mind remains the aspect regardless.

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Tavvy Crocker - Page of Life

His father's Class and his mother's Aspect, perfect together. Life is the aspect associated in part with biological strength/prowess, and the physical energy symbolized by sweets and nutrition. There isn't a whole lot of evidence for Tavvy's method of action, but what IS there all points in one direction:

His chumhandle glutinousGymnast alludes to sticky foods and acrobatic feats.

He offered sugary soda to Yiffy in solidarity and to hopefully cheer her up.

TAVVY: I,,, tried to remember if i have ever seen you,,, drink soda before, TAVVY: I'm,,, pretty sure i saw this brand in Aunt Jade's groceries once,,, TAVVY: ,,, and made some assumptions,,,

He made sure to leave trail mix (watching his friends' nutrition!!) with the note he provided when leaving for the End of Act 1 battle to protect Yiffy.

Yiffy left. I think she wants to help the rebel forces, somehow. Which is pretty stupid. But I am also pretty stupid, because I want to help her. I hope if I really try, I can keep her from dying, at least. I’m kind of sick of sitting around doing nothing. I thought it’d be best, doing this alone, since Yiffy sort of knows me. And you yelled at her a lot. And don’t seem to like her in general. Also this will require a lot of drastic gymnastics, which is not either of your strong suits. No offense. Hope you understand, Tavvy. (P.S. I left you guys some trail mix. Don’t pick the raisins out; they’re healthy.)

Finally, there was the sick gymnastic act he did in the End of Act 1 flash where he kick-deflected a missile that would've otherwise hit Yiffy.

Tavvy and Harry used to seem a near-tie between Heir and Page earlier in Act 1, but when Life symbolism seems the only cut-through theme between some of the only significant actions of Tavvy's own choice that he's made so far, we should at least be reasonably confident in Life as his aspect, and Page fits extremely well out of the standard classes. The Page is canonically, Word of God, the class who fights to preserve their aspect. (And presumably, fights to preserve using their Aspect as well.) Tavvy's only onscreen decisions across Beyond Canon so far align just about perfectly with "one who fights to preserve Life".

Granted, the earlier background color evidence we used for the others seemed more Breath than Life, but again, there was ambiguity from Jane's cyan Life powers, and I really haven't seen any evidence of Breath in terms of direction, quest, or purpose in Tavvy's actions as a lever to affect reality as much as Life, and most of the passive classes for Breath have already been taken! Though I suppose you could make the case for Maid or Sylph. I feel like there's one more important factor in favor of Page, though... the weenie factor, as @floridamansneighbor put it on the Fruity Rumpus forums. Tavvy is depicted in a way that feels a bit like a weenie in the same way that Tavros Nitram and Jake English were like, a unique way group-punching-bag way a character falls on their ass that seems to undermine all of their fragile pretensions, which "tastes" a bit different than John Egbert's Heir weenie-ness felt. The Page's inherent early fragility, begging to be overcome, which Tavvy seems well on his way to doing considering he ended Act 1 by KICKING A MISSILE AWAY, HOLY SHIT. Y'know?

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Yiffany Longstocking Lalonde Harley - Thief(?) of Rage

Finally we have Yiffy, for whom I'm lacking almost any evidence on class but COMPLETELY convinced of the Aspect: Rage theoretically is the aspect of the power of negative emotion and negative belief, such as fear and conviction. But it took me a long while to figure out this might be Yiffy's aspect only based on our old framework. Instead, this is the only instance so far where I've been swayed by people pointing out the Hiveswap Extended Zodiac Quiz Aspect personality description:

Those bound to the aspect of Rage are bringers of chaos. They posses great contempt for lies or false ideas, including the stability that false ideas can impart. To them, the true is far more important than the good; they would tear down a system just to destabilize it if, by their reckoning, it is built on faulty premises. Often the Rage-bound prefer anarchy to any of the alternate forms of civilization, which they believe to be riddled with lies and foolishness and obedient masses. They are bringers of confusion and doubt, and they can be frustratingly difficult to convince otherwise when they have attached themselves to an idea. If they sound dangerous, they are. The Rage-bound tend to be most volatile and unpredictable of the aspects. At their best they are original, revolutionary, and fearless. At their worst they are cruel, uncompromising, and vicious.

And doesn't this square with what little we've seen of Yiffy's ideology more than anything or anyone else?

