Literature / The Homestuck Epilogues

John still has one last choice to make.

> Examine plot relevant aftermaths.

Beware of spoilers. This is the epilogue to Homestuck and as such all spoilers pertaining to Homestuck are unmarked. Spoilers for The Homestuck Epilogues itself may also be unmarked.

On April 13, 2016, Homestuck seemingly came to an end after seven years. However, with that conclusion, Andrew Hussie promised his audience an epilogue to tie up all other loose ends. And three years later on April 13, 2019, starting with the Prologue and releasing the rest a week later... The time arrived, and with the assistance of authors Cephied_Variable and ctset, he was able to come up with a text-only epilogue showing two self-described "tales of dubious authenticity".

It has been seven years since the quest of John Egbert and his friends has ended, yet not everything completely well. John has one final choice to make, one that could affect not only his own life, but the entire canon.

But first, Meat or Candy?

Something worth noting about The Homestuck Epilogues is that Hussie and the other authors have stated that they should be seen as a completely different work than Homestuck proper, and even describe the two paths of the story as non-canon relative to its parent work, with the story itself being presented in a format derived from Fanfic. (Hussie has stated that the original intention was to only release it in print form, separating it from the main story as a "cursed tome".) In fact, they have outright encouraged fans to make use of Death of the Author or to treat the official ending to Homestuck as the true conclusion. For Hussie's personal notes on the epilogues and what they mean to represent, see the former Analysis page. (Spoilers included, obviously.)

However, in spite of the ambiguously-canon nature of the story, an “officially commissioned” sequel, aptly named Homestuck: Beyond Canon, picks up from the events of The Homestuck Epilogues. It began on October 25, 2019 of the same year, and features a recap of this story on its main page.

Can be read here.

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> Gather articles of supplemental data related to The Homestuck Epilogues.

