Calliope

Calliope HS 6991, also known by her chathandle uranianUmbra, is a player HS 6992 from an unknown session of the game. Initially believed to be a troll, she is in fact a cherub. She has stated that she is a female person and has been shown to have an appearance highly resembling that of. She has HS 6862 (lime green blood), though of a different shade of green than what is shown on the troll hemospectrum. Anyway, lime on the troll hemospectrum is in the place of the cancer sign, so she and uu could have normal (friendly, which is HS 6993 (uncommon among cherubs)) and mutant (exceptionally agressive, like Karkat, who has the same mutant blood color) variations of the same blood. She wears a dark green outfit with a red bow-tie. Each of her sleeves features a bright red 9, 6, or half of the cancer sign, which fits to the cancer theory too. HS 6992

Calliope first appeared at the end of the HS 6013 ([S] ACT 6) flash. At the end of the flash, a terminal with a caduceus symbol can be seen, which also serves as her symbol. HS 6014 (The subsequent panel) shows a pair of troll-like hands (later shown to be gloves), and the screen displays Alternian text that reads "Click ==> to continue". The terminal appears similar to the Homestuck Interface Devices used by Exiles, except with only one screen. Later on we see Calliope typing from that terminal. She claims that the terminal allows her to view the post-Scratch Homestuck Kids until a point in their session when Roxy blacks it out entirely. However, she suggests that she can still communicate through text.

Her whereabouts are currently unknown. Her session of the game is separate from all four known sessions (the kids and trolls' pre-Scratch and post-Scratch sessions). It is possible that she is from the universe the post-scratch kids are supposed to create.

In her session, she is a Muse of Space. She has mentioned to Jane that she has dreamt on Prospit all her life, an ability that thus far has only been possessed by Two other players, both Heroes of Space themselves. The Muse class is an exceedingly rare, powerful passive class only assigned to females.

Personality
Calliope has a very polite, cheerful and friendly demeanor, she tries to be helpful where she can although she is cautious about revealing too much information about herself due to her situation. She seems to be quite creative and is a writer and a talented artist. Her self esteem is quite low and she considers herself ugly, wishing to be more like humans and trolls. Her usually cheery mood can become defeatist and sometimes cranky when faced with problems, especially those relating to uu, but she usually stays quite polite even when in a bad mood.

Relationships
In her conversation with Dirk she talks about her "brother" who is supposed to be her client player, although she has offered to be his client instead. She stresses that he is not her brother in the sense that humans would understand it and they do not even have the same blood color - although they still have genetic similarity. Calliope's dreamself was killed by uu. He promised not to kill her if Dirk plays a "game" with him, however in a "twist ending" he revealed that he had their session's Jack Noir kill Calliope before said game (at least from his temporal perspective).

She could possibly be considered the patron of all the post-scratch kids. Dirk explains to Jake that the chat client allowing him and Roxy to communicate with Jake and Jane was given to him by an "alien friend" in HS 006746 (this) conversation. This more than likely implies that Calliope is the one who sent it to them, and that she did so as a means to set up the foundation for their session.

She later admits to Dirk that she is a fan of their story and near obsessed with them. She also admits to having written fan fiction about them, including fan fiction of the romantic kind.

Calliope seems very friendly and cordial toward Jane and Jake, offering constructive advice about their session. However, due to the rules of hers and uu's game, can be extraordinarilly cagey when reffering to personal details about herself. She is like this with Dirk and Roxy, but not shown to as much of an extent.

She seems very fond of Roxy, and even confides in her during the final moments of her visibilty into Roxy's session. Calliope reveals to Roxy her name, title, and race, and even gives her some fan art of a Trickster Roxy. She also admits to Roxy how beautiful she finds both the human and troll races, and how insecure she is about her own appearance, even going so far as to say that no one would even kiss her as a means of revival as a result. She seems taken aback by the notion of a flushed relationship, due to her race's standpoint on the matter, but does not seem to object much to pale relationships. This is shown during this very same interaction with Roxy.

Symbolism
Both Calliope and her "brother" undyingUmbrage represent the constellation of Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer. Opiuchus is a constellation that crosses Earth's ecliptic, but is not included amongst the twelve signs of the zodiac. It was once considered to be included in a new 14-member Zodiac (along with Cetus), but this idea never caught on in astrology. However, it became popular in Japan as part of a 13-member zodiac and it remains in use in the field of astronomy in dividing the night sky along with the 12 astrological signs.