You've only been around this earth for 15 years, but it's a self-evident fact that there are no useful authorities. Gifted with unimaginable power, their concern only stretches so far as to manhandle those dependent on them, and tangles into ineffectual deadlock the instant it meets a challenge worth addressing. Potential killed for the sake of comfort. True kindness is real, but only for those that bare teeth and break skin. Why should these disingenuous, bystanding, spineless, SELFISH adults get anything they want?

You hope they eat each other alive.

Combine that with the way she sent Jane Crocker into a flying rage by disrupting her funeral for Gamzee, with how irrationally mad Vrissy still remains at everything about her suddenly-revealed half-sister. She's both constantly angry and constantly anger-provoking, to the point where even her NAME and the fact of her existence sent the READERS into as much of a fit as the characters when revealed. (Not the first time a Rage player's effects have extended to the audience.) Yiffy is absolutely a Rage hero, and Dirk Strider deserves to be scared of her.

(AH:) I think you're scared of her. (DIRK:) Scared of who? (AH:) Of Yiffy. (DIRK:) Wow, sorry, this conversation was so irrelevant I completely forgot what it was even about. Me. Scared of Jade and a shittier Rose's spawn? I have to laugh. (AH:) Then why are you shaking?

The only alternative aspect for her was Time, something I speculated far earlier based on her reverse-hair/fur-coloration from Jade and her active nature. However, Time and Space make MUCH more sense as reserved for the Nymphs and Satyrs, as I'll explain later in this post.

I have no clear indication that gives me confidence in her class. I picked "Thief" for only two reasons: Pure process of elimination after all the other kids, Nymphs and Satyrs, and her scooting into a vent like Nepeta or recently Vriska with the following Thief/Rogue-like command prompt:

> (Yiffy: Swipe a backstage pass.)

> (Yiffy: Enjoy the show.)

Very thin evidence. She could easily be a Maid or Mage, or if we're wrong about any of the other players' classes (like Swiss being a Knight or Ly'lac a Rogue) that role could be reserved for her. I've never seen her TAKING Rage from anyone else, except perhaps passively becoming Candy Jade's single-minded emotional focus, but we'll have to wait for more evidence as the new session gets rolling.

Alright, time for the rest!

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The Nymphs and Satyrs

By the mechanics of the game, considering Rose and Dirk framed this as some sort of philosophical contest between them and their races, it always made the most METANARRATIVE sense for the Satyrs and Nymphs to have the Space and Time aspects between them rather than the Candy Kids, as if the session could have functioned without the newcomers if things had gone how Rose and Dirk had originally designed it. Calliope long ago confirmed that the bare minimum for a proper session was two players, one of Space and the other of Time. (There's circumstantial evidence that every session may be intentionally structured so that there is not enough time to complete the frog breeding, forcing the Space and Time players to collaborate to complete a Sburb session (one Aradia failed because of Role Inversion), serving as the enforcement mechanism of this Space-Time-minimum mechanic!) Dirk also is arranging to indirectly try and kill all the Candy Kids' dreamselves, the "intruders" to their session/game from outside Canon, meaning the mandatory Space and Time players presumably wouldn't be among those four.

So it makes eminent sense that we'd have a Time player bound to one moon and a Space player bound to its opposite, the Space player bringing a volcano to serve as The Forge on entry.  One Satyr and one Nymph, to even the balance between Rose Lalonde and Dirk Strider's sides of the game. That's why I'll go over this pair together:

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auguryAside - Sylph of Time

championsTirade - Prince of Space

Unfailingly, Time heroes have been Red themed/texted and Space heroes have been Green themed/texted. (Even alt!Calliope and Caliborn only swapped colors because they "stole" the other's by predominating over them.) AA's shared shorthandle with Aradia, obsession with augury/foresight, hourglass character symbol, and red theme nail her down as the obvious Time player of the six Deltritans. The green CT, who lives directly next to a Frog Temple as most other Space players do, is the obvious shoe-in for the other aspect. A character going by "The Mountain", personified as a place, as a Space player named after a literal space?  It simply fits!  And he's an INCREDIBLE artist on top of it all, fitting a consistent Space-player pattern of Creation.