Tropes Applying to Both Epilogues

• Aborted Arc: The main purpose of this epilogue is to wrap up all loose plot points from Homestuck. In fact, according to Rose, this trope is threatening to make Universe C non-canon.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The enormous list of content warnings at the start begins with "Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape, The Economy".
• Art Shift: The Animesque Act 7 animation is lampshaded, as John has been "dreaming in anime" as of late.
• Author Appeal: Played with in a meta way, as part of the epilogue's general parodying of fanfic tropes. The sexiness and grimdarkness of Meat, as well as its greater focus on gay relationships and male characters reflects the preferences of the author or narrator, who is revealed to be Dirk, who's been previously shown to have such interests. Meanwhile Candy, which may be written by some version of Calliope, previously established as a parody of fanfic authors, contains a lot of the unusual sexual arrangements (polyamory, milking) one might expect in the classic "fanfic author casually inserts their personal / favorite kink" setup.
• Book Ends: Meat's opening and Postscript has someone eating meat, as does Candy with candy. In both cases, it's John eating at the beginning. In Meat's Postscript, Alternate Calliope eats Lord English's corpse (which is described as "meat" in-text) in order to leave the Candy timeline and go after Dirk. In Candy's Postcript, Rosebot eats robot candy just before the ship she's on finds a planet suitable for Dirk's plan.
• Call-Back: This first page of the prologue ends in a call back to the first page of Homestuck.
• Cannot Spit It Out: The state of the relationship between Dave and Karkat. Dave, despite his confession to Dirk on LOTAK, is still hung up on publicly coming out as gay; Karkat is still hung up on thinking that entering any relationship is going to make everyone else think he's weak. In both timelines, people try to help them along, to varying degrees of success. In Candy, Jade tries to help out, but only ends up driving a wedge between them. In Meat, once Dirk's narrative control has been revealed, he abuses it to hook the two of them up, but it turns out this trope is so strong in the two of them that it takes Dirk an entire chapter to do it.
• Central Theme:
  • The importance of a community willing to intervene when its members engage in destructive behavior, and the consequences when community fails.
  • On a more meta-level, the idea of trying to continue a story after its ending and how it contradicts with the characters having a Happily Ever After, due to the idea that the audience wants to see the characters struggle.
• Content Warnings: A ridiculous amount that covers just about anything that could potentially make anyone feel even the slightest negative emotion, ranging from serious warnings such as "graphic depictions of violence" and "sexual abuse" to more humorous ones such as "Faygo", "Robots", and "Clown". Nonetheless, every single warning does legitimately apply to the Epilogues.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: In both Candy and Meat, Jane builds a corporate empire that becomes increasingly oppressive and all-powerful.
• Crapsaccharine World: An accurate description of Earth C, though it later becomes a full Crapsack World later in Candy.
• Darker and Edgier: Death is much more permanent and tragic as the characters often grow and develop into much more awful people. This is both as a nod to the fanfiction-"format" of the Epilogues and the fact that the characters have grown to adulthood, something Act 6 Intermission 3 briefly poked at with the 19 year-old "dancestors."
• Double-Sided Book: Viz Media's physical release of the epilogues. The Meat side is black with a white logo and text, and the Candy side is white with a black logo and text.
• Everyone Can See It: The fact that Dave and Karkat are in love is so obvious that others are occasionally surprised by the fact that they're not officially dating.
• Explosive Breeder: The Mother Grub. Alternia was a Death World, so trolls had to reproduce extremely quickly to survive as a race. Earth C lacks these pressures, so Jane is concerned that once Kanaya gets the Mother Grub up and running, the troll population will vastly outnumber the others almost immediately.
• Extreme Libido: Jade has developed a disturbing addiction to sex by the time the Epilogues start. It's implied this is partially due to the dog hormones caused by her merge with Bec, as well as being effectively isolated for most of her life.
• Extreme Omnisexual: Jade is mentioned to have slept with people of all different species, including the carapacians/chess guys, whose anatomy or ability to have sex is never specified.
• Face–Heel Turn: In Meat, Dirk as a result of becoming Ultimate Dirk and merging with his more malevolent alternate selves, revealing him to be manipulating the narrative to his own designs, splits up Rose and Kanaya so he can take the former off to another timeline, and incites Jane to run for president of the world complete with xenophobic views on trolls. In Candy, Jane opinions are revealed to be her own, becoming even more xenophobic to the point of war with the trolls, and openly abusive to Jake.
• Fantastic Racism: Species-to-species racism is referred to as "xenophobia" by Earth C's inhabitants. Jane is repeatedly called out for being a xenophobe to trolls, as her plans as president involve imposing a tight control over their reproduction. As Candy goes on, it becomes increasingly blatant that she is against trollkind as a whole, calling their whole species "insects."
• Fix Fic: Something of a canon example, as it is meant to wrap up the plot points that fans complained hadn't been wrapped. Lampshaded with the Archive of Our Own parody introduction page. Played with in that the endings, if anything, leave even more loose ends and end up with things in a darker state than the beginning.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In one of the commentaries for the printed Homestuck books, Hussie makes mention of the phrase "meat or candy" (as referencing what makes up a story - the hard hitting events and the character developing fluff) before adding that "it's not time to talk about this yet".
  • Internally within the epilogues themselves, this can happen if you read the Candy path first. Muse Calliope, possessing a dead instance of Jade - who is from the Meat route - discusses with Aradia the nature of narrative voices, and how the nature of a narrative can be retroactively altered when the narration is revealed to be a character in themselves. In the Meat narrative, it's revealed that the narrator is Dirk and he is actively controlling the narrative to force his friends along the path of his own design, until Muse Calliope arrives and overrides his control for a time.
  • A few pages back in Act 6 of Homestuck heavily foreshadow the events of the epilogues. Specifically, Jane's copy of Detective Pony vandalized by Dirk—in which he eventually replaces all pre-existing dialogue and narration with his own. The narration describes the book as a tough, emotionally draining read that's cathartic in all the worst ways possible, which is the entire concept of Meat in a nutshell.
  • The Prologue is prefaced with a parody of the Archive of our Own interface, complete with a tag list. Many of them are a given (such as the eight human players and most of the post-scratch trolls), but some tags seem odd, like "gerrymandering," "breastfeeding," "vore," and Barack Obama being listed as a character. These tags aren't exactly jokes, as they do appear within the Epilogues at one point or another.
• For Want Of A Nail: Some aspects differ significantly between Candy and Meat, such as Roxy's gender identity^note as the Meat version settles on male while the Candy version decides that it's irrelevant and a female presentation is fine after becoming pregnant and the status of the Dave/Karkat/Jade Love Triangle ^note In Candy, Jade's insistence on a polyamorous relationship and Dave's feelings of obligation to her end up driving all three apart, whereas in Meat Dave and Karkat are finally able to admit their love after Dirk does his best to force them to be honest.
• Good Powers, Bad People: Jane, who can resurrect the dead, becomes an unethical politician in Meat and a full-out monster in Candy.
• Growing Up Sucks: A major theme. The challenges of Sburb were far easier to deal with than the challenges of adulthood, and the characters fail more than they succeed.
• Hard Truth Aesop: Sometimes political differences make friendships impossible, and not everyone you were close to as a teen will grow up to be a good person.
• Happy Ending Override: Good Lord yes! By the end of each path, nearly every major character is depressed, evil, and/or dead. According to Hussie, this is, of course, one of the major themes of the work:

