Prologue

Homestuck has finished. On Earth C, ten years after his adventure began, John Egbert awakens from a traumatic anime dream. Rose Lalonde summons him to her home. She is gravely ill. Her awareness of her many alternate selves in other timelines is increasing beyond the capacity of her physical body: she is ascending toward her ultimate self, and it is terrible.

Rose explains to John that canon is predicated on three core principles: truth, relevance, and essentiality. She states that unless John travels back into canon and defeats Lord English, an event which is known to happen, the fundamental truth of their existence on Earth C will be undermined. Rose claims that this will lead to an effect she terms "dissipation", a retroactive discreditation of everything that has transpired since their victory seven years prior. She gives John a set of instructions for how to avert this effect, and sends him on his way.

Before leaving Earth C, John has a picnic with Roxy and Calliope. He discusses his options with the two of them. They suggest that John has a choice in the matter: he could go to defeat Lord English and validate the canonical sequence of events concretely, or he could alternatively choose to remain on Earth C and forgo the final battle altogether. But first, Calliope offers John an apparently different choice. What will he eat for lunch?

Meat, or Candy?

Meat

EVENTS FROM JOHN'S PERSPECTIVE

Upon making his choice, John is placated by the red meat, but only temporarily. His thoughts turn to Lord English and the various horrible crimes committed by him. John decides that he must leave Earth C, return to canon and kill LE, thereby completing the sequence of events necessary to prevent canonical dissipation. He says farewell to Roxy and Calliope, and makes his departure.

Following Rose's instructions, John first travels to the Game Over timeline, to the moment when Aranea makes her attempt to appropriate the Ring of Life and doom everyone. He knocks her out and takes the ring, thereby diverting this timeline from the original sequence of events. John leaves Gamzee in the fridge where he belongs.

Now that this timeline has been splintered off from canon, its residents are available for other purposes. As such, John now recruits the remaining kids as 16-year-olds for the final fight with LE. The eight of them return to Earth A a week before April 13th, 2009, to formulate their battle plans. And then it's showtime.

John and the teens arrive at the site of Caliborn's Masterpiece. Upon the delivery of a scathing assessment of the young cherub's artistic prowess, and a punchline long in the making, the final battle commences.

A whole bunch of shit happens that we already saw, but not in plasticine this time. John, Rose, Dave and Jade all end up stuck inside the house juju, where they remain until Vriska deploys it in several quadrillion years' time. John has an important revelation about his mental health in the meanwhile.

When they emerge, the second final battle is already in progress. Calliope's black hole has swallowed the green sun and started to consume paradox space, but the final blow to LE is yet to be inflicted. The kids join the fight alongside the army of dream bubble ghosts, including Meenah and Tavros. Things quickly take a turn for the dire: Rose is consumed in a beam of energy; Jade is fatally impaled on a shard of the void; Tavros is disintegrated, and Meenah is seemingly thrown into the singularity.

Only John and Dave remain, however they are aided at the last minute by Davepetasprite^2, who rescues John from being eaten by LE. Dave is not so furtunate I mean fortunate, and is decapitated. In retaliation, Davepeta impales LE on their claws and flies into the black hole with him in tow.

The fight is won, but at a terrible cost. John has been skewered by one of LE's teeth, and begins to fall prey to a deadly venom. He loses consciousness.

He is soon compelled to awaken by an external influence he cannot identify. John contemplates the inherent futility of his existence, before coming across his dad's wallet modus and taking it with him. He finds Meenah, not yet double dead, clinging to a server beacon. She steals the Ring of Life from him and makes her escape through the server.

He then encounters Terezi, who has been searching for Vriska for an indeterminate amount of time, and who is on the brink of starvation. John deploys the contents of his father's wallet. Terezi gorges herself on a hearty meal of pipe tobacco and shaving cream. John cannot help but be smitten.

For several days the pair of them camp out in John's dad's spare car. Eventually Terezi offers to remove the tooth still embedded in John's abdomen. He assents, and she performs the impromptu surgery. In the heat of the moment, the two embrace passionately.

They then fuck in the back of the car and that's really all there is to say on the matter.

John convinces Terezi to return to Earth C with him. But when they arrive, our hero finally succumbs to LE's venom, which has the effect of corroding a person's canonical existence beyond any hope of revival. John Egbert dies in Terezi's arms, ostensibly for good. His story is at an end.

