From the get go, we have this ship. A lot of hs^2 is like… very serious. I think thats cool because I don’t know how to do that. I am pretty good at writing goofy things though so my original goal for this chapter was to make it a little less serious. My favorite parts of homestuck were always when it made me laugh, or when it was just extremely silly. Where are the JOKES? I drew the original draft of the ship in paint and made it a twitchy gif. The artist thought this was so funny that they insisted we keep it in. So he cleaned it up and we kept it.

I wanted to establish an existing relationship between Aradia and Dave who only kind of knew each other in the comic. Dave is training to fight Dirk. Aradia isn’t as interested in that, but as Ghost Calliope’s acolyte is along for the ride. She passes time by having fun hanging out and developing this new friendship. I tried to make it so it felt like Dave and Aradia had been rubbing off on each other personality-wise. They tell the same kind of jokes and have a similar sense of humor. You know how when you spend a lot of time in a group chat and you all sort of gel together? I wanted it to feel like that. Just some friends talking about nonsense and being goblins to each other. Dave is talking about Tony Hawk, who was popular when Dave was young. He is still popular now but if you follow skateboarding, as I know you do, there are definitely more relevant skaters to today’s scene. Dave doesn’t know this because none of these skaters exist. Skateboarding is a crime on earth C. I made that up. I don’t know. They let me write whatever I want.

I know Dave isn’t short for David. I just think its funny. It is like calling your friend Jim “Jimothy.” A completely victimless crime. Throughout this scene possessed Jade/Ghost Callie is just off screen narrating. That is their version of training to fight Dirk. As you know from the comic Calliope is kind of an unreliable narrator. I wanted to develop the character a little bit, or at least set up more interesting and capable writers with an opportunity to do so. This is the same Callie we see possessing the OTHER Jade. Why is she so different then? I think sometimes when you hang out with people who are more on your level you tend to open up. I wanted the idea to be that Aradia and Dave are just SO annoying that Jade-Callie can’t help but get swept up into their energy.

There is an interesting point of Lore here where I talk about Aradia having tried this TIME joke in multiple timelines on different versions of Dave, but since Davebot has ascended to his ULTIMATE SELF he has the culminated experiences of all these timelines already. The “passive” line is sort of a red herring that a lot of people fell for and I think that is very funny.

We get into them talking about their feelings. Aradia has been through a lot and very few people really ask her about it. She is doing that thing that people who have dealt with traumatic experiences often do where they very openly and sort of macabrely joke about them to test the waters a little. If you know, you know.

“Times fun when you’re having Flies” is an old person joke that my Dad used to say. “Son you know what Kermit the Frog says? Times Fun When You’re Having Flies.” The phrase is “Time flies when you’re having Fun.” in case you were born after 2005. After this Dave raps and it gradually devolves into his feelings of guilt, in a way that is immediately transparent to anybody that isn’t Dave Strider. I wanted both of them to show that they are good enough friends to be vulnerable around each other, but maybe they still don’t want to talk about their problems in depth. It is a precarious balance.

We get into Aradia and Sollux here. In the epilogues Aradia says that she is cutting Sollux loose so he can do his own thing, since he seems tired of all of this narrative tomfoolery. Sollux isn’t especially perturbed by Aradia going off and doing her own thing. She has always kind of been this way. Aradia says a swear because she got so caught up in the portal and Jade-Calliope vore that she forgot Sollux was up on the roof. How will he get down? What zany family friendly adventures will he get into? Only time will tell. He is making a very sad face but I assure you it is because he is on a roof in the timeline that sucks.

I’m not the best writer when it comes to meta stuff or prose or sentences with words in them because I genuinely just don’t know how to do that and it actually doesn’t interest me that much. However I really like the joke that when Calliope narrates through Jade, it sometimes is just her mumbling off in the corner.

The rocket spinning like that was a last minute edition because without it the time skip seemed a little too sudden. Here is the example gif I made.

Again Ghost Calliope Jade is practicing their ability to narrate by just saying really basic things, a sort of word training montage that nobody asked for. At one point Aradia interrupts her and Callie begins using the narration to be petty, which is growth in its own way. She is convinced she knows better. She is using the narrative voice in a somewhat childish and irresponsible way, to prove her own point. “Well ACTUALLY I do care. And I am using my god powers to tell you that you are wrong.” Hm! Where have we seen that before? I will let you come to your own conclusions there as the story continues. A lot of this chapter was to set up people who are better at writing. We finish off with some jokes. We get to see Ghost Calliope start to let her guard down at the exact moment she is distracted elsewhere by things going on in a different body.

Ok I love you Bye Bye