  Because, as certain characters go to some length to elaborate on, you can't tell new stories without reestablishing significant dramatic stakes: new problems to overcome, new injustices to correct, new questions to answer. There can be no sense of emotional gratification later without first experiencing certain periods of emotional recession. And by peeking into the imagined realm of "happily ever after" to satisfy our curiosity, we discover that our attention isn't so harmless, because the complexities and sorrows of adult life can't be ignored. Nor can the challenges of creating a civilization from scratch, when several teenagers are handed god-status. It turns out the gaze we cast from the sky of Earth C to revisit everyone isn't exactly friendly, like warm sunlight. It's more like a ravaging beam, destructive and unsettling to all that could have been safely imagined. Our continued attention is the very property which incites new problems, and the troublemakers appear to be keenly aware of this.

• Happily Married: Rose and Kanaya are by far the most stable couple. In Candy, anyway. Dirk brainwashes Rose in Meat to take her away from Kanaya for an indeterminate period of time.
• Hotter and Sexier: In comparison to the main comic, the Epilogues have the characters engage in plenty of off-screen sex and on-screen displays of attraction.
• I Miss Mom: John hasn't left his house in ages because he's mourning his dead father.
• Immortal Procreation Clause: Averted; the gods can have kids, such as Harry Anderson Egbert and Tavros Crocker in Candy. As Dirk says to Jake near the end of Meat, however, those kids won't be immortal, so they'll probably die long before their parents.
• In Spite of a Nail: In Meat, Jane becomes president of the world, allowing her to enact population control over the trolls. In Candy, she doesn't, but her corporation is so powerful and has enough influence that things turn out even worse.
• Lampshade Hanging: John has been "dreaming in anime", referring to the animation in Act 7.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After all the morally ambiguous actions Vriska did in the story as part of (what was at least partially) an arrogant desire to be central to the plot, her ultimate fate is finally revealed: she gets impaled by a shard of reality and sucked into the black hole before the final battle against Lord English truly begins, meaning she completely misses out on it; she then gets dumped into the Candy Timeline, where she discovers that she's essentially been replaced with Vriska Lalonde (a near-clone of her being raised by Rose and Kanaya) and is rebranded as "(Vriska)" to highlight her almost complete irrelevance to everything going on. Also, she loses her Sevenfold Vision eye, again.
• Mayfly–December Romance:
  • Karkat pairs up with Meenah, who has the Ring of Life in Candy, and Dave, who's a God Tier in Meat.
  • Terezi hooks up with John in Meat, not that he has long to live anyway.
  • Averted with Kanaya, who is immortal on account of being a Rainbow Drinker and can thus live forever with Rose.
• Medium Awareness: Rose is aware that Universe C is outside the realm of canon, and warns John that if the aforementioned Aborted Arc isn't resolved, then Universe C will no longer be canonical.
• More Diverse Sequel: Unlike the original comic, this devotes a fair amount of space to trans and gender identity issues, and have several characters that are presented as cis in the original come out as trans or genderqueer.
• Neutral Female: Roxy and Calliope don't think politics should come between friends, so they stay out of the conflict between Jane and everyone else. They subvert this trope in Meat, but it's the "female" part that's subverted, not the "neutral" part. In Candy, they continue to passively support Jane even as she turns into a genocidal dictator.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Jane's character in the Epilogues was based on then-current United States president Donald Trump, whom the authors find abhorrent, as part of An Aesop that sometimes your childhood friends will grow up into terrible people. She's a famous businessperson whose success is (as theorized by Dave) due entirely to her inherited position, and is actually pretty awful at business. She makes a run for the presidency despite having no prior political experience, which is successful due to the intervention of an exterior power. She harbors openly xenophobic views and relies on tasteless populism to garner votes. She's a rapist and abuser who is very public about her lack of faithfulness towards her partner. And she has latent fascistic tendencies, which come to the forefront in the Candy timeline.
• One World Order: The four kingdoms of Earth C are unified under a global presidential republic. Justified: the Sburb players built this world's society from the top down, and had no reason not to have it start out unified.
• Painting the Medium:
  • The story alternates between Homestuck's standard second-person narration and a third-person perspective. Almost all of Candy is in the latter, with Dirk's suicide being the sole exception. Meat alternates between the two depending on whether John is the focus or not.
  • Muse Calliope's example of narrative manipulation shows her changing her color and font to that of the narration, strongly hinting at her status as the narrator — or, at least, one of the narrators. Aradia points out that she sounds different somehow, but cannot place what's different about the way she speaks.
• Poor Communication Kills: The Central Theme.
  • Roxy and Calliope's unwillingness to confront Jane about her toxic politics leads to Jane becoming A Nazi by Any Other Name in Candy, or "just" a Donald Trump expy in Meat. Similarly, everyone else's refusal to tell Roxy and Calliope that their support of Jane is unacceptable leads to the carapacians following Roxy to join Jane against Karkat's rebellion.
  • In Candy, Dave and Karkat's unwillingness to clarify their relationship with Jade leads to Karkat quitting in fury, then Dave being trapped in a loveless marriage with Jade.
  • Jake is entirely unable to stand up to his friends, which traps him in a sixteen-year abusive relationship in Candy, and makes him Dirk's helpless puppet in Meat.
  • Had Dirk not been left to stew in his own bullshit for so long, perhaps he wouldn't have talked himself into either killing himself or becoming a monster.
  • John can never tell what Roxy is thinking and never thinks to just ask her, which leads to their marriage ending in misery. Thankfully, he's much better about this in their conversation after the Time Skip.