EVENTS ON EARTH C

Meanwhile, on Earth C, things have been getting political. Jane Crocker has decided to run for the presidency of Earth, the first time one of the 12 players has attempted such a maneuver. There is a sinister pretext to her bid for power: this year is the first time that the new Mother Grub will be used to propagate the troll population on Earth C, as opposed to simple cloning. Jane is running on a platform which many suspect would curtail the reproductive rights of the troll race on Earth C, and which Karkat and Dave believe to be some real xenophobic bullshit. Dave also thinks that Jane's economic plans leave something to be desired. He convinces Karkat to campaign in opposition to her.

The two discuss the likely allegiances of their remaining friends, who together comprise the most powerful and influential people on the planet. Kanaya, Rose and Jade will be likely allies to their cause. Dirk, Jane's campaign manager, is already accounted for. Roxy and Calliope are neutral parties, as is Jake. English, the most successful celebrity figure of them all, will be the deciding factor in the election, with both sides furiously courting his endorsement. Once their plan is decided, Dave gets a call from his brother.

Dirk holds up a live episode of RUMBLE IN DA PUMPKIN PATCH, a rap-battle-robot-wrestling hybrid which he co-hosts with Jake, in order to have this conversation. The crowd is not amused. After soliloquizing ominously to Dave for a while, Dirk hangs up and resumes the show. Jake proceeds to perform the worst rap in the history of paradox space.

Dirk then tranquilizes him and ends the episode in order to field a call from Rose, who is contacting him to discuss her condition. Dirk reveals that he is already aware of this apparent secret, and moreover that he is suffering the same "sickness" despite not showing any of the same symptoms. He invites Rose to his studio to discuss the matter further.

Some time later, Dave, Karkat and Jade discuss strategy. Things quickly take a turn for the uncomfortable however, as Jade manages to turn the conversation to the subject of their three-way relationship dynamic. In particular, she focuses on Dave and Karkat's feelings for each other. Dave and Karkat vehemently deny any romantic feelings despite literally all evidence to the contrary. Jade draws a shipping grid and leaves the two of them to think about it. They pretend not to think about it very very hard indeed.

Jane attempts to woo Jake to her campaign unsuccessfully. Not to be deterred, she invites him to her office, where she tries to seduce him physically as well as politically. In this moment of intimacy, Jake's thoughts cannot help but turn to Dirk, however. He makes his excuses and leaves. Jane furiously rings her campaign manager, unaware that he is the reason for this unfortuitous development. Dirk offers to deal with Jake, before hanging up quickly as Rose arrives. The two need to talk.

Over the course of the conversation, Rose's condition deteriorates further before she loses consciousness. Dirk, who has secretly already come into his own as an ascended self, openly claims control of the narrative of Homestuck. The Prince is awake, and our shit is wrecked.

Jade attempts to persuade Roxy and Calliope to endorse Karkat's campaign, but they are unconvinced. Roxy is unwilling to go against such a close friend, and Callie is uncomfortable with taking sides. The two of them come out as nonbinary, to Jade's (and Dirk's) surprise. At a moment circumstantially simultaneous with her alternate self's death in the furthest ring, Jade suddenly passes out.

This alternate self, experiencing her last moments after the battle with LE, approaches the supermassive black hole which was once the green sun. She is beckoned forward by the voice of Calliope's god tier self, who speaks in the narrative text in opposition to Dirk. He panics, and quickly shifts our focus back to Earth.

Dave and Karkat visit Kanaya in the brooding caverns and discuss the election. Kanaya reveals that Jane has already visited the caverns in an attempt to curry favor with the troll kingdom. Kanaya believes that while Crocker's intentions may be good, her xenophobic beliefs about troll reproduction border on the fascistic and are too dangerous to be ignored. She agrees to aid Karkat's campaign, and then attempts to phone Rose. Dirk picks up instead.

He rebuffs Kanaya's inquiries into her wife's health, hanging up on her in order to continue talking with Rose, who is now very weak. She is on the verge of ascension, her physical body barely able to contain her higher self. So far she has resisted the urge. But Dirk convinces her to fail to resist the urge. From this point on, he holds her physical body together with his powers until such time as he is able to deposit her soul into a vessel of his own construction.

Teen Jade falls into the black hole. The dead cherub uses her as a beacon to gain access to the narrative, now openly challenging Dirk's control. The two fight for supremacy as the adult Jade wakes up on Earth C. Her newfound consciousness and the battle are both short lived however, as the dead cherub takes possession of her body and the narrative in one fell swoop. The Prince is, for the moment, outmatched.

Jane returns from the campaign trail, where she has been using trickster mode as a publicity strategy. Dirk warns her against overindulgence, and the two discuss the Jake stakes once again. Dirk says that he is working on a backup plan, now that his influence has been curtailed somewhat. Meanwhile, Dave and Karkat successfully convince Jake to endorse their campaign, and team Vantas organize a stadium event to announce this fact.

