#4053

It sounds like Scratch's changes weren't really about combat ability at all. Instead, he was more concerned with ensuring the trolls were psychologically prepared to face the game. We don't really know what made the pre-Alternians so bad at Sgrub, but Scratch solved any and all such problems by replacing them with a group of belligerent power-gamers who sought to conquer the universe they made. Thanks, Doc!

Also – this might be a little pedantic, but did the post-Scratch session really count as a victory? I mean, when your frog is terminal, your universe is sealed off, and your species is almost extinct, can you really say you won?

The pre-Alternians might have grounds to sue, is what I’m trying to say.

The young twenty-four would again be scattered in two groups, twelve modern contemporaries, and twelve ancients. But in addition to losing their memories of everything that had happened before the scratch, there was another catch for the failed heroes. In the new reality, they would not serve as the heroes. They would mature to become the ancestors of the twelve they formerly regarded as theirs, and this twelve would be chosen for glory.

...the Ancestors were Alternia's original Players.

I speculated that the kids might change Guardians after the reboot - but for some reason, I never even considered that a Guardian could become a Player. If this is how a Scratch actually works...

This... this changes everything. This is Act 6's hidden twist - the fact that we're not going to be getting our kids at all. Homestuck's new heroes, the next session's champions, are Joan Egbert, Roxy Lalonde, Dale Strider, and...

and...

PEN-PAL IS THE SCRATCHED VERSION OF GRANDPA.

Jesus christ, everything fits. He's a child with Grandpa’s mannerisms because they’re time-duplicates, and it's looking increasingly likely that memories can bleed between the two. He recognizes Jade as his 'grandmother' because in his timeline, Jade arrived before he did, and became the new matriarch of the Harley family. He knows about Earth culture because he grew up on another Earth. His access to the bunny's endgame weapons... is still a little confusing, actually, but this fits literally everything else. I am absolutely, 100% confident that this is the answer to Homestuck's most maddening riddle.

A closer look at IC 5201

In 1900, astronomer Joseph Lunt made a discovery: Peering through a telescope at Cape Town Observatory, the British–South African scientist spotted this beautiful sight in the southern constellation of Grus (The Crane): a barred spiral galaxy now named IC 5201.

Over a century later, the galaxy is still of interest to astronomers. For this image, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope used its Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) to produce a beautiful and intricate image of the galaxy. Hubble’s ACS can resolve individual stars within other galaxies, making it an invaluable tool to explore how various populations of stars have sprung to life, evolved, and died throughout the cosmos.

IC 5201 sits over 40 million light-years away from us. As with two thirds of all the spirals we see in the Universe — including the Milky Way, the galaxy has a bar of stars slicing through its centre.

Wait, hang on a second. Is he saying that Alternia spawned a session when it was still peaceful? Like, before Scratch had ever arrived to corrupt the planet?

Wait, no.

No, Scratch specifically stated that these heroes are from a discarded reality, and he's describing this session as though it's only kind of in the universe we're familiar with - almost like this is a doomed version of...

...of....

Wait.

Is Alternia the result of a fucking Scratch?

Fuck, but that would explain why this animation of Alternia features two rings of identical symbols!

So, that's an explicit confirmation that memory bleed is real. I suppose it makes sense that the father of a Blood Player would be particularly prone to it.

This guy knows for a fact that trolls aren’t monsters, and it was only natural that he'd revolt against such a status quo. He’s fighting against a society built from the ground up to deny one simple truth: that trolls are pretty chill, actually.

This is the story of the Signless.

Ah, because he was a redblood. Robbed of his place on the hemospectrum, he'd have been just as much of a pariah as Karkat – although it sounds like Karkat hid it a lot better than his father did.

The trunkbeast in the room, of course, is that Karkat did get a sign. Just what happened to the Vantas name between then and now?

Unlike his peers distributed elsewhere in history, he was not given a sign at a young age. Alas, there were no signs reserved for one of his mutant blood.