As for the classes: Naming AA a Sylph of Time is one of the few full-title slam dunks we've been given.  She's acted heavily like every single Sylph we've seen since not only her introduction, but before her introduction, when Ly'lac's first conversation suggested she bugs and fusses and meddles, something attributed to both Kanaya and Aranea.  Her manner of speaking is overly loquacious like both of those two, concerned with assuaging her friend even if it disarms her pronouncements of doom, and she's pretty much the most focused on her friends (instead of herself) of all of the characters set to join the session so far.  As for why she's not Mage/Seer, it appears her Time fixation might make her a bit of a "false seer", aspiring to doomsaying and pronouncing the future even if she isn't all that good at it:  Ly'lac's first conversation mentions she's "not an oracle", she's "something else". We know she has access to foresight in Skaia's clouds as a Prospit dreamer, so to have been outmaneuvered in predicting the future by TC is a good hint that the REAL Seer / Understanding class lies elsewhere, not with her.  Her obsession with foretelling, therefore, is that of a Time player whose true skill at affecting Reality around her doesn't rely on understanding outcomes. In fact, as a Sylph of Time and presumably a healer whose handle is "augury ASIDE", her true focus may turn out to be to heal people and outcomes DESPITE what augury has in store for their fate.

Prince my very strong gut guess guess for CT, as he'd relate heavily to Del'fi as a pair of Destroyers and killers. Considering he goes into Kayfabe mode as an "insane murderer", openly aligned with killing, and he and Del'fi both privately believe they could kill the other indisputably, Destroying makes perfect sense for them both (I'll go into Del'fi further below). The only other potential Destroyer candidate in the entire 10-player session, going purely on their behavior/personalities -- absent any pre-session Role Inversion hiding their "true" personalities like we had with Gamzee and Aradia and Jade -- would be Yiffany, but her Aspect rules it out-- both the Bard and Prince of Rage have been taken by Gamzee and Kurloz, and Yiffy seems to be far more aligned with pure Rage than a Destroyer anyway.

The balance between AA and CT makes further sense given AA is a Prospit dreamer, and CT is a Derse dreamer, making them moonswapped from every Space/Time pair we've seen so far! Additional points if the Space player is indeed a Destroyer Class like the Prince. And as Space is in some ways the aspect representing Creation to Time's Destruction, it would indeed be interesting to see how a Destroyer of Space operates outside of the likes of Role Inversion (Aradia). Sorry for repeating so many of the same links to my old posts by the way!!! But I'm gonna keep doing that because I wanna be thorough. Please hover over the links to check so you won't open my Aspect Duality post for like the eighth goddamn time. I'm incorrigible.

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Ly'lac of the Final Applause - Rogue(?) of Doom

GC: sorry. i know... GC: you'd "h8" this "vaguely ominous Doomer 8ullshit."

Doom is theoretically the Aspect of Energy's Negation, quietly or explosively-- of Depression, the way Life's energies are boxed in by Anxiety, Caution, Rules and Order, or the Codes of reality (which provide its association with hacking). Doom entails that energy must be expended and exhausted, that a countdown must end, that a lit fuse must lead to an explosion-- that every action has a consequence.

Ly'lac, a self-professed "Doomer", is surrounded by Doom symbols like using mechanical Satyr equipment instead of regular Nymph magitek, not being able to keep plants alive, explosives (a very potent Doom symbol, like Clubs Deuce who's oddly ALSO a Rogue of Doom fit and our first-seen Carapace of the session, or like the Aimless Renegade who also put yellow Caution tape everywhere representing boundaries one cannot cross without consequences), includes fuses ticking down in her typing quirk, and her entire spell repertoire consists of Death Beams of one sort or another. She's practically bleeding Doom out her ears! And is partially our vector of understanding the Doom-alignment of the entire Nymph race, as envisioned by their creator Rose Lalonde. Her Aspect couldn't be clearer.

But her class feels WEIRD.

The incident with The Latchkey against the Hagsnab had plenty of oddities.  Even though she's clearly Doom-aligned in aspect, it seemed as if the Hagsnab exploded due to an overload of LIFE instead, or a LACK of Doom, in the form of destructive cancerous expansion. Even the wand's magic color shifted to near-Peixes Fuchsia.  The Latchkey's weirdness is likely a hint as to her class, and the biggest option that fits her relative passivity is Rogue. (Prince and Bard are better suited to others above and below, and don't quite fit her personality so far.) But does Rogue fit anything else we've seen of her? Maybe the way she constantly defuses the bombs that she primes, as part of her Sylladex... that makes a degree of sense. She's constantly juggling Doom around, someone for whom the Artist/Writer Commentary said "This little weirdo only feels safe when she isn’t". (I know, sounds Bard-y, but wait til I get to Del'fi!) Rogue also has the unique quirk of overlapping with the much more clearly demonstrated Clubs Deuce in that title (who traded around not just deadly bombs but some of the most dangerous items in the Game, like the Ring, the White Scepter, the Tumor), so if it's true, it'll be interesting to see her showing us a different side of a nominative hero title. Its expanded potential.

