I’m sorry, I was going to get you a drink, but I got held up over by the bar.
—MST3K 802, “The Leech Woman”
Somebody on TV Tropes pointed out that Homestuck looks a lot gorier once you switch all the troll blood to red. One trip to Photoshop later, I discovered that they were quite right about that.
Is this starting to feel funny to you?
—MST3K 811, “Parts: the Clonus Horror” and 609, “Skydivers”
Oh this is excellent cinematography.
—MST3K 811, “Parts: the Clonus Horror”
Cal’s Marvelous Journey Through Paradox Space
Caliborn wasn’t kidding when he said there could be only one; in fact, originally there was only one, until the Scratch duplicated all the meteor babies and their respective keepsakes.
Lil Cal’s Stable Time Loop
The other day, I realized what went wrong in Davesprite’s timeline: he used Lil Cal to prototype his sprite.
We never got a clear explanation of where the Cal in Dream Dave’s room came from, but I’m guessing that Gamzee put it there with his chucklevoodoos, similar to how he put the clown doll in Dream John’s room. That Cal from the dream room went on to become the Cal who got sliced to bits on Dave’s roof, which Davesprite used as prototyping material. The problem is that the prototyping process completely consumes the object used to prototype; in Davesprite’s timeline, Cal was stuck inside the sprite, so he was never retrieved and repaired by Bro and never fell into Gamzee’s hands, and thus never inspired Gamzee to create Cal in the first place. Calsprite wasn’t just annoying — he was temporally impossible. That time paradox was what screwed Davesprite’s timeline.
OOOOH THIS MAKES SENSE
Except John went to confront Typheus before Calsprite was prototyped. That’s what doomed the timeline. Doomed John was given the Choice, by dying there he doomed his timeline and allowed the jump back in time to happen for Davesprite.
In order for the Alpha timeline to take place, Davesprite had to jump back, prototype himself, and talk John out of going through the gate. So Davesprite’s timeline wasn’t screwed, it was necessary.
That still leaves Calsprite as being impossible, but paradox space doesn’t seem too bothered by cleaning up offshoot timelines.
But the question is: Why was John’s detour such a bad thing? Typheus wasn’t hellbent on killing John on sight, so why didn’t Typheus just go “Hey, you’re not supposed to be here yet, get your ass back to the surface”?
Doomed John said:
EB: because this was important.
AG: What was? Getting killed 8y a monster?
EB: well, yes. but not just that.
EB: the whole ruse was important!
EB: if i didn’t make the decision to go, then dave would not be able to go back in time and fix things.
EB: in fact, if i didn’t die here in this palace, we never would have been born in the first place!
(bolding mine)
Fix things? Fix which things? John says that his visit to Typheus was necessary in order to “fix things,” so it wouldn’t make sense if that “thing” was “John going to visit Typheus.” John’s implying that his detour to Typheus’s lair was necessary in order to fix some other problem, and that he chose to die so that Dave would have the impetus to go back and fix whatever that other problem was. In the process, Dave also stopped Alpha John from going to see Typheus, but even if he hadn’t changed that detail, I’m not sure it would have been a problem, since according to Doomed John, Typheus wasn’t out for John’s blood and could have just booted him back up to the surface.
There’s one other possibility: Even if Typheus had sent John back to the surface, it’s possible that John still wouldn’t have made it to the Ecto Lab in time to make the paradox babies — he did say he was wandering around Typheus’s lair for hours. However, maybe he could have made it there in time — I was never clear on how long Alpha John spent hanging around the Ecto Lab.