So that’s how it works. I’m picturing a large compendium of signs, each mapped to a slightly different blood color. We know there are more than twelve troll signs, so there must be some way to distinguish say, a Serket, from all the other cerulean signs. Minor variations in pigmentation, perhaps?

Anyway, the point is moot in the case of Karkat Senior. The hemospectrum has a place for everyone, and everyone stays in their place – but Vantas blood isn’t on the spectrum. He has nowhere.

But it may also have been due to his mutation that he began to have the visions. Spontaneous, lucid imagery of his world in peace, before its fall.

If Big Bro Vantas is predisposed to visions, then surely Karkat, who shares most of his DNA, is equally prone to them. They are lowbloods, and we know that lowbloods are the most psychically sensitive trolls - so maybe divination is a redblood specialty, allowing the Vantas bloodline to receive more than just 'feelings' from their other selves.

And – ooh. Unlike every other type of psychic ability, Alternia wouldn’t be aware of what Vantas psionics are capable of, since there aren’t any other examples of a redblood with powers. The Signless might be the only troll in recorded history whose psionics can reach into other worlds.

This is kind of wild. Karkat – who Alternia would dismiss as a useless mistake – might just have one of the most powerful, dangerous abilities of all.

They held the promise of his people's true potential, beneath the ages of conditioned cruelty. They held the spark of revolution.

Of course this promise was fulfilled to the letter, as you have seen.

pfft

The trolls have done this all before - and apparently, they fucked it up real bad.

This is a very strange way for their original session to have gone. The Hivebent trolls excelled at the game, and not just because Scratch made them so bloodthirsty. Many of them were gifted with incredibly powerful abilities, which allowed them to absolutely decimate most of Sgrub's challenges. These pre-Scratch trolls are the same people as their successors, and should have the same abilities, just different upbringings.

I suppose growing up in a peaceful world might have blunted their edge a little - but at the very least, trolls like Sollux and Equius should still have been obliterating Underlings. Even if their lives on preboot!Alternia granted them zero combat experience, it shouldn't take much skill to, say, pulverize Imps with gigastrength.

Though they could not recognize it for the bad omen it was, this session was not the one in which they had been spawned.

It doesn’t sound like the original Alternian session even had a Veil sequence. That is a bad omen, because its Players still needed to be created somewhere. If they didn’t find a way to close the loop and clone themselves, it wouldn’t even matter if they won their game; They’d be trapped in a doomed timeline either way.

This explains why they really lost, then. The pre-Alternians were forced to concede defeat and reset the game, even if Sollux could slay every Underling on his own. If they didn't, they wouldn’t have existed in the first place.

Such is the symptom of a subtle glitch affecting certain sessions, an error designed to trigger an unfathomable cascade of misfortune throughout paradox space. This glitch is the calling card of the one I serve. It is the discreet, gentlemanly manner in which he reserves his place in a universe for later visitation.

This sort of forced Scratch is right up English’s alley, of course. The guy is all about inevitable failure – and of course, he’s no stranger to exploiting Sburb’s mechanics to his advantage.

The heroes, understanding their defeat was absolute, sought advice from the mother of all monsters. She offered them a choice. The heroes could either accept their defeat along with the extinction of their race, and put no others at risk. Or, she could show them a path to a second chance, to a reality in which the chosen heroes of their race would be strong enough to succeed with ease, and claim the reward. This reset would come at the cost of wiping the failed heroes from existence. They would live new lives from scratch, playing different roles in the reset reality, with no memory of the game they played or the choice they made.

Once again, a Denizen offers a choice between life and death. I think Kanaya’s analysis was entirely correct - every Choice does involve facing your own mortality.

I wonder, though, if they paid attention to Echidna's exact wording here. If they chose death, they’d put no other beings at risk – but she made no such assurances about the consequences of choosing life. This deal was a disaster for the Alternians’ entire universe, and its original Players couldn’t possibly comprehend the damage it’s already done, let alone what it'll do once English enters the building.

Also... she only promised that they’d get a chance to try again. She never promised them victory.