Lil Cal is a puppet featured prominently in Homestuck. Many iterations of him have been observed to exist, such as one in the possession of pre-scratch Dave's older brother, another acting as the supposed guardian of Dirk in the post-scratch universe, and even an identical one belonging to Andrew Hussie as given to him by Eyes5.
Biography
Origin
Lil Cal has been identified as a juju, and as such, his existence is an ontological paradox, meaning he has no true point of origin.
Cal is first introduced as having been part of Dave's upbringing by his bro; however it quickly becomes apparent
that Dave is severely unnerved by the puppet. This turns out to be partly due to the presence of a copy of Cal in Dave's dream room on Derse's moon. The existence of this version of Cal is not explained at this point in the story, and was assumed to simply be a consequence of Dave's exposure to Cal while awake.
Once the session begins, other characters become entangled in Cal's circuitous path through paradox space. During a visit to Dave's dream room, dream Rose becomes annoyed by Cal and throws him out of the tower. Rather than plummeting to an uncertain fate, Cal miraculously lands on Bro's traveling hoverboard, which brings the puppet to the ectobiology lab in the Veil through a transportalizer. It is assumed that, shortly after, when the other Guardians were preparing for the ectobiology session to begin, Dave's Bro gave Cal his signature gray hat. During the events of The Reckoning, dream Cal is then assigned to a meteor with baby Dirk, who later grows into Dave's bro. This means that the real Cal who torments Dave in his waking hours is, in fact, a future version of the very same Cal who haunts his dreams.
Universe B1 (pre-scratch Earth)
Initially believed by Dave to be thoroughly awesome, Lil Cal slowly began to both disturb and flip him the fuck out over time. In Dave's defense, Lil Cal has a rather unnerving aesthetic and initially seems to possess independent mobility, including the ability to appear very suddenly. This movement is, in reality, the work of Dave's bro flash-stepping around and moving Cal as he does so. This has, however, also happened outside of the presence of Dave's bro, which has been suggested to be Dave's subconscious mind manipulating Cal in the same way that John and Rose's subconscious minds had them write on their walls. It is unclear how often Cal's movements are controlled by Bro, how often they are controlled by Dave, and how often they are controlled by other means.
The effects of Bro's mind games give Dave occasional nightmares in which Cal talks, causing him to wake up in a cold sweat. This is due to Cal's presence on Derse's moon, where he can seemingly move without external force. Cal possesses this ability there because that incarnation of him has (presumably) been animated by Dave's subconscious.
During strife, Bro uses Cal as a weapon, making Cal a part of his supposed puppetkind abstratus. Bro manipulates Cal so that it appears that Cal is fighting with incredible speed and maneuverability. This succeeds in delivering both a physical beatdown and psychological trauma.
During Bro and Dave's final strife, Cal is trapped between them and cut to pieces. These pieces are collected, along with a load of junk out of Dave's sylladex, by his seppucrow sprite and made into a nest for the cruxite egg that must hatch in order for Dave to enter the session. Shortly after Dave enters, he is then faced with the task of second tier prototyping the sprite, which seems to want him to prototype something unsettling, which is unsurprisingly revealed to be the pieces of Cal. However, this timeline is doomed by several factors resulting from John's death, so Dave is forced to go back in time. He then proceeds to self-prototype his sprite instead, resulting in Davesprite, and thus averting Calsprite's existence. In this corrected timeline, Dave soon loses track of the pieces of Cal.
It turns out that the pieces have been retrieved and stitched back together by Bro, and Cal thus reprises his role as Bro's weapon in strife with Jack Noir in the Land of Wind and Shade. However, after Bro is defeated by the Becquerel-prototyped Noir, Cal is taken by the archagent as a trophy. Later, when Bec Noir comes to his senses and discards his trophies, he cannot bring himself to throw away Cal. He can never stay mad at Cal, as Cal is a true friend; the only one he has ever known. He stores Cal in what appears to be a dimensional pocket using first guardian powers.