• Put on a Bus: The only sprite character to make an appearance is Davepetasprite in Meat, once John's back in canon. None of the other sprites seem to exist any more.
  • The Bus Came Back: ... however, thanks to getting sucked into the black hole, Aradia, Sollux, Eridan and Feferi all appear in the Candy timeline, after being Out of Focus or absent for the latter parts of Homestuck proper.
• Really Gets Around: Jade in Candy and Jake in Meat (and likely the other way around as well, it's just not given much focus). In Candy, Jade has been in a number of polyamorous relationships with people of all species. In Meat, Jake has many illegitimate children and is so well-known for his promiscuity that Jane decides to slut-shame him as an election tactic.
• Robot Me: As part of ascending to the Ultimate Self, Meat Rose and Candy Dave both get their consciousnesses transferred into robot bodies by the end.
• Shipper on Deck:
  • In Meat, Dirk clearly thinks Dave and Karkat should get together, and does what he can to facilitate it through his narrative powers. Dave eventually yells at him to stop interfering right before planting a Big Damn Kiss.
  • Muse Calliope approves of John and Terezi getting together in Meat, but takes a more passive approach than Dirk, only suggesting that John stop repressing his true feelings.
  • In Candy, Vriska Maryam-Lalonde clearly thinks that her namesake is in love with Terezi, and approves wholeheartedly.
• Ship Sinking: Both major Jake pairings take huge damage. In Candy, Jane rapes him and abuses him after manipulating him into a relationship, leading to him leaving her and the wreck of Jake/Jane. In Meat, Dirk repeatedly expresses his scorn for Jake, messes with his mind to humiliate him and keep him compliant, and eventually breaks his heart and abandons him, spelling an awful end for Dirk/Jake.
  • To a lesser degree: The Jade/Dave/Karkat pairing takes a rather hard hit as well. Despite their Threesome Subtext, in Candy Karkat and Dave don't love Jade in the way that she loves them and her attempts to push the relationship and their unwillingness to open up end with the three pretty unhappy and breaking up. In Meat, only Dave and Karkat are pushed together, Jade had been possessed the whole time.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Right in the middle. The Epilogues make it clear that there are no true happy endings, some of your childhood friends will grow up into terrible people, and sometimes you'll fail and be miserable no matter what you do. However, strong and healthy communities can stop people from going down dark paths, and your story isn't over until you say it is. This story ends on a low point for pretty much everyone, but there is both a hope and a plan for a better tomorrow.
• Split-Personality Merge: The 'ultimate self'. As time has been progressing, both Rose and Dirk have been assimilating their alternate selves. To Rose this causes painful headaches and delirium; Dirk has been able to compartmentalize it better, but owing to a number of his alternate selves being jerkasses he's gone through a Face–Heel Turn. While this seems to end in Candy as John further detaches the universe from canonicity, at the end of that timeline Dave also realizes his ultimate self.
• Split Timelines Plot: As the Candy and Meat routes progress, the epilogue is revealed to be this. The dead trolls sucked into the blackhole in Meat find themselves in the world of Candy. Muse Calliope is explicitly the same in both routes simultaneously, as the body she's possessing in Candy is the Jade in the timeline created by John in Meat, acting in Meat to wrest control of the narrative back from Dirk, and in Candy to head him off and punish him for throwing things Off the Rails as he heads towards that world with Rose. Candy!John exchanges a series of text messages with Terezi, which stop when Terezi encounters Meat!John.
• Stable Time Loop: Averted, hence the problem. By jumping out of canon and not creating the weapon that Vriska used to kill Lord English, the safe but non-canonical Universe C is fading away... or something.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Wayward Vagabond died sometime before the start of the Epilogues. Since Act 7 showed that he and PM went back in time to help start a civilization, it's likely that he died of old age (assuming Caprapacians can die that way).
• Unable to Cry: After John dies in her arms, Terezi finds herself "so devastated she can't even fucking cry".
• Uncertain Doom:
  • It's never made explicit whether Davepetasprite^2 survives dragging Lord English into the Candy timeline, but Muse Calliope finding a burnt orange-and-green feather implies that it's pretty unlikely.
  • Early on in Meat, younger versions of Jane, Jake, Dirk, and Roxy are stranded in the Land of Colours and Mayhem with no clear way home, and we never see what happens to them.
• Unreliable Narrator: A major theme. Halfway through Meat, the narrator is revealed to be Dirk soon after his Face–Heel Turn, with all of the biases that entails. At the end of Candy, Muse Calliope has an extended conversation about this trope, telling Aradia to always be mindful of the speaker of any particular story.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension:
  • John clearly still has feelings for Roxy, and regrets not acting upon them sooner. He does not know if Roxy returns anything. In Candy they get married but eventually split up, but in Meat he goes for Terezi instead.
  • Karkat and Dave have been clearly orbiting each other for a decade without admitting they want be closer than just friends. In Meat they become a couple, but in Candy they never manage to accomplish the same, with Jade's well-meaning efforts to pull (all three of) them together inadvertently push them further apart. When Jane's anti-troll policies eventually force Karkat to flee and form an underground resistance, it puts a damper on any further development.
• Wham Line:
  • One courtesy of Rose in the Prologue:
    Rose: You will need to travel back into canon and defeat Lord English.
  • Another one happens in the Meat timeline during Rose's visit with Dirk, when the text changes to Dirk's colour and addresses the audience.
  But you already knew that, right?
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Apart from Davepetasprite^2, the sprites are nowhere to be seen.
  • Nepeta (aside from Davepetasprite^2) and Equius are not involved in either path at all, to the point where they are excluded from the tags. Unlike Eridan and Feferi, they do not even get cameos as ghosts.
  • Peregrine Mendicant is never mentioned, but since Wayward Vagabond is dead by the start of the story, she probably is too.