Calliope's symbol is seen to be a cross between the caduceus (☤), symbol of the Greek god Hermes, and the rod of Asclepius (which is otherwise known as the asklepion), the latter of which being one of the two Ophiuchus symbols. By contrast, undyingUmbrage's chat symbol is the other, less common Ophiuchus symbol. Aside from being the messenger of the gods, Hermes was also the guardian of boundaries and the travelers who cross them. Asclepius, on the other hand, was a healer in Greek mythology. When he died, he became the constellation Opiuchus.

In North America, the caduceus and asklepion are often confused for one another, where the former is used to symbolize the medical profession, while it is used to represent commerce elsewhere. While Calliope uses this symbol, uu uses the Japanese-preferred symbol for Ophiuchus which is a tilde superimposed over the letter U, a stylized symbol of a man holding a snake.

Calliope's symbol may additionally be a reference to the myth of Tiresias, who was turned into a woman for (variously) seven or nine years by Hera as punishment for striking two copulating snakes with a staff.

Relation to undyingUmbrage


undyingUmbrage was first seen soon after Calliope went to sleep. In a later conversation Calliope had with Jane in Myststuck, she claims that uu made a mess of her house while she slept. Seeing that Calliope and uu have never met in person, Jane questions this, which causes Calliope to change the topic. It is possible that she and her "brother" are in fact the same person, alternating between personalities in some "Jekyll and Hyde"-like fashion or other, as she claims that her "brother" made quite a mess in her room, despite the fact that she has never met him. Admittedly, this might simply be because of their client/server connection with uu starting the game while she was asleep. This would explain that he agreed to play the game, and why her room is a mess, because he would have full control over her surroundings. On the other hand, Jane is familiar with the Sburb's environment manipulation abilities leaving it unknown why Calliope would avoid answering questions on the matter. Keeping with this theory, Calliope states in HS 6862 (this chat) with Jane that she and her brother are "Up to qUite a bit fUrther than oUr neck in [this crazy game]". She specifically says "our neck" instead of "our necks". It should, however, be noted that "we are up to our neck in it" is a perfectly common construction even when talking about 2 or more distinct people.

Later Calliope and uu are seen playing a game of chess, uu had created tiny caps for his king and queen in order to hide one as the other after convincing Calliope to let him swap his king and queen's starting positions and thus fool her into believing he had swapped them while actually leaving them in their normal starting position. This and a statement by uu about the state of the board after Calliope's forfeit seem to suggest they have been playing on a single board the whole time. This and their strange staggered method of messaging each other further hints to them sharing a body.

Later Calliope explains to Roxy that when she hears or reads her "brother's" name she will fall asleep and he will wake up and that the same goes for him should he hear or read her name.

As they have different blood colors it unknown how this would work, however as they have separate dream selves it is possible one of their blood colors is only shown in their dream self.

In the Complacency of the Learned films, the character of Calmasis was shown to have been HS 6761 (chained up) with one cuff on each leg, one bearing Calliope's symbol and the other bearing undyingUmbrage's symbol. Each side's background color corresponding to the other's blood colors, Calliope a bright red, and uu a lime green, further highlighting a theorised relation between Calliope and uu.

Calmasis
Post-scratch Rose wrote a book in which Calliope's associated symbol is shown on the cover. The little we've seen of Calliope's outfit sports the same color scheme as Calmasis' clothes, namely bright red accents on dark green. In Act 6 Intermission 2, Andrew Hussie was seen dressed in HS 6571 (Calmasis's outfit) Calliope's sign, horns, and gray face paint.

In the book Calmasis engages Zazzerpan in a game of chess, which closely parallels the game of chess between Calliope and uu. However, during their chess game, it was in fact undyingUmbrage who plays the role of Calmasis, and Calliope who emulated Zazzerpan. Hussie was shown dressed up as Calmasis with Calliope's symbol, yet it was undyingUmbrage who represented Calmasis. This further supports the one-body theory.



It is possible that Calmasis represents both Calliope and uu, with one being the antihero and the other being the antagonist. In this scenario, it would be unclear as to which is which. This would tie in well with Calmasis' androgynous nature.

Calmasis also references a prevalent fan speculation that Calliope is actually an antagonist. As noted previously, Calliope is something of an antithetical counterpart to the trolls, particularly Karkat. It therefore follows that since the rude Karkat turned out to be good, the seemingly kind Calliope could possibly be evil. This further led to speculation that she was an existing character; these speculations were seemingly proven wrong when parts of Calliope's actual appearance were shown.

