#particularly chaotic

The first four lines Karkat says here literally sound like they could be a disgruntled Homestuck fan talking smack about me as they scan backwards through the story. Which sounds like a funny thing for me to say—and it is—but it's also not that remarkable, since at any given moment Homestuck is full of surrogates for various factions of the readership. Basically any character who is viewing the actions of other characters on a screen can be seen as a consumer of that story through some form of in-canon digital media. Whether they type in character commands like the exiles, or use Trollian to skip around the "archive" in a nonlinear way like the trolls do, for the sake of "adventure analysis" or to heap scorn on those involved, every narrative-viewing character is temporarily filling the role of the Homestuck reader from a certain angle. Later, cherubs become the ultimate distillation of the idea.

There's something kind of eerie about these stable time loops when it comes to the absurd, bitchy conversations the characters have with each other. There is literally no discernible origin to this prank John is playing. It's pasted to him from the future, he thinks it's a great prank, and he decides to play the prank in the future because of it, exactly as typed here. And yet, the whole exchange appears to be perfectly in character and in full alignment with their personalities. So entire exchanges between two individuals can be totally without origin, yet still sound exactly like them. This opens up a whole bunch of creepy possibilities. Ghosts or afterimages of their personalities seemingly can emerge from pure void in a convincing way, like bodiless simulacra. Echoing time loop mimic-wraiths, intruding on their conversations.

While I know about the Cherubs as a reflection of readership (Callie being a parody of Homestuck lovers and Caliborn of Homestuck haters), and the Alpha Trolls as a caricature of people (Porrim of feminists, Kankri of Tumblrinas, Horuss of systems, etc - a writing choice I'm not a fan of), I admittedly never thought of the Beta Trolls and exiles as fulfilling a similar purpose, albeit more subtly. The trolls often echo or mock our thoughts on what's going on in the story, and provide meta-commentary while still being IN the story.

And then there's commentation on the unsettling nature of time loops and, seemingly, dream bubbles. Stable time loops police characters into having perfectly replicated conversations with no origin, a deviation from which would get them all killed. Creepy shit.

Also, apparently, the concepts of Ancestors and the hemospectrum weren't present/fleshed out at this point. Also, this:

From my perspective, the great thing about this stupid backwards conversation was that any time someone wanted to know the answer to an obvious question, like "What's the point of the game?", and I didn't think it was time to reveal that info yet, I could just have this jerk say "I ALREADY TOLD YOU THAT" and justifiably be reluctant to repeat himself. But he would indulge in other details of lesser importance, like the material here about the Veil. He hasn't mentioned that yet, so he can take some time to cover it now. It's a totally organic and logical way of concealing critical story information so that it flows in an order of least critical to most critical.

As you watch this animation load, the "GATE 5" up there is really ominous. The Fifth Gate? What happened to...the first four? You wouldn't guess it just going by the scenery, but LOHAC is the bustling financial capital of the Medium. There is a thriving stock exchange here, run by energetic, greedy lizards. This animation was pretty slick at the time. Lots of action, cool music. Neat time tricks by Dave. It's an absolutely massive time skip that left everyone overwhelmed by its implications. Dave has already been here for months, battling monsters, hopping around gears. He's made a stylish new suit too, I guess to foster a certain Secret Time Agent chic. He's like the James Bond of horsing around with weaponized time travel, is the message being conveyed here. Just as the monsters on LOWAS and LOLAR have oil and chalk themes, these ones on LOHAC are amber-themed and yield grist accordingly. I touched on this a while back, but the "planetary pollutant" in a world full of clockwork would be a substance that could gum up the clockwork and make it tick slowly or grind to a halt. That would be a sticky, hardening substance like amber. The quest here on this planet, if done by the book, would involve clearing the land of its sticky pollutants so the gears could tick freely, which probably would wake up the denizen, and so on and so on... But here's the first glimpse of why so often in this story the by-the-book quest falls into the background as something trivial, like a sidebar of mythos-color that's mainly of academic interest and not plot importance.

It's because there's always bigger fish to fry. Something more imminently concerning or threatening, like having to survive for months in this hellhole while two of your friends are dead. He did it. He prototyped the crowsprite with Cal. He knew it was a bad idea. But he did it anyway. The cursed journey of Davesprite begins with one unspeakable folly. So tragic. Say what you will about Calsprite. He's a formidable combatant. That huge puppet-ass attack? Absolutely devastating. This sword concept is pretty cool. Caledscratch, as the weapon is named, is a broken sword, which Dave can wield thanks to his ½bladekind specibus. But it has a built-in time travel mechanism that allows it to cycle through previous states in its history, including back to a period of time when it was not yet broken. So it can extend and contract at Dave's will. A bit like a lightsaber, maybe? If you could turn on a lightsaber only halfway, I guess. Dave is doing all these cool time-attack tricks. Hopping forward and backward in time, but only by a little to keep the maneuvers simple. Each time he does, he's creating a little stable time loop he has to account for. Good practice for a Knight of Time. Starting now, Dave gets into the habit of casually encountering himself a lot. It's kind of his thing. Some kind of charactery thing about his character that he has to deal with, think about, and learn from. What? Referring to it as a charactery thing about him isn't highbrow enough for you? Why don't you go back to book school for lame nerds, you dork.

He made some TURNTABLES offscreen over the last few months. They let him time travel. I'm not sure what he used to make them, other than his record players from home. Looks like some sort of mystical gear component he probably plundered from the local industrial ruins. He probably went on a lot of exciting but lonely adventures on this planet we'll never get to see or hear about. Those block-type grists are sulphur. I wonder how many huge sulphur cubes have fallen into the lava over the course of his Knight of Time berserker fits? They're kind of like giant, stinky bouillon cubes falling into a huge vat of boiling broth. It probably absolutely reeks on LOHAC when Dave goes on a rampage. Right about now, the Ruby Giclops is wondering where it all went wrong in his life. It was probably when he, for some inexplicable reason, decided to swim through an ocean of lava to go mess with this boy in a suit going nuts with a sword. You can tell Dave is probably overloaded with grist he doesn't particularly need by now. He carves up that giclops, and it starts raining huge rubies everywhere. But he doesn't seem to care at all about harvesting them. Instead, he takes a moment to yell at his puppet.