I'd like to ask what are your thoughts on John's dream in the prolouge? I thought the black hole was foreshadowing calliope but no, the black hole john was dreaming about was implied to be literally consuming all of paradox space and killing ghost and "destroying their hypothetical futures" I think this is wildly overlooked.
The black hole in John’s dream is the Dead Cherub’s black hole, as we experience it in Act 7. Its consumption of paradox space and ghosts is all true; that’s why we’re left with only an empty white void when he visits in the Meat Epilogue.
On the surface level the black hole is described that way because at that point in the story, that’s what we’re being led to believe is the truth; that everything being sucked into the black hole is dying.
In a more coded sense, the black hole represents a gateway to and from canon (See Pick Your Poison, Is Candy Canon?, Black Hole Theory), and John having nightmares about it foreshadows the choice he makes that sets the Homestuck Epilogues into motion; to either travel back into canon to the battlefield surrounding the black hole, or to allow himself to be taken into noncanonicity, where the black hole actually leads. Rose more or less confirms this when she offers her wisdom on the next page regarding her own visions.
It’s anyone’s guess at this point. I’ve been skeptical that the Friendsim series would ever tie in with the Earth C plotline, but this teaser definitely seems to be trying to make us think that’s what it’s doing with the white door imagery and the juxtaposition of Earth’s sun and Alternia’s moons in the same image.
So we’re getting 14 episodes of Pesterquest, with a standard of two characters per episode. That means 2 episodes for the kids, so we’re left with 12, which is enough episodes for 2 sets of 12 characters.
Are we getting the Alpha trolls as well as the Betas? That probably wouldn’t make much sense if we weren’t also getting the Alpha kids, but they wouldn’t fit unless at least four of the troll characters where pushed into double-character routes like Kuprum and Folykl, and that seems impractical and unlikely. The concept of the Scratch might also be pretty difficult to explain easily to a newcomer to the franchise.
Are we getting the ancestors? That would certainly serve as both exciting fanservice for existing fans and as something easy to digest for people who only know Hiveswap and/or the Friendsims, and it doesn’t require any unnecessarily complicated timeline jumping beyond travelling to the past of an Alternia already familiar with the player.
On the other hand entirely, it would be deceptive at best and inaccurate at worst for the game to be called Pesterquest and yet feature only 1/5 human characters. Going with the above assumption, we are also to assume the protagonist has travelled back to their home planet to meet with four kids only to then just go back to Alternia for the rest of the adventure. A plot like this could well have been simply called a direct sequel to the Friendsim.
EDIT:
Show’s how much attention I’ve been paying!
Still, that leaves us with between 6 and 10 mystery characters, depending on whether we assume Alpha kid involvement or not, and that’s both an unconventional amount for human characters and a significant amount of trolls to potentially be included in a game called Pesterquest.
It said 14 episodes, up to 20 new friends. My bet is on all 8 kids plus all 12 trolls.
That makes the most sense numerically, but I’m still hung up on the fact that calling it Pesterquest when there’s more troll characters than human characters is a bit of a misnomer.
If we get all 12 trolls we can only presume some of them will team up for episodes. I’d love to see an Equius and Vriska episode but unfortunately Vriska and Terezi seems much more likely at this point in time.