Things do not go according to plan. While Dave and Roxy discuss the queer experience at the rally, Dirk ascends the bell tower with Roxy's red sniper rifle in hand, apparently intending to assassinate or tranquilize Jake during his speech. The dead cherub attempts to stop him through narrative fiat, but is outwitted. Dirk in fact snipes Jade with the tranquilizer dart, which has the effect of ending the dead cherub's possession. Without Jade to act as her beacon, she is forced to relinquish narrative control to the Prince. Back in the stadium, Jake declares his love for Dirk Strider and switches his endorsement at the last minute. The Vantas campaign collapses, and Jane coasts into office unopposed.

A month passes. Jade remains comatose in hospital during this time--Terezi, who recently returned to Earth with John, meets Roxy outside. After the two catch up and Roxy departs, Dirk reveals that he and Rose will be leaving Earth C momentarily, and invites Terezi to join them. She brings John's captchalogued corpse with her.

Rose and Dirk prepare for their departure. Dirk uses Kanaya's insecurities to manipulate her into accepting her wife's "decision" to leave, simultaneously convincing Rose that Kanaya has no qualms in letting her go. Dirk leaves Kanaya the antidote for the tranquilizer he used on Jade, before making his way to Jake's mansion.

Once there, he requests the use of the fastest Skaianet starship available. Jake, who is now completely and openly infatuated with Dirk, and who believes that he will be coming along on this voyage, readily obliges. Dirk gives him the bad news: English will be staying behind with Jane, ready to serve as the father to countless generations of her new presidential dictatorship. He kisses Jake one last time, saying that they will never meet again.

Back at Dave and Karkat's house, the two mourn their political careers. The commiseration session takes a turn for the personal, and they discuss their relationship, subtly (and not-so-subtly) egged on by an impatient Dirk. The two affirm their friendship, but this time it's not enough. For once in his life, Dave takes the initiative. They kiss. Davekat is canon.

Kanaya and Roxy visit Jade in hospital. Calliope, who was negatively affected by the presence of their dead alternate self, has since shut themself in at home and begun religiously scrawling on the walls. Kanaya gives Jade the antidote, and she wakes up.

Jade, who is now somehow aware of Dirk's influence, declares that he must be stopped. Dirk agrees with her, claiming his role as the villain of the story outright. He accepts the intrinsic antagonism of his narrative power, and has decided to carry that antagonism to its natural conclusion. He states that his eventual death will be Just.

Kanaya realizes the extent of Dirk's manipulation, but it is too late. He is already gone. The dead cherub resumes her possession of Jade, and seizes the narrative once more. Though she has sworn neutrality, she points the remaining players in the direction that Dirk, Rose and Terezi have fled. Kanaya, Roxy, Dave and Karkat resolve to give chase.

Years later, we see Dirk, Rose (now in a robot body) and Terezi approach a new planet. The most important Sburb session in the history of existence is about to unfold.

Candy

Meanwhile, inside the black hole, another timeline has been in progress. In this timeline, John chooses to eat candy at the picnic instead of meat. Upon doing so, he starts feeling sweet and sentimental about the time with his friends that he missed out on while holed up at home, and which he now risks sacrificing by leaving. He chooses to ignore Lord English and stay on Earth, to Roxy and Calliope's approval.

This failure to validate canon leads John to suspect that his existence is somehow insubstantial and meaningless. Calliope distracts him with one final task: he must rescue Gamzee, who she insists deserves to begin his redemption arc immediately. John reluctantly does so, retrieving him from the final moments before the events of [S]: Collide.

Back on Earth C, Gamzee is set free from the fridge and declares his redemption arc begun. He claims that every bad thing he had ever done was simply due to extenuating circumstances beyond his control. Roxy and Calliope are taken in by this transparent bullshit.

Not buying this foolishness for a second, John texts Terezi out in the furthest ring. The two privately dunk on Gamzee, who begins attracting the attention of civilians with his performative contrition.

John's decision not to validate the truth of canon does not go unnoticed. Dirk, as his ascended self, is shaken by this profound undermining of his own narrative significance. He calls Jane, tells her to cancel her presidential bid, and goes off the grid.

Jane visits Jake at his mansion, where he has been getting drunk and shooting things. They discuss Dirk's strange behavior and sudden disappearance. As Jane joins in with Jake's day drinking, she attempts to seduce him but is ignored. Not to be denied, she resorts to using the terrible power of the trickster lollipop. The two sleep together. When they come to, Jake is alarmed by his lack of consent in the matter--Jane manages to talk him into a committed relationship.

