you know, since we’re all looking forward to the prospect of burning in homestuck hell again, I think this is a good opportunity to ramble on about a plot point in the current timeline/scenario which……. which has me very suspicious I guess? And I’ve been kicking this back and forth in my head for the last several months.



See, back in Act 5 Kanaya says that Echidna offered to tell her the location of the Final Frog in exchange for a request– but this request was, in her words, impossible. Since it was impossible Karkat did the Ultimate Alchemy with the frog as-is, lacking literally any other choice on the matter, and the result is well known.



But she never said what that request was. Not a single peep in the entire story. And Karkat himself doesn’t seem to know what it was either; she just very insistently and pointedly says “it was impossible, nothing else to say”, and he never interjects or clarifies. He just seems to trust that it is.



The funny thing about this is that even though Echidna asked Jade to carry five planets along when she escaped the session, Jade herself did not see the need to hide this strange and absurd request from anyone. Not only that, but she accepted it. She had no idea how she was supposed to accomplish this feat, but she told Echidna she would anyway. And then she told other people what she was expected to do.



So… why didn’t Kanaya? Why did she reject Echidna’s conditions out of hand? For someone like Kanaya who has a Very Particular Way Of Speaking, who came back from the dead, sawed people in half and was so prolific in her Cloud Watching in Skaia, what does “impossible” mean in this context?

And if Echidna’s demand was so impossible before that she wouldn’t even speak of it, how is it that Echidna’s demand right now is so… conveniently what she clearly already intended to do anyway?

So a part of me is trying really hard to convince me that she lied to Karkat. For his own good, of course.



The problem with this line of thinking is that, well. It’s been established that Kanaya doesn’t lie. Eridan even says that she teases, but doesn’t lie. And when put on the spot, she can’t come up with anything better than “oh Karkat really blitzed his chakras so he stayed behind”.

But at the same time… clearly “not lying” is a personal choice for her, rather than some compulsion or quirk. She’s uncomfortable with lying, so she avoids it for the most part. But if she had an idea about what Echidna might want to tell her, and knew in advance that she might have to lie about it, it would not be impossible for her to rehearse enough to sound plausible… would it?

See, my brain seems to have come up with the incredibly compelling scenario where Echidna wants Kanaya to kill Karkat, to which she says “impossible” while meaning “unacceptable” because the latter would generate questioning. Lying without quite lying. Avoiding a lie while letting someone else misinterpret her anyway.

And that would really explain a lot, including why Echidna’s terms this time around seem so easy, so convenient and so helpful and so hopeful and so suspicious…

…and it makes me feel a little crazy for thinking it up. Both possibilities, that Kanaya is lying and that she isn’t, are too neat and convenient in different ways.



When I think “Kanaya could probably lie to Karkat’s face given some forewarning”, am I being biased in my interpretation of Kanaya?

