Complacency of the Learned

The post-scratch book cover.

Complacency of the Learned is a story about wizards written by Rose Lalonde and her post-scratch self. Pre-scratch the story was a work in progress recorded in Rose's journals; post-scratch at least six volumes were released, all fairly long doorstoppers, and the series was considered a huge literary success.

The pre-scratch version of the story is an allegorical retelling of the events of the A2 Sgrub session. Both Doc Scratch and the Writ Keeper were shown to have an interest in this version.

The post-scratch version directly relates to Lord English and the Condesce and was written as a passive aggressive taunt to the Batterwitch. A poster of what is presumably the cover hangs from the door of Roxy's room and features a caduceus on it.

Characters

The Learned

The Learned were a group of twelve wizard elders.

• Zazzerpan the Learned - Also known as the Predicant Scholar, Zazzerpan was the leader and eventually sole surviving member of the wizard elders. He is known to have never lost a match of chess, not even to the gods.
• Frigglish - Roxy named her cat after one of the wizards in the book, which she sympathizes with the most. Frigglish was cursed by Calmasis to write virtually unreadable works of his knowledge, similar to the proportions of both Complacency of the Learned and Homestuck, and ended up being killed by his own books (note that in the beginning of Homestuck, John says Colonel Sassacre's Text could kill a cat if dropped, and Roxy's cat faces this precise fate).
• Executus
• Smarny
• Ockite the Bonafide
• Gastrell the Munificent
• Six other unnamed wizards

The Disciples

The Disciples were a group of twelve children who were apprenticed under The Learned, before eventually rebelling against their Complacency due to being corrupted by knowledge.

• Calmasis - An androgynous young apprentice who is both the antihero as well as the main antagonist of the books. S/he turned Zazzerpan's fellow disciples against the Complacency and killed the wizard elders one by one, until only Zazzerpan was left. It is heavily implied that Calmasis is a representation of Calliope and Caliborn's shared body, being an androgynous being, with a similar suit, in addition to the chains that the two wear in order to tether each other away from their sides of the room being shown in one shot. In the same picture, Calmasis is shown holding Doc Scratch's gun, which Calliope is known to possess. Even the name, Calmasis, could be seen as Calliope or Caliborn.

Plot

The books' main story is focused on Calmasis' efforts to kill all members of the titular "Complacency of the Learned", a group of elderly wizards led by Zazzerpan. All twelve are killed but Zazzerpan himself, forcing a showdown.

The cover art above depicts the final chess match between Zazzerpan and Calmasis. It has many similarities to the events on The Battlefield, such as becoming checkmated and eventually losing The King but not ending the game. This seems to reference a game of chess between Calliope and Caliborn in which Caliborn seems to lose his king, though he reveals it to be his queen in disguise. This enables him to win against Calliope, who, like Zazzerpan, had never previously been beaten. The chess pieces Calliope uses also closely resemble the appearance of the two shown on the cover of Complacency of the Learned.

Potential version differences

Aside from the level of completion it is unknown how, if at all, the plot differs between the pre- and post-scratch versions of the story. However some of the symbolism of the story may suggest differences between the versions. In the pre-scratch version it is stated there are twelve Disciples who are meant to symbolise the trolls, however it is never stated how many disciples exist in the post-scratch version. The only named disciple, Calmasis, who is symbolic of Calliope and Caliborn, who are in turn symbolic of theories about a 13th troll, may suggest a different number of disciples between the two versions.

Trivia

• "Calmasis" is a pun on Lil' Cal and Salmacis, a villainous androgynous nymph in Greek mythology.
• When she was younger, Roxy wrote her own wizardfic called Wizardy Herbert. It is not known how much Complacency of the Learned inspired this work.
  • In real life, Wizardy Herbert is a novel that Andrew Hussie began writing but never finished; he later incorporated some of its concepts into Homestuck. Zazzerpan and his Complacency were originally extremely minor Wizardy Herbert characters.
    • In Hussie's Wizardy Herbert, the members of the group were Girgund the Stately, Frigglish the Jocund, QuianZu the Auspicious, Cloudspindle the Maven, Smarny the Quiescent, Dillfly the Sober, Executus the Spry, Bund the Laconic, Gastrell the Munificent, Zazzerpan the Learned, Ockite the Bonafide, and Cuttletard the Deft (in that order.)
• In Act 6 Intermission 2, Andrew Hussie dresses like Calmasis.
• Calmasis' mission to kill off all of the members of the Complacency mirrors Spades Slick's mission to kill all of the Felt.
• Calmasis's green coat and red bowtie resemble the outfit of Whistles the Clown.
• It is possible that Frigglish is a reference to Nanna, who was killed by a copy of Colonel Sassacre's Daunting Text, which could definitely be described as "a book [filled] with all of h[er] arcane knowledge... a virtually unreadable patchwork of impenetrable erudition."
• The twelve members of the Learned (in the post-scratch version of the story at least) could all be representatives of the twelve players who made it through to claiming the Ultimate Reward (the eight human kids plus Karkat, Terezi, Calliope and Kanaya), however not enough of the book has been published for this to be confirmed or denied.
• The Problem Sleuth Volume 3 book commentary mentions that the word "complacency" is a collective noun like "murder of crows". Hussie says: "A complacency is a group of good wizards, while an obscenity is a group of evil wizards."