Rose wakes up, miraculously recovered from her illness. She and Kanaya renew their vows of love to one another. Soon after, they visit the brooding caverns and find a newly hatched grub which bears a striking resemblance to Vriska Serket. Rose and Kanaya decide to adopt this grub, and name her Vriska Maryam-Lalonde (Vriska ML).

Jade gives the news of Jane's political withdrawal to Dave and Karkat. They all agree that this is a welcome development. Jade proceeds to aggressively flirt with Dave and Karkat. They both agree that this is a very unwelcome development. She then drags the two of them out on a date, pressuring their feelings even further. Eventually it becomes unbearable--Karkat throws a tantrum, and Dave simply fucks off.

John and Roxy go on a coffee date. Gamzee soon interferes, offering to act as John's wingman while Roxy is in the bathroom. John is naturally disgusted by this. Gamzee leaves and John surreptitiously texts Terezi about it until Roxy returns.

Dave then interrupts, taking John outside and asking for advice on handling his relationship with Jade and Karkat. John can't give him a satisfying answer. Dave decides he needs to talk to his bro, and goes to his studio.

There he finds Gamzee, as well as a note left by Dirk. Dave's worst fears are realized as Dirk kills himself by hanging in public, his death automatically proving Just due to his self-hatred.

At Dirk's funeral, Dave gives a conflicted but heartfelt speech which Gamzee immediately defiles with his own eulogy. John leaves in disgust right on time to interrupt a crucial moment of intimacy between Dave and Karkat outside.

John offers to retcon Dirk's death but Dave refuses. Once Dave and Karkat leave at Jade's call, John notices that he can't seem to use his retcon powers at all. Roxy comes outside and proposes to John, which he accepts.

John texts Terezi, but a timeflow difference between the interior of the black hole and the furthest ring outside it results in them speaking again six months after the wedding takes place. John reveals Roxy is now pregnant with their first child.

In the meantime Jade's relationship with Dave and Karkat has not been going well. Jane's bizarre three-way with Jake and Gamzee is even worse. Unaware that he is speaking to Terezi from inside the black hole, John tries to convince her to return to Earth C. She refuses.

Three months later, John and a heavily pregnant Roxy visit Rose and Kanaya. John becomes confused when it appears that none of his friends remember the true course of canonical events. Rose in particular does not seem to recall pressuring him into fighting Lord English at all. He continues to message Terezi in secret, her presence seeming to be the only real thing in his life.

Jane and Gamzee's relationship takes a turn for the caliginous. Jake, who had been caring for his and Jane's biological son, Tavros Crocker, leaves the room. Gamzee's amorous honks follow him out as he calls Jade and has a short, sad conversation about their respective futures.

Swept up in the baby-making spree, Jade tries to pressure Dave and Karkat into having kids between the three of them. They are characteristically recalcitrant. Their discussion is interrupted by the sudden arrival of the corpse of teen Jade, who fell into the black hole in the Meat timeline. Jade immediately takes her alternate self's body to Jane, but Jane cannot heal her, noting with frustration that she doesn't seem quite dead.

The event has brought everyone together though, and Roxy tries to capitalize on the opportunity by suggesting another funeral. The sudden proximity inflames the political situation though, with Karkat and Kanaya publicly opposing Jane's machinations.

Karkat expresses his anger as Jade does not take his side in the face of Jane's flagrant xenophobia. He delivers a damning speech and then leaves, breaking off his relationship with Jade and Dave in the process.

The funeral for teen Jade happens in spite of this setback. During the proceedings, Aradia and Sollux inexplicably show up. Roxy's speech is cut short by going into labor. John races her to the hospital and Callie moves to follow, but gets distracted by the sudden reanimation of teen Jade's corpse.

The body wakes up claiming to be the alternate version of Calliope who destroyed the green sun. She now exists as the consciousness of the black hole that devoured it, channeled through Jade's body. She says she has come here to protect their world and prepare to challenge Dirk, who is simultaneously assuming control of events outside the black hole's event horizon.

Events begin to accelerate. Three years in the future, Terezi messages John on the third birthday of his son, Harry Anderson Egbert. John fills Terezi in on the current state of events, which have rapidly begun to deteriorate. Troll ghosts who were sucked into the black hole have begun falling from the sky en masse. Jane is using her business to lobby the government into instituting more and more totalitarian controls on the troll population.

Karkat has established a rebel faction. The rebellion basically sucks until Meenah shows up wearing the Ring of Life which she stole from John. She agrees to be Karkat's second-in-command, and starts whipping the resistance into shape.

