by lackadaisicallexicon

When the word “smug” is brought up in the context of Homestuck, there’s really only one character capable of taking the prize in that category: everyone’s favorite cue ball, Doc Scratch.



Despite the fact that his last appearance in-universe was nearly four years ago, Doc Scratch left a lasting impression on the comic and fandom alike. His overbearing charm and infuriating self-assuredness, coupled with the kind of diction that quickened thirteen-year-old Rose Lalonde’s heart, made him instantly memorable as a character, but it’s his relevance to the overall themes of Homestuck and literary thought that make him, in my opinion, the perfect host.

“Old Scratch” is a somewhat archaic name for the Devil, and Scratch takes on the Satanic role with admirable aplomb; he plays tempter, often contrasting the wishes of characters, be it for information or the cessation of psychological torture, with his own inscrutable goals. He plays the longest game in two universes, and just like Satan in the Christian Bible, he plays to lose, knowing even his small victories result in his ultimate destruction.

And, similar to the created Satan in the hands of Almighty God, Doc Scratch has absolutely no free will to exercise. In Homestuck, the greatest trick the Devil ever played was convincing the people with real power that he was a player at all. Consider: Doc Scratch knows the inevitable result of his actions is his destruction, is granted omniscience by the shiny white orb that is his head, and never once attempts to preserve his own life. And why should he? “He is already here”, after all, and resistance is inherently futile. Doc Scratch is the fulcrum on which a stable time loop swings, and it is inescapable.

By contrast, players exhibit a remarkable amount of free will, for all their vaguely philosophical grappling with the question of whether they have it. As of the present canon, John Egbert’s powers grant him free will over not just his own actions, but the fabric of causality itself. For all that Doc Scratch pretends that the players have no choices, the game itself contradicts him; if the players’ choices were irrelevant, there would be no reason to preserve them in the form of doomed timelines that can still affect the preserved one.

Scratch’s only weapon of misdirection against players’ will is his omniscience. While he is unable to lie outright, he can bend the truth at an 89.999° angle, and he is extremely good at it. In the absence of this omniscience, though, as best demonstrated by the Void field surrounding Equius Zahhak, he is prone to violence and easily manipulated by someone with agency and the requisite intelligence to use it.

What makes Scratch such an appealing character, in the end, is much the same reason that reading A Study in Scarlet for the first time has been astonishing readers for over a century: a person given a massive amount of information and processing power can prevail in tasks that seem impossible, and watching them do so is a pleasure. Scratch’s goal is, in the end, just that of a cue ball: to sink every other ball into the proper pocket in one precisely calibrated shot, with no control over the cue that directs him nor the reaction of the balls. He does it on the micro scale with the Felt…

…and on the macro scale with everything else. Haven’t you ever wondered why his chessboard is shaped like the Battlefield at the center of Skaia, the passive arbiter of fate? Checkmate, and he never has to move a single piece.

Small wonder, then, that he makes the perfect host for Lord English. After all, there’s nothing easier than making a previously empty house familiar, and since there’s a little slice of English-soul inside him, in the end it’s true that there’s no place like home.