by @ohthewhomanity

Remember Calsprite? He’s the smuppet-shooting, incessantly laughing, and phenomenally unhelpful sprite of the doomed Dave who would eventually become Davesprite.



Way back when we first learned about doomed timelines and Dave’s time powers, Terezi sent John to his death at the hands of his denizen, causing the trolls to lose contact with the kids and Jade to never enter the Incipisphere at all. Also, Dave prototyped Lil Cal into his dead bird sprite, and his annoyance at Calsprite’s never-ending HAA HAA HEE HEE HOO HOOs was part of his decision to cut his losses (after what was for him several months and for us only about five pages) and head back in time to become his own sprite and make sure that John did not die.

But what if I told you that Calsprite wasn’t just an annoyance? What if Calsprite’s existence was a real problem? Forget John’s death; the most important reason that Dave had to go back in time and become Davesprite was to keep his past self from prototyping Lil Cal.

As far as we know, there’s no way to get something back out of a sprite once it’s been prototyped. It’s stuck there. And if Lil Cal had been stuck inside a sprite, the entirety of Homestuck canon as we know it would have fallen apart.

Lil Cal is a juju, and vital for the creation of Lord English. Lil Cal must be carried through the Beta Kids’ session, first by Bro and then by Bec Noir, until he’s sent on a crash-landing Aradiabot to Alternia, where he’s used by Snowman to prototype Doc Scratch, who raises the Handmaid, causes most of the mayhem that the Alternian Trolls, the Midnight Crew and the Felt, and the Beta Kids go through, and provides the means for Lord English to re-enter the universe.

If Calsprite exists, Doc Scratch cannot, and so Lord English cannot.

Lil Cal could still follow Dirk to the Alpha Session. He could still end up in Caliborn’s hands and be filled with Caliborn’s soul. ARquiusprite could still be sucked into Lil Cal.

But if there is no Lil Cal being carried around in the Beta Session, Lil Cal cannot be used to make Doc Scratch.

And Doc Scratch is the reason why Alternia is the way it is; the existence of his green moon is the impetus for the post-scratch troll society to differ from Beforan society. The trolls as we know them would not exist without Doc Scratch. They might not even play the game at all. And that means that Earth is never created, and Gamzee never sends the original Lil Cal into Dave’s tower on Derse…which is a paradox.

Here’s another thing that Calsprite’s existence would prevent, for obvious reasons: Davesprite. If Dave had gone back in time but still let Lil Cal be prototyped, there would be no Davesprite helping defend Dave, fight Bec Noir, comfort Jadesprite, angst over his relevance to the universe, and most recently, prototype with Nepetasprite, forming Davepetasprite^2.

Therefore, Calsprite’s existence would negate both Lord English and the person who is the current prime candidate for defeating Lord English. Also, humans would not exist, and the Alternian trolls as we know them would not exist.

Dave’s time-travelling wasn’t to save John. John’s death was to ensure that Dave ensured that Calsprite was never created. The John from that doomed timeline even explained it to Vriska later: “If I didn’t die [at the hands of my denizen], we never would have been born in the first place”.

It’s a little more complicated than that, but still.

I find it cool that a character seemingly so innocuous, just an annoying, amusing sidenote who lasted approximately five pages before being unwritten, is such an important tide-turning character. So it goes in Homestuck.