homestuck epilogue writeup

ah, i can field this one i think. so the events of collide and act 7 create an endpoint for lord english's life, trapping him in the black hole and therefore the narrative he sought to commandeer. however, with one plot thread left open, caliborn can still influence events: namely, the event he foretold with his little claymation vines, where the alpha and beta kids all warp to his location, fight him, and lose so that he can trap the beta kids in his juju, has not happened yet. in the credits, we see john grow increasingly isolated and despondent. caliborn provokes him by sending him taunts via snapchat, and john takes the bait, smashing his phone with his hammer and seemingly indicating that he intends to fulfill this unresolved inevitability and go fight caliborn in his prime. there are also warning signs in the credits and snapchats that some of the kids and trolls are failing to be the leaders and paragons that Earth C needs them to be:jane and jake recreate the corporate empires from the previous world, while karkat shirks in his promise to echidna that he would be the kind of leader that Earth C needs. so this creates the outstanding tension and lays the foundation for conflicts that will define the epilogue... what kind of happy ending could it be if four of the beta kids, who are lovers to some, beloved family to others and sorely needed leaders to all, end up trapped for all eternity in a juju? what kind of happy ending could it be with john isolated frk. all contact except social media, with jane and jake retreading the sordid mistakes of their alternate selves, with karkat breaking a solemn promise and depriving the world of the benefit of his guidance? the new world has been created, but so much healing and struggling remains until it is really where it needs to be.

oh, and perhaps most importantly: what will come of terezi's search and rescue mission for vriska, who she cares about so dearly? what exactly happened when she used the house juju on lord english? what is with the strange phenomena that she finds as she ascends into space towards the aftermath of calliope's black hole? if it is indeed a black hole, why can terezi fly around it without being sucked in? (i have a theory that the black hole actually became something called a white hole, but... that is theorizing a little too far for now.)