Tropes Applying to the Meat Epilogue

• Actually Pretty Funny: When Dirk expresses fascination that Roxy thinks Calliope is beautiful, Calliope's alternate self expands on this by narratively giving Roxy a wish to remind Calliope they're beautiful every single day. Despite their antagonism, Dirk laughs at this.
• And the Adventure Continues: Deliberately invoked. Dirk reasons that without continued conflict and a goal for the protagonists to chase, the story will end, and therefore (in his view) stop mattering. So he makes himself the new villain, brainwashes Rose and manipulates Terezi to join him, and runs off into space to set up the "most important Sburb session ever played," with the other main characters in hot pursuit. Possibly unbeknownst to him, Muse Calliope is also chasing him down, accompanied by Aradia and Davebot.
• Auto Erotica: John and Terezi hook up in a car.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Despite Muse Calliope's attempted interference, Dirk's plans go off without a hitch.
• Bathroom Stall of Angst: Facetiously referenced when Dave says "brb gonna hit the toilet for a quick power sob" when Karkat doesn't listen to his suggestion.
• Card-Carrying Villain: During his final soliloquoy, Dirk Strider explicitly calls himself a villain who needs to be stopped.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: John, in Terezi's arms.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Past!Rose and Vriska are taken out early into the Lord English fight. In the case of the latter, this is because Dirk was tired of Vriska hogging the spotlight and wanted to permanently remove her from the narrative. She ends up being taken to the Candy timeline.
• Dying Declaration of Love: John dies halfway through confessing his love for Terezi.
• Eating the Enemy: A favored combat tactic of Lord English, who tries to eat both Dave and John when they fight him. He bites off Dave's head, and attempts to swallow John whole, though John escapes. This is also how Muse Calliope finally defeats him.
• Eskimos Aren't Real: Jade didn't realize that Barack Obama, Snoop Dogg, and Nicolas Cage were real people.
• Expendable Clone: Well, expendable alternate-timeline double. Teenage Rose, Dave, and Jade die in the battle with Lord English. Teenage Jane, Jake, Dirk, and Roxy are stuck on Caliborn's planet with no way home.
• Forgot About His Powers: During the fight against Lord English, John never uses his ability to turn into wind. It probably would have saved his life.
• Gaslighting: Dirk does this to several characters using his power over the narrative to warp people's thoughts and gradually change their perceptions and feelings about other characters. He subtly manipulates Kanaya, making her doubt whether Rose ever really loved her, and does the same to Jake to gradually make Jake obsessively in love with him.
• The Hero Dies: John is killed by Lord English's poisoned gold tooth. This method of death bypasses his Resurrective Immortality and makes Jane unable to revive him. If Muse Calliope is to be believed, there's a chance that John's friends could revive him somehow, but even if they do, he'll never be important to the narrative again.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: What Dirk has planned with the "most important Sburb session ever played", or why his plan involved killing John, brainwashing Rose, and manipulating Terezi to join him, we don't get to learn.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Even without narrative control to help him, Dirk is skilled enough with a sniper rifle that he can immediately turn it one hundred eighty degrees, zoom in on a distant apartment, and hit the jugular vein of one of its inhabitants in one fluid motion.
• Incest Subtext: Dirk's kidnapping of his biological daughter Rose may just be case of him seeing her as a Platonic Life Partner and not necessarily romantic or sexual, but it certainly has creepy, incestuous undertones. This is Lampshaded by Dave, who straight up asks everyone if the two of them are now in an incestuous relationship, though it's quashed by others who point out the Incompatible Orientation between the two.
• Ironic Death: Lord English is finally killed in a manner that echoes his past crimes. After trying to eat John and Dave during their fight, he is ultimately defeated when Muse Calliope eats him. She's also an alternate universe version of the sister he spitefully killed, an action which jumpstarted his rise to power. Not to mention the fact that, for all the talk about how Lord English's life and death define canon, his actual death is decidedly and humiliatingly unceremonious: he's dragged into the black hole by Davepeta (a character who didn't even exist until more than 95% of the way through the story) and eaten by Muse Calliope in a scene where he's not even named.
