Lil Cal

Lil' Cal is a puppet featured prominently in Homestuck. Many renditions of him are seen to exist, including those owned by Dave Strider's pre-Scratch older brother, acting as supposed guardian of Dirk Strider, and an identical one belonging to Andrew Hussie as given to him by Eyes5.

In the pre-Scratch universe
Initially believed by Dave to be thoroughly awesome, Lil’ Cal slowly began to both disturb and HS 2365 (flip him the fuck out) over time. In Dave's defense, Lil' Cal has a rather unnerving aesthetic and seems to possess the ability to appear very suddenly (which is one of Bro's many ways of tormenting his younger brother).

Bro's mind games involving Lil' Cal have given Dave occasional nightmares where Cal talks, causing him to wake up in a cold sweat. This had been due to Cal's presence on Derse where he was seen as moving without external force. He may, however, have simply been animated by Dave's subconscious in his dream, as he has yet to move on his own outside of dream Dave's room. It is speculated that Cal was "alive the whole time," Caliborn referring to Cal as a juju. He does have his doubts, the dead look in Cal's eyes suggesting Cal may have died after leaving Derse. Caliborn also dislikes mentioning Lil' Cal's name, which may be due to its similarity to "Calliope" (which when uttered would cause Caliborn to fall asleep).

During Strife, Bro uses Cal as a weapon, manipulating him so that it appears that Cal is fighting while keeping out of sight using his ninja-like speed. This succeeds in delivering quite the beatdown, and untold psychological damage. This, along with his post-scratch self's possession of the abstratus suggests that Bro has the puppetkind Abstratus.

During Bro and Dave's final strife, Cal is trapped between them and cut to pieces.

After accelerating to a future scene, Cal is shown to have been used as a Tier Two Prototype in Dave's Sprite. When Dave goes back in time, he prototypes the seppucrow with himself, as the Calsprite doesn't seem capable of communication beyond mocking laughter.

Cal like many things in Homestuck has paradoxical origins. Dave was raised by Bro and Cal, he grew fearful of him due to his creepy aesthetic. Gamzee Makara then HS 5931 (burned this fear into his subconscious) using his "cHuCkLeVoOdOoS". This caused a manifestation of these fears to make a 'Dream Cal' which continued to antagonize Dave in his dreams. Rose became annoyed by him and threw him to Derse, but he landed on Bro's hoverboard and was brought to the Ectobiology lab in The Veil by a Transportalizer. This Dream Cal was sent back in time with Baby Bro to grow up with him, become the 'real' Cal, and raise Dave, leading to his paradoxical origins as he causes subconscious trauma that creates him in the first place.

Cal is later stitched back together by Bro at an unknown time and appears with him when he faces Jack Noir in the Land of Wind and Shade. The fact that Bro carelessly allowed Cal to be cut to pieces, but went through a great deal of effort to stitch him back together, suggests that he may have intended for Dave to prototype with him.

After Bro is defeated by the Becquerel-prototyped Noir, he is taken by Noir for unknown reasons (along with Bro's awesome shades). When he throws away all of his trophies Jack Noir keeps Cal. The reason being that he could never stay mad at Cal, and he is a true friend. The only one he has ever known.

Jack stores Cal in some sort of First Guardian dimensional pocket within his own body. When Jack battles the Aradia army upon entering the trolls' session, he sends Cal to entangle one of the attacking robots. That particular Aradia then travels through time, taking Cal with her, and when they arrive they are promptly hit by a meteor and into one of Skaia's defensive portals. Cal lands on Alternia, near Aradia's hive before the creation of Sgrub, and the impact reveals a Frog Temple. She then gives him to Sollux, who in turn gives him to Kanaya. She makes him a new Felt-like outfit, but decides to put him away in her respiteblock when she too becomes unnerved by him. The Black Queen then targeted him with an Appearifier along with the Magic Cue Ball to create.

Later, a sober and murderous Gamzee managed to retrieve Cal from Kanaya and used him to taunt Terezi when he tricked her into falling to the apparently-canon Music Room featured in Trickster Mode of Alterniabound and Kanaya: Return to the core. She never sensed Gamzee working Cal to move around the room (and for all we know, he never did...), but she captchalogued the puppet when ascending to confront Vriska, and apparently removed him during HS 5985 (Attempt rare and highly dangerous 5x SHOWDOWN COMBO), where a blind Sollux aimed his flushed/caliginous/confusing feelings for Gamzee onto him. Following the "duel", Lil' Cal sat in Gamzee's lap as they watched HS 5119 (the miracle of a new beginning) and talked to Doc Scratch at the Critical Moment.

It is presumed that Gamzee still possesses this universe's Lil' Cal on him, even after traveling to the post-Scratch session.

In the post-Scratch universe
Cal briefly appears in the opening to HS 6013 (Act 6) in his Dersite clothing, holding a sword. He is the companion of Dirk, the post-Scratch Bro.

Cal is referred to by Caliborn as a juju, one of many, each of which only exists to turn the lives of everyone who shares a universe with one of them into a nightmare. He tells Dirk he should cut up and burn Cal, referring to the puppet as a bad omen. This particular Cal's eyes are described by Caliborn as looking dead, and he speculates that the Cal may be untainted. He later changes his mind, now believing that the dead-eyed Cal may be even more dangerous than one with normal eyes. Caliborn also claims that only one juju can exist at any given time and cannot be copied, so if Cal appears in both reality and dreams, one of the Cals must be either an illusion or an error that will soon be corrected. As Dirk's iteration of Lil' Cal is a duplicate created by the Scratch, it may be dead because the original still exists. However, the possiblity exists that the Lil' Cal there may have been the original after some Weird Stuff happend. Lil' Cal's limbs have not been seen uncovered, since Kanaya fixed him.

When Dirk's dream self is knocked out by falling rubble on Derse, his waking body is knocked out as well. Lil' Cal is dropped into the fiery ocean below, to which Caliborn repeats his claim that there can only be one.



Trivia

 * MSPA Forums user Eyes5 constructed a real life Lil' Cal puppet which is now in the possession of one Andrew Hussie.


 * Lil' Cal also shares his name with a character that Andrew Hussie created ages ago.
 * In Cascade, Cal was shown to be sitting on Gamzee's lap during a certain HS 5119 (critical moment.) This makes him a candidate for "most important character in Homestuck". And this title is very fitting, as he seems omnipresent and has connections to multiple universes and characters, not to mention two major antagonists took a liking to him, and two others heavily reference him, with shared traits like head shape, eye shape, candy-red cheek symbols, and a single gold tooth in each of their mouths.