It's also possible however that The Latchkey is a weird artifact which, even if it resonates heavily with Ly'lac, has its own Juju-like alignment that operates differently than her class. Not the MOST likely option, but possible.

I have a weird side shot to call, though. Maybe I'm underestimating how well Rogue fits, or making hay of the fact we haven't seen any theft/acquisition-mindedness from Ly'lac, but... I feel like if we get any non-standard classes in our coterie, something OTHER than the standard 12 I believe usually cover the whole gamut of action verbs you can leverage over Aspects, then Ly'lac could be a prime weirdo candidate.

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Swiss Elysi - Knight(?) of Light

Blinding white is the first thing we saw with his introduction.

Light is not just associated with Fortune but also Agency and Importance, the story's spotlight, Meaning and Information (as Void's opposed pair). An acquisitive Light player might care more about the meaning which Status confers them, as opposed to a Life player whose aspect centers more on the literal Power that status confers than the mere fact of occupying that status and its prestige (as seen with Jane and the Condesce re: Crockercorp, for example).

I've seen people argue whether Swiss is more likely Light or Life.  His insistence on his moralistic values, on Importance and Status and Prestige, is absolutely heavyhanded, and those versed in the symbolic theoretical definitions we've sussed out of the Aspects from the original comic,   What makes the difference to me is the discussion Meenah had with (Vriska), way back when:

MEENAH: sea my thing is MEENAH: i dont verbally torture my cray schemes like all the serket girls MEENAH: and that works ok for me MEENAH: guess i made some mistakes but who really gives a flip VRISKA: You don't care if you make mistakes? MEENAH: not like you and she do MEENAH: araneas deal is MEENAH: what shes doin now isnt much different from how she always did stuff MEENAH: the stuff she does is never about the things shes actually doing MEENAH: its about what those things M-EAN and makin sure everyone KNOWS what they mean MEENAH: and above all makin sure everyone understands how important she is cause shes obviously the source of all that critical M-EANING without which all action would be pointless right? MEENAH: but thats not how i rolled MEENAH: i just MEENAH: did shit MEENAH: and the shit i did MEENAH: meant only the things the shit accomplished MEENAH: and if that shit accomplished a dumb thing that sucked MEENAH: then i guess thats what you call a mistake and oh fuckin well MEENAH: mistakes aint make me feel too bad since i dont really connect results with my shelf worth MEENAH: ya feel me

This is one of the biggest differences between Light and Life players-- concern about what every action MEANS, which we can ascribe to the layer of meaning and subtext associated with the Light aspect.  Whereas when Meenah does something, what she does is only important for what it is and what it accomplishes is simply what it accomplishes, and if it fails she doesn't let that impact her idea or view of herself.  That sounds EXTREMELY opposed to the way Swiss Elysi operates-- where he's concerned with status, it's all about the IDEA of status and the ideals those represent to the point of obsession.  He drowns himself in Meaning until he has anxiety attacks, rather than a Life player in the swing of their role simply doing what feels good to them.

I'll acknowledge that there ARE additional Life symbols tucked all around Swiss, so it's not entirely impossible:

AT: What kind of mentor shows up the day AFTER his kouhai's BIRTHDAY? The LACK of CARE... it's enough to make a man SICK. AT: Always ignoring your nutritional NEEDS, never asking about your LEVELS. AT: Your MACROS. AT: Fucking CHUFF.

He's helping manage CT's nutrition routine, and making custom Honey for everyone too... but that could be Satyrical ⍺/β/⍵ Beta-role leanings on Swiss's part. And Light has enough overlap to make things unclear. So I won't be too unprepared if he turns out to be Life and Tavvy turns out to be some Breath class we haven't seen, but I'll DEFINITELY be surprised, given the huge amount of Light symbolism woven through his entire introduction and most of his obsessions and anxieties.

