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[Enzo]

Hasn't it been said (by the trolls) that the kids screwed up so hard (presumably, by introducing the game breaking bug that is JACK NOIR ASCENDANT) that it not only wrecked their game, but the trolls' game as well, not to mention probably every other instance of Sgrub/Sburb in paradox space? It may have wrecked the trolls' stable time loop, if the trollian timeline in the most recent update is any indication.

This is true, but to be fair, this is still only what the trolls think. It's certainly possible, and probable, but hard to really say for certain.

That said, with all this Interdimensional Time Demon Lord English stuff I'm wondering how Jack can stay the Big Bad, seeing as Andrew intends for him to be the story's main villain. Maybe he kills Lord English and takes his power somehow too?

There are basically four options:
1) Jack kills English, making Jack quantifiably stronger than an Interdimensional Time Demon. (As you said)
2) English kills Jack, making Jacks badassness simply a means of quantifying English's immense badassitude. (Less likely)
3) English and Jack join forces, everyone is totally fucked. (Also unlikely)
4) Andrew does something completely fucked up and unexpected. (My money is on this one)

[Josephus]

I speculated on a possible wham finale earlier in this thread.

The four kids, the twelve trolls, Bro, Dad, Mom, and not-dead Grandpa, Jack Noir and Courtyard Droll

versus

Lord English, Snowman, Doc Scratch, Draconian Dignitary, and Becquerel.

_{fuck yeah!!!}

[JoshuaFH]

If something unexpectedly fucked up does happen, I speculate it'll be that one of the kids or trolls, through some weird time loop paradox magic nonsense, ends up becoming Lord English.

I mean, where else is such a powerful demon going to come from?

[Josephus]

Oh shit.

What if it's Garland John? In the words of AH, he's awesome because he's naive and honest and a good friend.

He would be the best, most gutpunchy candidate for Chaos Giygas Lord English!

[Enzo]

Goddamn. GODDAMN. That would actually totally fit, wouldn't it? Jesus wept.

[Aqizzar]

I think the crazy glowing wall of doom at the end of the timeline display gives some new insight into how the rest of the Trolls think.  As said, at the point in time Sad Karkat is posting from, Sollux is still deciphering what went wrong outside of their own session, and they don't know about the kids yet.  It's hard to judge a sense of scale from that graph, but it looks like the Rift could be as little as a day or so into Sad Karkat's future.  (The exact timeline has some hints - Terezi trolls the kids forward in time, at whatever pace she wants.  She gets Sollux to decode the rocket-pack code for John, which presumably took quite a bit of time, and that was after the trolling had already begun.)

But anyway.  So, the Trolls think, or at least Karkat and Sollux think (see Sollux's conversation with Kanaya back when), that their universe is going to end in short order.  Sollux throws a big fat sulk over the matter, but Karkat, Terezi, Tavros, and Kanaya step up to troll the kids and try to figure out what's going wrong.  There's also whichever of the remaining troll-girls who came up with the trolling plan but didn't want to participate - it's not clear who that is, but Vriska's horn was visible in that teaser shot.  Which also means that at least Gamzee, Eridan, and Equius, and probably Feferi, Nepeta, and Aradia (who Karkat keeps calling thoroughly bonkers) all more or less decided not to partake in what may be the answer to their salvation.  We know most if not all of them are still alive in the future, so one wonders just how hopeless they think the situation is.

And now I think back on it more, Karkat decided to troll backwards, to figure out what the kids screwed up.  He mentions this, and that he still hasn't figured it out, long before Jack gets the ring, which from Karkat's perspective is long after.  Apparently, he also degenerated into such a belligerent wreck that he was almost incomprehensibly mad in John's kinda-recent past, when he changed his handle.  Which all means by extension, that from whatever point he started trolling John in John's future all the way to John's past, neither Karkat nor any of the other Trolls helping him ever found what they were looking for.

