HAHA it's a fair question, there's two retcons in series and while that includes the alpha kids' timeline, it doesn't really factor in the amount of stuff that happens during that time. i'll be honest, i didn't find homestuck too confusing? i probably had a suitable amount of prep though because i'm a long time when they cry fan, so timelines are actually one of my favorite story tropes. that said, it helps to think of a big event that happened in each time line or come up with a name for each of them; for example, for anything pre cascade, i refer to that as "before the scratch" and after cascade is what i just call "the reset" mentally? i don't think this is a fandom accepted term (i'm actually new to hs so lmao idk what the majority of fandom agrees on), but it helps me. "before the scratch" i think of as acts 1-4 which is easy enough, whereas "the reset" is all the intermission heavy stuff. alternatively, this is the Heartbreak Timeline, because, [s] game over,, after that is the retcon! separating it into three chunks helps me a lot, personally, and breaking it down like that means that you can quickly come up with chunks of references.

that said, a lot of it is also just constantly rereading lmao, the wiki has a bunch of links which make that incredibly easy these days - i don't know if it was a thing back when hs was first starting up as The Big DWRP And General Fandom Fad, but i find that if i'm ever struggling to find something, remembering what chunk of the story it occurred in and who jade said it to makes that a lot easier!

ryoji is really cute and i love seeing him around! he's a very forward character which i'm pretty curious about; were there any worries you had bringing him into the game, whether they were with adapting his canon self to be au or whether you could achieve the effect, so to speak, that you wanted with him in game? (i.e. just making him fun to tag - which he super is, i love our thread!)