As for his class... honestly, we don't really have many hints besides all the swords about, which could be more Dirk-related than anything Knight-related.  But after the process of elimination for most others, I'll tentatively roll with it. His scrambling activity and the way he physically jumps into every anxious problem he encounters strikes me as rather Knightly. He's probably the third most in-question Class though, and I wouldn't be too surprised if he ends up a Maid of Light and frees up the Knight class for someone like Yiffy. I did expect more people to buck the Gendered Titles trend, more male Maids and female Princes et cetera. (Hey, The Mountain has a poster of Lady Divine in his Derse room, so when combined with some dissatisfaction of his, hinted in the Writer Commentary for us to get to later, maybe we will get a female Prince?)

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tinnitusChakra - Seer of Void

Void is the aspect theoretically not just of the obfuscation or destruction of information -- Secrets, Silence (or the sensory blur Tinnitus might introduce!) -- but also the aspect of Submission of Agency, of giving over your control of events partially or completely to mind-altering substances, to other people, to sleep and dreams. Its players seem to have Doom-crossover with technological and hacking interests as well, which apply here.

TC has long been foreshadowed as the Seer of the session who actually knows what's going on and who will enter when, as well as the consequences of the Game they're all setting into motion, seemingly unbeknownst to all the other five Deltritus Kids.  His associations with mystery, obscurity, darkness (first shown computing in darkness in a techy tower, hiding his plans from the others while seeming to see through the secrets of others (like Del'fi's identity), his quirk being ø (the NULL SET), the skillful way he manipulated Swiss in their conversation, and even his association with mind-altering substances and the Submission ties those carry to the Void aspect like alcohol does (though in this case strategically used to titrate and optimize his mood up or down for the occasion), all identify him as a likely potent and quite realized Void Seer in the full swing of his role to me.  I wish there weren't so many "vibes" to it, to the similarities we can draw to other players like Roxy or Equius who share the aspect and how they've been depicted, but I have to admit the evidence is heavily circumstantial.  I just have all my chips on it.

The TC / Mirthful / substance use / purple hints feel superficial to me, a red herring that makes all readers immediately fear a Gamzee-like twist of a Rage character when they’re hiding something deeper in plain sight, and really, there were only so many colors to pick from. His behavior is too effective without invoking Rage to feel like a match, the way he orchestrates those on the other end of the conversation. I think the team saw an opportunity for teasing bonus parallels with their self-dosing character and took it, but that the Void parallels run deeper than the Rage Destroyers’ surface similarities, especially since all Rage Destruction is taken so it’d have to be a Thief/Mage/Seer if not Inverted. It’d be quite like Void to mask itself behind another apparent Title. Again though, much of deciding what does or doesn’t matter is my gut here, so I can see other subjective readings diagnosing his whole Title differently, or especially just his Aspect as the Understanding Class vibes are strong with this one. I’m really really sold on Seer of Void despite alternatives.

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Del'fi, Who Aches To Be - Bard of Blood

Del'fi is a MUCH more concrete case, though!  Blood is defined by bonds, relationships, promises and pacts and the fetters that bind one to the world and to others, are heavily implied by all their surroundings.  Their entire home environment is full of HANDS CLASPING, and Hands in general. Blood has not only been symbolized by handshakes but Hands themselves, often hands covered in blood, dragging someone down to the mortal reality of a situation (perfect to traumatize Breath-player Tavros for instance). They cut off a spare shapeshifted HAND to cast a BINDING CURSE wrapping Jake and Karkat forcibly together, two people who have been conspicuously hinting at the potential for a Black relationship between them. Their fetch modus Pairs items to each other with the same visuals as the blocky fingers-joining of the hands-architecture in their surroundings.  They're obsessed with Yaoi and shipping their friends, shipping being one of the overlaps between Heart (one's inner uniqueness and drives) and Blood (recall Karkat's obsession with romcoms and self-professed romantic expertise, it wasn't just a Nepeta thing).  And one of the very first things we see Del'fi do onscreen, unlike every Blood player we've seen thusfar (even counting Jack Noir), is make a promise to Ly'lac that they won't snitch about her dreams (like the many pacts and promises Karkat engaged in from the start of Hivebent, as detailed in my Breath and Blood post)...

