user davestriderpostscratch raises an interesting point that I’ve so far not really been factoring into my assertion of Cronus as English’s first intended host:

…i wonder what english’s preoccupation with hope players is though […] it’s obvious that caliborn has a Thing about jake (stole his name etc) […] so i’m… assuming that’s why caliborn would try to use cronus as a host?

when English’s possession spell bounces off Cronus, “the legacy of defeating the evil magician would have to 8e passed on to his descendant, or […] perhaps on to some other Hero of Hope.” so to us, looking at the story “linearly”, Jake is a Human Substitute Cronus. but from Caliborn’s perspective Jake isn’t a “substitute” anything; he’s The ideal host. so following Caliborn in his backward time travels, it’s really Cronus who becomes the Troll Substitute Jake, a demonstration of symmetry in alchemy. which is perhaps the secret reason behind Cronus’ identification with humans, or at least his particular phrasing that he “vwas actually a human "born” in the body of a troll“?

could even be that this is yet another case of Aranea’s biases bleeding through into her storytelling; she thinks of herself as an ancestor to the rest of the trolls, so it’s natural that she’d describe time as flowing linearly from Beforus in the direction of Earth. but again, Caliborn isn’t in the business of starting at the beginning; he comes in at the end and then goes backward. so is it instead that Caliborn tried to inhabit Jake’s body first, and then failing that, sought substitutes among the trolls as he travelled back? (in the tags on that last post I said I "need to start thinking of the scratch as a 1 dimensional line between timelines or worlds”, with the implication being that the scratch is like a signpost English puts down to delineate that which is within from that which is without his domain: but if we think of English as a backward traveller, maybe the scratch - represented, remember, by the scratches on Cronus’ face - is more like a ceiling that he hits his head on, preventing him from going any further?)

or maybe both interpretations are true, and English’s failure to possess Jake OR Cronus has him pinging back and forth along Homestuck’s timeline, an eternal loop perhaps connected to the one Calliope seals him in by trapping him in that black hole in Act 7…