by @marathemara​

Warning: Things get stabby a little farther down.

The Black Queen and her Archagent (known at various times as SS and Jack Noir) are Dersite game constructs, fixtures in any properly functioning session of the Game. And they are always, as far as we know, kismeses. However, every time we as readers have seen their relationship in a new session, it is different; and those differences shed a fascinating light on the differences between the Alternian and Earth sessions.



The Alternian session is, as far as we know, a normal, perfectly functional, session. In that session, Jack and the Queen are the textbook example of kismesissitude. They are rivals; they compete for power, and in so doing drive each other to be stronger and more successful. Jack advises the Game’s players on how to defeat the Black Queen; the Queen advises other players on how to avoid being betrayed by Jack Noir. It’s all part of the game.



Even after both are exiled and sent into the distant future, their rivalry continues like clockwork. Jack–now Spades Slick–founds the Midnight Crew with his fellow Dersite agents; the Queen–now Snowman–joins their rivals, the Felt. She finds little ways to embarrass and inflict pain on him; he does his level best to erode her power base without harming her. Again, all part of the game, all part of the relationship–but with a twist. Now their little game is being manipulated by Doc Scratch, who has linked Snowman’s life with that of the universe they live in. He persuades her to make her attacks more painful, her watchful eye more embarrassing, to bend the rules of her relationship with Jack and goad him into breaking them, so that when the time is right he will kill her, fulfilling one of the conditions under which Lord English can enter the universe.

After killing Snowman and experiencing the death of his universe, Slick somehow ends up under Hussie’s care. By the time Hussie is murdered by Lord English, Slick has recovered somewhat from his ordeals and is able to go back to doing what he did best as Archagent: find some people to boss around and use them to get out of his predicament. He even found a new matesprit, around whom he is capable of being a real gentleman. That forced rest was important to Slick’s character development, at least based on the behavior of Jacks Noir who did not spend an unspecified time in bed thinking about what they’d done.

In the Earth session, things are slightly different. Karkat’s carelessness in rushing the creation of Earth’s universe introduces a mutation into the session that makes Jack angrier and less mentally stable. (Remember, we’re talking about a person who, in a universe without this mutation, considered stabbing people a good way to get their attention. Angrier and less stable is really bad.) He is still the Black Queen’s kismesis, but he’s more primed to resent any decision she makes that concerns him, especially the decision to make all her staff dress as harlequins to reflect the first prototyping of John’s kernelsprite. She’s aware of his resentment, and makes a special effort to persuade him to follow her policy. He responds by killing her and stealing her ring of power. He doesn’t stop to consider what he’s done; the power he’s just gained fuels his desire for revenge on anyone who could possibly have harmed or offended him ever, and each murder just makes him feel more powerful and more angry.

This Jack, better known as Bec Noir, now has a flush crush on the Prospitian Monarch, though he doesn’t quite seem to realize he’s done nothing to impress her in that quadrant (as Spades Slick, after his long rest, was able to impress Ms. Paint by being gentlemanly). Quite the opposite, in fact: to PM, he’s the perfect rival.

But even Bec Noir is calm and respectable compared to Alpha Earth’s Jack. This Jack came into being after Bec Noir, as much as anything in separate timelines can be said to happen before or after each other, so Karkat’s mutation is more advanced in him. By the time we meet him, the Black Queen is long dead, I suspect by Jack’s own hand, and Jack himself is well off the deep end. Instead of meeting him in a bureaucratic office avoiding paperwork, we find him in the field, murdering dreamselves himself and then languishing in Prospitian prison while the Draconian Dignitary runs things on Derse and chats up the Condesce. This Jack is so quick to resort to violence that Slick, the name the calmer Alternian Jack chose for himself, has become an ironic nickname.



In an “ordinary” session, Jack hates the Black Queen passionately but would never actually kill her. The mutation Karkat’s haste introduced into the Earth sessions change successive Jacks’ personalities in fascinating ways, making him more and more likely to kill the people he hates, starting with the woman who would otherwise be his true hate, and less likely to take the time to calm down and see what it’s like to not be a cold-blooded killer. I really hope Ms. Paint never runs into either of the Earth Jacks. Stay in that dimensionally transcendental oven, dear.