by @marathemara

I’ve been sitting on this post for far too long, seeing as I wrote Why I Like Caliborn as my very first post on this blog. With that post, I was trying to be edgy, to challenge readers’ idea of what a Why I Like blog should be about by finding fun and interesting aspects of a character designed to be unlikeable. Calliope is literally the opposite of Caliborn, though, and so it struck me as obvious that she was good and sweet and imaginative and a loveable underdog and everything the conventions of twenty-first-century literature directs us as readers to like and sympathize with. When someone’s that pure and good, what’s there to write about?



But just as Caliborn shows unexpected depths over the course of his journey, Calliope is much more interesting and relatable of a character than the good-vs-evil dichotomy would suggest. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I am Calliope in a lot of ways. I have often wished I lived in faraway fictional worlds rather than my own bland everyday life. I have created cosplays and fanworks and tried to find community through fandom. I have had my interests disparaged and misunderstood by my peers, and had a few unpleasant run-ins with those members of my fandoms who are more interested in controlling than in creating (as Caliborn tends to be). I have felt anxiety and impostor syndrome even in safe places, as certain that I am unworthy of my friends as they are certain I am worth their time. Calliope experiences these things in the extreme, growing up isolated save for Pesterchum and sharing a body with a brother who wants to kill her, but in reading her story, I can say I’ve been there. I know how you feel.

Even if you don’t personally identify with Calliope’s experiences, you have to admit that she’s more, and more interesting, than simply A Good Person. All timelines’ Calliopes are good by nature; ours is different because she was allowed contact with humans. In the one doomed timeline we know about, a Calliope without access to other people’s voices and thoughts and lives grew strong, predominated over her brother, and went on to become a solitary and terrifying being like her mother.



This is the God Tier Calliope who meets Jade in the Furthest Ring. She is distant and brooding. She’s good and she’s important, but she’s certainly not nice. Meanwhile, our Calliope has made human friends, learned human morality and empathy, and grown through her relationships with the Alpha Kids to become someone who is capable of living in a world with other people and being loved instead of feared.

[In Homestuck, it seems nurture trumps nature at every turn.]

Calliope is an inspiration to us all, which is good because that’s literally her mythical role in the Game: the Muse of Space, one who inspires creation. She inspires Dirk to rebel against the Dersite agents trying to kill his dreamself. She inspires Caliborn to compete with her, and maybe even to discover a creative side we thought he lacked. She (or at least the legend of her) inspires Vriska and Aranea to search for ways to defeat Lord English. She inspires Roxy to recreate the Matriorb. She inspires me to write blog posts and publish them, even knowing that very few people will ever see or appreciate them. And she reminds me that, no matter where I find myself, there is always someone who cares about me.