Calmasis was also HS 6761 (shown in shackles) displaying both Calliope's and uu's chat symbols, set against a lime green and cherry red background representing Calliope's and uu's blood colors. The jagged two-colour split background style seen on that page is one which is normally associated with conflict – for instance, between HS 5669 (Terezi and Vriska), or HS 6711 (and Hussie) – which reinforces the apparent tension between Calliope and uu. Both colors are also the tones for the beta and alpha kids Sburb symbol.

Trivia

 * Calliope is the Muse of epic poetry in Greek mythology. Calliope's name and title are based off of her.
 * Calliope chose uranianUmbra as her chathandle due to her fascination with Uranus's unique rotation, though when explaining this to Roxy she is unable to remember the word for a ball's topspin. In pool, the term for putting spin on the cue ball is english.
 * During the revelation of Calliope's name, Roxy's drunken slur of her name, lined up with her correction in the very next line of text, puts the letters "lil" and "cal" together vertically. This further ties Calliope with Lord English, as Lil' Cal is his ectobiological "grandfather" of sorts.
 * In relation with the theory that she and uu are actually the same person, her true name could be a reference to the protagonist of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel Middlesex in which the protagonist, an intersex individual named Calliope, begins life as a female but switches to being male and takes on the name of "Cal".
 * When the update revealing Calliope's name and species was first released, Andrew Hussie put an author's note on HS 6997 (the page) that showed her true appearance asking readers not to widely circulate the picture; as an alternative, he provided a second version of the page depicting Calliope as a troll, thus preserving the surprise for those who had yet to read the update. The note was taken down a few hours later.
 * Umbra is Latin for “shadow”; in English, it can mean the same, but usually refers specifically to the darkest part of a shadow.
 * Similar to how the trolls were based on common internet archetypes, Calliope is based on the MS Paint Adventures fandom; Andrew Hussie has referred to her as the obnoxious fandom avatar character.
 * Calliope (and possibly uu) may also be a reference to character roleplayers who chat as opposite-gender and opposite-sex characters, or roleplayers who switch frequently between a multitude of accounts and fantrolls, if one or more common guesses about Calliope's gender irregularities and/or connection to uu are correct.
 * Just by looking at some of her traits, the association is not that hard to make. She is a shy person with very low self-esteem, who wants her identity to remain secret, and who hasn't been able to experience social-life outside her computer. More importantly, she likes dressing up as a troll/cosplaying, makes colourful "fan-art", writes (lemon) fan-fics and wish she could have been a Homestuck character instead of herself..
 * HS 6044 (One) of Calliope's conversations with Jane is an antithesis of Karkat's HS 2759 (conversation) with Jade (as well as the HS 4039 (one) between Kanaya and Aradia).
 * Calliope, uu, and Karkat have all abolished "hemotyping" and use custom grays which differ slightly from the more common RGB-defined grays. In the hex code of Calliope's color, the 6's from Karkat's color are replaced by 9's (#626262 becomes #929292); Karkat's symbol is an inverted 69.
 * 92 is the atomic number of uranium. Uranium is naturally silvery grey, but in some forms appears bright green, similar to the two colors of Calliope's chat symbol and also tying with Calliope being a lime-blood.
 * Karkat Vantas' typing color is directly in between that of Calliope and uu's.
 * The 4 universes that Calliope refers to are: the instance of the trolls' universe in which the Ancestors played Sgrub (A1), the instance of the trolls' universe in which the current trolls played Sgrub (A2), the instance of our universe in which the pre-scratch kids played Sburb (B1) and the instance of our universe in which the post-scratch kids will play Sburb (B2).
 * Most likely, as the kids and trolls' pesterchum handles are combinations of the A-C-G-T bases of DNA, Calliope's cherub's obsession with the letter U is a reference to uracil, a nucleotide base that RNA contains in place of thymine (T).
 * Calliope's client begins and ends with cheering, which is different from Trollian, Pesterchum and Bettybother which begin and cease with trolling, pestering and bothering, respectively.
 * HS 6601 (It has been hinted) that the knowledge Rose is compiling into a tome might be congruent to the information Calliope is supplying the B2 kids with.
 * Calliope's fake horns look quite similar to the horns in the poster to the right in HS 3912 (Gamzee's introduction page). Oddly enough, the poster immediately left of that depicts a clown with horns that curve identically on both sides, resembling a "U" shape as a result.
 * Calliope's use of British English ties in with her lime blood, since "limey" is a common slang term for British people.