• Kick the Dog: Dirk does this all over the place. He's manipulative and abusive towards Rose, Jake, and Kanaya, and condescending and dismissive towards John, Jade, Roxy, and just about everybody else (except Dave). This is quite possibly a deliberate gambit to make himself hated by the audience, as part of his desire to see himself become the new villain so the story won't end, as well as his self-admitted subconscious sabotage of his own plans.
• Last-Minute Hookup:
  • After having Unresolved Sexual Tension for the entire story, Dave and Karkat finally admit their feelings and hook up right near the end.
  • Similarly, John and Terezi end up having sex and realizing their feelings for each other right near the end. John dies shortly afterward.
• Love Chart: In a Call-Back to Karkat's repeated attempts to make a Shipping Chart for Dave in the main comic, Jade recreates Karkat's relationship chart to argue that Dave (and Karkat) need to get together with her in order to fill out the pairings and avoid incest.
• Meaningful Echo: Dirk's narration mercilessly cashes in Terezi's assertion very early on in Homestuck that she would listen to John bleed while she smells him die.
• Mood Whiplash: The scene where Jake gives his endorsement of Karkat is filled with a mix of tones. Dave decides to go on a long tangent with Roxy about his sexual orientation, a speech that is alternately touching and hilarious, but really not very appropriate considering Dave is needed elsewhere for more important things. Meanwhile, Dirk and Muse Calliope battle for control of the narrative while Dirk threatens to kill a character, which is filled with dramatic tension, and the resolution to the conflict provides a twist. The immediate aftermath of how the scene went down, as narrated by Dave, is hilarious and filled with slapstick and Toilet Humor.
• Morality Pet: Dirk might be willing to insult, manipulate, and/or kill the rest of the cast, but he loves Dave with all his heart and would never do anything to hurt him.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Kanaya is horrified when she realizes how easily she let Dirk take Rose from her. It's only after other characters point out that she would never blindly trust anyone with her sick wife's well-being that it hits her that either she's gone crazy, or Dirk has been manipulating her mind.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Discussed. Dirk says that Jake and Jane can have thousands of children together, all of whom will grow old and die before their immortal parents. He thinks this type of "living through your entire future family tree" sounds badass. Jake strongly disagrees.
• Reality Warper: This is how control of the narrative works: anyone with this power (that is, Dirk or Muse Calliope) gains the ability to shape other characters' thoughts and, to some extent, cause physical events to happen.
• Rewatch Bonus: The Prologue and the first few chapters of Meat take on a new meaning once you know that Dirk is narrating them, and subtly influencing what occurs.
• Serious Business: Played with: Dave's obsession with the economy would be legitimate in a normal society, but given that Earth C is a world where Sburb-type alchemy means the entire planet effectively has an unlimited source of everything the inhabitants could ever need, it ends up being somewhat arbitrary.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: The scene changes just as John and Terezi, and later Dave and Karkat, start to get it on. In the case of the latter, Dirk briefly considers narrating the scene, but decides to give his brother a little privacy instead.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: Dirk's initial plan is upended by Muse Calliope assuming control of the narrative, preventing him from using it. He quickly devises a backup plan to get things back on track. To prevent Calliope obstructing him, he obscures his motives by pretending he's going to assassinate Jake. While he's doing this, he "innocuously" advises Roxy to give the Muse-possessed Jade some sun... giving him a line of sight to shoot her instead. Instead of using a bullet (from which she would revive within minutes), he shoots her with a powerful tranquilizer, putting her into a coma and cutting off Calliope's connection.

