Author commentary: I would never claim the absolute ability to recall Homestuck's entire text word for word, but I feel quite confident this is the one and only time the troll biology term "absurdity palate" is ever used by a troll, or by anyone else, for that matter. Which leads one to wonder whether it really is a troll biology term, or if it's just one of the many things made up by these guys to mess with humans and sound more alien to them? A number of the phrases and concepts trolls use seem to invite the reader to wonder this. In fact, you could argue that almost every worldbuilding feature of trolls and their culture invites the reader to wonder the same thing about the author. /
Here's where Karkat first cops to the fact that he stupidly railroading himself into having a backwards conversation with John. It's pretty challenging to write a conversation like this over an extended series of exchanges, where one person has full knowledge of future conversations that haven't even been written yet. But that didn't stop me from just diving into this idea like a fool, just like our boy here, Karkat Vantas himself. It's tough doing something like this in an improvisational manner without really charting it out first, because by the nature of the task you just have no idea at this point how these future conversations went. You just know, as Karkat alludes to, that they start becoming friendlier, which is an outcome likely precipitated by the fact that Karkat tells John that's what's going to happen, and therefore starts saying friendlier things himself. This is how everything works in the story from now on. Things turning out to be the cause of themselves, especially when it comes to the content of stupid conversations. See, this is why you needed a good time-travel primer during the Midnight Crew Intermission. /
/Pulls up to the Jadekat Fuel Station, beeps horn twice for fast & friendly Full Service/ :)