Y'know, I think I really do feel sorry for Karkat now.  This is what an inherently angry boy looks like he knows there's no point anymore.  When he thinks there's no hope.  And now that I give it a second look, he may well be right.  Which would be a real damn shame if the Trolls exit stage by way of their universe shorting out.

[Soadreqm]

I'm not sure what the kids did to break the game, but I don't think Jack was it. Sure, it DID break the game, since they have like ten hours total to win, when it took the trolls six hundred. The sequence breaking is exactly that, sequence breaking. The pacing of the game has changed. But it's all withing the rules of the game, and shouldn't screw up the trolls' session. Worst thing that could happen is that the human session would be unwinnable, and considering that John did get the infinity plus one bunny in the end, it's not necessarily even that. He could probably take on Jack right now with that thing. And Bro is on the same side as far as we know, and he fought Jack to a standstill with just his sword. They just have for however long the defense portals last to regroup and find and defeat Jack and they'll actually win.

Of course, that won't happen, since they cause the rift instead. I think they did cause the rift, since Sollux apparently traced it back to them. I trust his competence. And the trolls have seen the future with the Trollian viewport, and still hold the view that it was them. Of course, it's almost certain that it wouldn't have happened without the trolling.

Also, the memos give interesting insight into what the trolls were expecting to happen when they started trolling the humans. They already trolled themselves, and that was hundreds of pages of Karkat arguing with himself and giving romance advice. The humans have taken it far better, paying attention at the useful knowledge. Heh, imagine Karkat trying to pull a Dave and travel back in time to warn himself.

EDIT: Oh, right, the trolls DON'T know what went wrong. Maybe they are wrong and the Rift happened independently of all this. Maybe the stupid game is unwinnable. Congratulations, Skaia saved, a winner is you. The timeline will collapse in 4:12:59:57. The purpose of the game is still a mystery. Save Skaia, the source of all creativity. Then what? What's supposed to happen when you do that? What happens if you fail?

[ToonyMan]

And now I think back on it more, Karkat decided to troll backwards, to figure out what the kids screwed up.  He mentions this, and that he still hasn't figured it out, long before Jack gets the ring, which from Karkat's perspective is long after.  Apparently, he also degenerated into such a belligerent wreck that he was almost incomprehensibly mad in John's kinda-recent past, when he changed his handle.  Which all means by extension, that from whatever point he started trolling John in John's future all the way to John's past, neither Karkat nor any of the other Trolls helping him ever found what they were looking for.

:[

That's a tragedy.  I have to find that past John page.

[Aqizzar]

Also, the memos give interesting insight into what the trolls were expecting to happen when they started trolling the humans. They already trolled themselves, and that was hundreds of pages of Karkat arguing with himself and giving romance advice. The humans have taken it far better, paying attention at the useful knowledge. Heh, imagine Karkat trying to pull a Dave and travel back in time to warn himself.

Herein may lie the grand stupidly of it all.  The Trolls all obstinately refused to take their own advice, or at least little angry general Karkat's advice.  They kicked their game to the curb, but are still doomed because of some glitch outside the game.  The kids increasingly take their advice to heart (even if this does fuck with John's and Dave's heads backwards and forwards), but in the end, it turns out the Trolls are the same loony morons and jackasses who wouldn't take their own advice anyway.

Karkat's perspective on how to help the kids is a little funky - as John goes forward in time, Karkat is more forthcoming, but he himself doesn't know as much, and as he readily admits he's pretty dumb.  Tavros is just in it for the Me Too factor, apparently.  Which means the kids are basically hanging on the advice of Terezi and Kanaya.  Kanaya is a serial relationship mediator, who's not very good at her job, kinda mixed around in the head, and is working through her borked up probable infatuation with Rose.  Terezi is halfway competent and actually approaches problems in a sensible manner, but she's also Terezi.

Long story short, everybody's screwed.  Really screwed.

[JoshuaFH]

I think there's a noticeable difference though in how the "Time-physics" of the Kid's world and the Troll's world work. Alternia is in paradox space, and have easy readily available access to things that seemingly cannot exist, like Trollian's trans-timeline communication. However, Karkat and the other trolls seem bound by predestination in that while they have knowledge of the future, they can't control their actions enough to actually change the future, which is what I guess allows paradox space to work in the first place.