Tropes Applying to the Candy Epilogue

• Ambiguously Gay: Of all people, President Barack Obama. He mentions to Dave that he used to occasionally meet Dirk, who taught him about "combat, philosophy, life, love..."
• Amicable Exes: This is how John and Roxy end up: they talk about their issues honestly and openly for the first time, and it's implied they'll stay in contact and continue to heal together. Whether that will translate into getting back together is left up in the air.
• Babies Ever After: Played with. Several different couples all have babies early on, as a nod to the story's nominal status as a Fix Fic involving the characters' happy ending. The story continues, however, and the babies don't make everything happy.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Barack Obama turns out to have played Sburb, been a personal friend of many characters, and time traveled through multiple universes.
• Bisexual Love Triangle: After a polyamorous relationship with the two falls flat, Dave is trapped between his safe marriage to Jade and his attraction to Karkat, the latter having left their family to become a revolutionary.
• Brought Down to Badass: As a result of existing in a non-canon timeline, John loses the ability to retcon, though he retains his wind powers.
• Child by Rape: Tavros Crocker, the child of Jane and Jake after Jane coerced Jake into sleeping with her using the Trickster Lollipop.
• Dead Guy Junior: All three of the new children.
  • Rose and Kanaya's adoptive child is named Vriska, because the original (whom they incorrectly think is dead) is her ancestor.
  • Jane and Jake's child is named Tavros, though the status of Gcatavrosprite is unknown.
  • John and Roxy's child is named Harry Anderson Egbert.
• Death Wail: John lets out one when he incorrectly thinks Terezi's dead.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Gamzee reffering to other people as "my ninjas". He never did this in the actual comic.
• Domestic Abuse: Jane and Jake's relationship rapidly devolves into her abusing him.
• Double Entendre:
  • When Kanaya asks how humans are born, Rose tells her to "use [her] head for a moment".
  • Jade apparently makes jokes about "tying the knot" with Dave and Karkat, referring both to the prospect of marriage and her implied dog penis.
  • When Karkat asks how Kanaya and Rose tolerate each other, Kanaya smugly replies "Quite Thoroughly Enthusiastically And Often". Karkat is not amused.
• Driven to Suicide: Dirk kills himself to better concentrate his power in the Meat timeline after realizing Candy has gone Off the Rails to the point where he has no role in the narrative.
• Easily Forgiven: Gamzee claims that all his sins have been absolved and can't be held against him because he's had a redemption arc. Despite him acting like a more obscene and lecherous version of his pre-sober self, Jane, Roxy, Calliope, and society as a whole agree, much to John's confusion.
• Fourth-Date Marriage: John and Roxy know each other, but haven't hung out in years. After one date and several weeks of being casually interested in each other, they decide to get married. It's because Roxy is struggling with gender dysphoria and is overcompensating.
• Freudian Excuse: When Gamzee returns and declares himself redeemed, he alternates between actually apologizing and blaming his absent Goat-dad and Highblood culture for his many crimes. Calliope immediately buys into this; John... not so much.
• Gayngst: As conveyed by Dave to Obama near the end. He's married to Jade and loves her, but realized too late that he might be gay.
• Goodbye, Cruel World!: Dirk left a suicide note for his friends to find, but according to Roxy, didn't bother to say anything coherent in it.
• Grew a Spine: It takes years, but eventually Jake finally stops taking Jane's abuse, and absconds with their son Tavros.
• Henpecked Husband: Jake becomes one after Jane uses alcohol and the Trickster lollipop to rape him, causing Jake to feel obligated to father the resulting Child by Rape.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Roxy and Calliope continue to support Jane even as she becomes a genocidal fascist tyrant, and refuse to entertain the notion that what she's doing is wrong. Even after Roxy quietly distances herself from Jane near the end, she still thinks the idea of Jane being evil is laughable.