Gamzee has started performing public redemptions featuring sloppy makeouts and baby bottles full of Jane's breastmilk. Worried about Tavros Crocker's abusive home life, John plans to kidnap him. He puts this plan into action during Harry's fifth birthday party, held at Jane's manor. He manages to get Tavros into his bedroom where they can escape out the window, but gets interrupted by Jade.

The two of them argue loudly enough to alert the rest of their friends. John and Jane have a confrontation that culminates in John losing control of the Windy Thing. He leaves the party in disgrace. Terezi texts him, and the two open up about their existential despair. Terezi admits that she's dying of starvation, but can't bring herself to give up searching for Vriska. Their conversation ends with Terezi saying she wanted to give John closure.

John is worried about the implications of his continuing involvement with Terezi, and flies around until his Dad's car crashes through the sky. Noticing Terezi's blood all over the back seat from their hatefuck session in Meat, John mistakenly takes this to mean that she is dead.

This leads to an existential tantrum so intense, it forces the narrative to skip ten years. Harry Anderson is now a shitty teen and dating the slightly-less-shitty Vriska ML, who is in a caliginous relationship with Tavros Crocker. They consider running away from home and joining Karkat's rebellion together, because things are so fucked.

John himself is now epically divorced. He attends Jade and Dave's wedding, where he meets Karkat. He considers joining Karkat's rebellion, but decides against it because he thinks he'd be too sad and useless. Karkat flees to avoid meeting Dave, who comes outside to talk to his best friend.

John throws away the selfie he asked Terezi to take ten years ago, making peace with the idea that nothing matters anymore. The original Vriska, sucked into the black hole during the battle against Lord English, drops in from the sky. She's alive, and she's pissed.

Alternate Calliope spots LE's own entrance into the black hole and moves to intercept him. Jake informs Jane her father has died protecting the president from an assassination attempt by Karkat's rebellion. Jane launches a full scale war to kill Karkat, and when Gamzee objects to her xenophobic rhetoric, she kicks him out of her life and off her imperial warship.

Vriska, now dubbed (Vriska), hates the inconsequential reality she finds herself in and wants to return to canon immediately. They're interrupted by Gamzee, who tries to manipulate Vriska into a sexual relationship in the name of "redemption". She delivers a righteous and savage beatdown, but the clown's disgusting wiles have the desired effect. The two hatesmooch behind some bushes.

Rose and Kanaya arrive, themselves now important rebellion figures. John is distacted from the horrific clownery by Rose, who thanks him for making the choice that put them on this path. She no longer cares if this reality is true, relevant or essential, and is enjoying the simple happiness of loving her wife and daughter. Vriska ML discovers her namesake in the bushes with Gamzee.

(Vriska) freaks out. Gamzee tries to manipulate her some more, implying that somehow she took advantage of him, despite their age difference. She kills him, and the two Vriskas acquaint themselves.

Vriska ML reveals that she stole John's phone. They read his conversations with Terezi, and after divulging her longstanding and complex romantic feelings for her fellow scourge sister, (Vriska) sends Terezi a message.

John returns to his father's house, where he discovers Jake and Tavros, who have fled the Crocker household. Jake and John have a heart to heart. Jake convinces John to reach out to Roxy and Harry Anderson.

John meets Roxy at their old house. John believes that his actions have doomed everyone to insignificance. Roxy decries this self-important nonsense, and opens up to him about her feelings about their marriage, gender, and childbirth. When Harry Anderson arrives home, John asks him if he'd like to go for a drive. Harry agrees.

Dave and Jade, now working for Karkat's rebellion, work far from the front line excavating ancient Earth artifacts. They get separated and Dave finds his way inside the ruins of the Oval Office.

There he finds a transportalizer that leads him to a chamber with a Hero of Hope outfit and a holographic projection of Barack Obama, who addresses him directly. Dave talks to his hero about his sexuality. Obama comforts him, before convincing him to ascend to his ultimate self and enter the robot body Dirk had apparently prepared for him some time before.

The dead cherub, still inhabiting teen Jade's body, explains to Aradia that their reality, being composed of stories, is open to manipulation by any agent powerful enough to assume the role of narrator. Such manipulation may only become apparent in hindsight, casting into doubt the neutrality of all events prior, and hence undermining the very integrity of the story in which they live. This is, she reveals, what Dirk has been up to outside the event horizon.

The dead cherub then kills and devours Lord English. By doing so, she attains heights of power heretofore unmatched. She punches a wormhole in the fabric of the black hole, allowing a brief window of escape from its gravitational well. Davebot arrives. The cherub, Davebot and Aradia leave through the portal in pursuit of the Prince.