However, Dave, having access to time travel, was able to go back and alter the timeline so John wouldn't kill himself accidentally against his denizen at the troll's prodding. Altering the timeline in this way is something the trolls have yet to be able to do, even with similar technology. Then again, Dave IS the Knight of Time, so special rules my only be applicable to him.

[Retro]

I'm not sure that the trolls tracing the problem back to the kids means that the kids originated the problem. Not that I doubt that Sollux can do it, but I'm thinking they may have just tried to trace Rose's beacon back to where it came from and just sort of assumed it was their fault.

[Aqizzar]

However, Dave, having access to time travel, was able to go back and alter the timeline so John wouldn't kill himself accidentally against his denizen at the troll's prodding. Altering the timeline in this way is something the trolls have yet to be able to do, even with similar technology. Then again, Dave IS the Knight of Time, so special rules my only be applicable to him.

Don't forget Dave finding his own bloody corpse from a failed attempt to stop DD in the past, so he just decides to not do that, chucking his own de-grandfather-looped corpse out the window.  And Karkat did mention that their own Maid of Time is out of her mind, probably for precisely this reason.

That said, the only evidence so far of predestination is the Trolls' memos.  And the only evidence there is that they foolishly skim over their own memos in the future, but the Trollian system somehow knows to delete them when the reader is supposed to write it, and they all feel compelled to write them, like you do when you think you need to say something seemingly important.  Karkat kinda hints that the specific content isn't really set in stone, just the size and gist of the conversation.  That said, also remember that Karkat especially loves to blame curses and predestination.  Many of the other Trolls do likewise; it seems to be a common trait, they're all such egotistical basket cases that they have to find things outside of themselves to blame.  Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong.  Kanaya, weirdo that she is, actually comprehends that people can be blamed for stuff they do to themselves, but she plays along with Karkat's lament of predestination without much comment.

At the lack of anything better to say, all the haters complaining about this Shipstuck intermission, you finally have a real brain-bender of a story to decipher.

[JoshuaFH]

*looking at new update*

That would be where I'd go "Goddamnit", or something similar. Now that might not actually be where the timeline/universe/paradox space or whathaveyou ends, it could just be a flaw in trollian's programming that prohibits it from looking that far into the future (like if all the troll's computers are spontaneously destroyed simultaneously, I'm pretty sure that's how it would work.) or if the nature of how the timeline works is being changed at that point in time, so trollian can't track it anymore.

I'm just saying it doesn't necessarily mean the trolls are killed/erased at that point in time, it could mean anything.

Either way, I personally predict more mindfuckery.

[Aqizzar]

*looking at new update*

Bastard, you made me look.

I'm just saying it doesn't necessarily mean the trolls are killed/erased at that point in time, it could mean anything.

Either way, I personally predict more mindfuckery.

I suspect it is just as apocalyptic as it looks, wind up being something a little less total than that.  The Rift will take place, but it will not necessarily be the end of the Troll's universe, or at least necessarily the end of the Trolls themselves.  Could be just about anything, mindfuckery guaranteed.  I say again, if we don't get a sixteen-way "Pose as a team" by the end of this, let alone any explicit character endings, Hussie is going to have a large number of very motivated and emotionally invested people angry at him.  He'd have to wear kevlar if he ever wanted to attend another convention.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

There are basically four options:
1) Jack kills English, making Jack quantifiably stronger than an Interdimensional Time Demon. (As you said)
2) English kills Jack, making Jacks badassness simply a means of quantifying English's immense badassitude. (Less likely)
3) English and Jack join forces, everyone is totally fucked. (Also unlikely)
4) Andrew does something completely fucked up and unexpected. (My money is on this one)

Pehaps Lord English isn't an independant being at all. Perhaps he's just a state, what the one being that obtains enough power to end the universe is called. Thus, Jack is English.