• Insecure Love Interest: Implied to be the case for Calliope toward Roxy. Callie tries to be happy to see Roxy with John, but clearly still has strong feelings for her which might not be entirely unrequited.
• Insistent Terminology: Gamzee insists that nobody can treat him like he's a murderer anymore because he's been through his "redemption arc".
• It Always Rains at Funerals: There's heavy rain during the funerals of both Dirk and Teen Jade.
• It's All About Me: When Jane learns that her father jumped in front of a rocket to save the human president, she's furious at him for an incredibly selfish reason:
  Jane: The human president could be anyone! My dad can't be anyone but him!
• Mess of Woe: John doesn't bother to clean his house.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: Jane devolves into a genocidal fascist, and takes the human government down with her.
• No Ending: By the time Candy ends, the pillars of canon have been so thoroughly warped that the story no longer follows a narrative arc at all, and there are no true endings outside of narratives. We never get to see how the war is resolved, how Jade reacts to Dave's sudden disappearance, whether Roxy and Calliope leave Jane, whether Terezi will ever see (Vriska)'s texts, or anything else, and it's implied that fans will have to finish the story themselves. Homestuck: Beyond Canon thankfully picks it back up.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Virtually everything eventful in the Candy timeline happens off-camera, with the actual story being solely about how those events affect the characters' relationships.
• Rage Breaking Point: John hits his at Harry Anderson's birthday party, where all of his angers and frustrations against Jane's abuse, xenophobia, and tyranny come out in one blast. This is the breaking point in his relationship with Roxy and his son.
• Rebel Leader: Karkat finally realizes his destiny and becomes the leader of a rebellion against the genocidal, Crocker-controlled government.
• Skyward Scream: John bellows his frustration at the sky when he finds his dad's car, with what he thinks is Terezi's blood smeared inside it, and assumes she's dead.
• Straw Nihilist: John, of all people, becomes one. He's become convinced that the non-canon nature of his timeline means that nothing in it matters, so he doesn't even see the point trying to rebuild relationships with his estranged family. Jake and Roxy snap him out of this.
• Starts with a Suicide: Dirk decides to hang himself after realizing his timeline has become irrelevant to canon. This is described in horrifyingly graphic detail, and Dirk's body is in such a state that it is divided into multiple coffins for burial. This occurs very suddenly in the opening chapter, and sets the stage for the entire story's tone.
• Take That!: Gamzee's "redemption" in Candy is a mock of poorly-written cases of Easily Forgiven, and a parody of what happens in fanworks that make use of Draco in Leather Pants. The moment John brings him in to Earth C, he goes on a half-assed excuse about his lusus abandoning him and Alternian society made him the way he was, and then says that anyone criticising him is just as bad as he is. Calliope is moved, but John is not. While he is not outright seen trying to kill anyone after, he's generally portayed as unsettling and disgusting (and John even has a feeling that he sexually abused Tavros Crocker, though this is never proven one way or the other), to the point where his eventual death at the hands of Vriska Serket/(Vriska) is hardly seen as anything tragic.
• Time Skip: Ten years take place between Epilogues Five and Six.
• Took a Level in Cynic: John, big time.
• Visit by Divorced Dad: Near the end, John goes on a drive with his son Harry Anderson. It's the first time they've seen each other in years, but it's implied that this will be the first of many subsequent meetups.
• Who Writes This Crap?!: When John recaps the Candy Epilogue thus far to (Vriska), she responds with "John, this story fucking sucks."
• The World Mocks Your Loss: After the Time Skip, John hurts to see Dave with Jade, and Rose with Kanaya and their daughter, while he's lost his family.
• You Are a Credit to Your Race: Jane says this to Kanaya, who is not amused.

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