GC: also before i get into this you need to swear on your ink and gristle you won't snitch to the maroon goon... GC: this information will cause her to flip out and among my rankings of nymphs i need flipping out she is in dead last. [...] CC: (//.^)/ GC: [-,-]\ you gotta prommy. CC: i promise GC: um… wheres my prommy? CC: kys ROFL GC: o--* CC: OK OK ON WITH IT!!!

...and they IMMEDIATELY BREAK IT by snitching to AA on the side before they've even finished their conversation.

AA: My superior sources of intelligence have alerted me to thy recent ascent to the quiet kingdom bathed in the wine of She Who Looks Aside, Our Weaver Of Tendrils. GC: oh really...? GC: your "sources" told you this? AA: Yes. AA: My sources. GC: and would this source happen to be a certain disgusting backstabbing seafoam sucking pervert? AA: A nymph never tells her secrets. GC: just everyone else's... GC: i really can't with the two of you today.

Del'fi is easily invited to smash prommys, to try and kill their Caretaker, to envision having to kill their only Satyr friend, to catfish and spin up relationships that are bound to shatter under their untruths.  I think it's a dead ringer for a passive Destroyer, a Bard who instigates to rile up and manipulate their friends to destructive ends (like that entire "motivational" speculative harem to rile AA up), more outwardly-focused on the conduct of others than a more active Prince of Blood would be. (A Bard is theoretically not only one who invites and allows destruction of and through their Aspect, but also is easily INVITED to such destruction, by the way.)

Even the “Door arc” comics from The Beyond Anon were an exercise in envisioning the destruction of Blood— recounting modern Terezi about to find modern Vriska at her door, but failing to meet in a dozen ways. Del’fi is prophetic as their namesake, but envisions the Blood bound pair (perhaps likely soon to be united) failing to unite at all, or destroying themselves in the process!

Although, one of the main reasons besides personality that I think they’re more Bard than Prince is that "Prince of Blood" is already taken by a character with such a starring role that we can't see it reprised: theoretically, Jack Noir, the ultimate active Destroyer of Blood as seen in the Breath and Blood post I linked, or his use of the Ring and its Bloody Miles, or his favoring of the Crowbar Juju, the ultimate tool for prying things apart and breaking temporal contracts, or his cutting of the chain that linked Prospit's moon so it would crash down in Descend, or his otherwise slaying of those relying on the power of relationships, his talent at cutting through bureaucratic red tape, et cetera.  With Prince so thoroughly played for us by Homestuck 1, a Bard promises a much more unique spectacle in Homestuck^2.

And yet again, out of all the players of the session, only Del'fi and CT seem to murder for sport and/or obligation, meaning their deeply relatable friendship as Destroyers who both believe they could (and would!) easily murder each other would be extremely fitting and almost touching. 

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So! Of our 10 players' aspects, this theoretical set of assignments would leave us without Hope -- interpret that how you will -- and without Breath -- in a session where June is destined to make an appearance, perhaps she'll make up for the lack of it that way.

We're short on definitive class evidence in a lot of places and doing a lot of house-of-cards process of elimination here, but that's not too much of a surprise when the Session hasn't even started.  The Aspects are usually a bit more apparent than the Classes, at least in cases other than auguryAside's.  I'm going to continue to monitor for hints at their titles pretty obsessively as I continue to liveblog each upd8 as they drop.  (It might be entertaining to backtrack through my Homestuck Liveblog tag and read ever since Ly'lac was first teased if you want to watch how my viewpoints have evolved on their titles with everyone's help!) I might also add smaller pieces of later evidence to this post if they fall in line with it, or if any of these titles get DEBUNKED, post a fresh version with a new date so I can keep people informed while linking to my outdated ones for a thorough record of my mistakes.

GOSH it's fun to get disproven by the comic and have to rethink things, feel everything click into a new order. I can't wait to see what of the above I ended up getting wrong!!!

[bladekindeyewear]

Finally finished the image for the thing! You'll have to wait to see it until I finish the classpect writeup in the next few days though. Calling so many shots like this just doesn't feel as serious as I want it to come across without a header image that clearly took me hours. :D

[bladekindeyewear]

Do you think that the long exposition on Alpha/Omega/Beta roles might be foreshadowing as to the Alpha/Omega/Beta kids and their interactions with the upcoming game?

Not particularly, no. I think the importance of adapting an Omegaverse romance system that reflected Dirk Strider's characteristics and values and would make for interesting interactions between the session's players was too crucial to leave room for such generalizations.