Universe A2 (Alternia)
Bec Noir then enters the trolls' session by way of de-appearifier, after storing himself in, and emerging from, the Lotus Time Capsule. On arrival, he is held at bay by the Aradiabot army, at which point he throws Cal to entangle one of the attacking robots. That particular Aradiabot then travels through time, taking Cal with her. They are promptly hit by a meteor, and carried with it into one of Skaia's defensive portals.
The meteor lands on Alternia, near Aradia's hive, before the creation of Sgrub; Cal and the Aradiabot are ripped apart upon impact. The crater reveals one of the troll session's twin Frog Temples, which Aradia investigates, at which point she finds the remains of her “biizarre robot doppelganger” and Cal.
Aradia gives Cal's remains to Sollux, who in turn passes them on to Kanaya. Kanaya stitches Cal up again and makes him a new Felt-style outfit, but decides to put him away in her respiteblock when she too becomes unnerved by him, just as Dave was. Unbeknownst to the trolls, their session's Black Queen then targets Cal with an appearifier, along with the Magic Cue Ball, to ectobiologically create Doc Scratch.
Later, after the trolls conclude their failed session of Sgrub, Cal has once again slipped off the radar. He eventually turns up in the possession of a sober and murderous Gamzee, who had retrieved Cal from Kanaya (or at least her house) at some point prior to Bec Noir's arrival. After finding Tavros murdered by Vriska, he makes out with the corpse for a while, then has a conversation with a past version of Dave. At this point, he reveals that he used his “dark ancestral chucklevoodoos” to create both the Jack doll in John's dream room, and the original dream version of Cal in Dave's dream room.
Gamzee subsequently proceeds to use Cal to taunt Terezi after tricking her into falling into the secret room of the base. Terezi then captchalogues the puppet before ascending to confront Vriska over the deaths of their fellow players. She removes Cal from her inventory at some point before the rare and highly dangerous 5x SHOWDOWN COMBO, during which the now-blind Sollux mistakenly aims his confused feelings for Gamzee at the puppet. Following this, Cal sits in Gamzee's lap as they fondly regard the miracle of a new beginning and talk to Doc Scratch at the Critical Moment.
This iteration of Cal remains in Gamzee's possession, and is later seen with him on Derse in the post-scratch B2 universe's session. It now apparently contains Caliborn's soul, and is seen to rather disconcertingly wink at Gamzee.
Universe B2 (post-scratch Earth)
Cal's B2 iteration in Dirk's room.
The scratch produces a new iteration of the humans' universe with altered destination times for the meteors carrying the ectobiologically-created players. As such, the appearance of a "second iteration" of Cal emerges, despite the fact that he is a juju. Lil Cal still arrives with Dirk on the meteor, but now lands on Earth four centuries later. Unlike the B1 universe, Dirk has not given him a "CAL" shirt, at least by the time he is 16. This is possibly due to the lack of resources on post-apocalyptic Earth. Dirk is very close to Cal, even referring to him as the closest thing he has to a real guardian.
In Caliborn's first conversation with Dirk, he describes Cal as a "juju". He describes jujus as mysterious objects with only one instance in all of paradox space and a nearly impossible-to-trace origin. He goes as far as to say that if there appears to be more that one, “IT IS ONLY AN ILLuSION”. Caliborn tells Dirk that he should throw Cal off his roof, referring to the puppet as a nightmare that curses all who live in the same universe as it. He briefly reconsiders, speculating that Cal is free of a curse and its eyes look "dead".
Dirk decides to bring Cal to the roof regardless. After he defeats )(IC's Imperial Drones, Dirk stands towards the edge, contemplating the situation on Derse. Once his dream self is knocked out by falling rubble on Derse, his waking body is knocked out as well. Dirk drops Lil Cal into the burning ocean below, to which Caliborn repeats his claim that there can only be one.
Later, on Derse, Cal with Felt clothes, likely the same from the trolls' meteor, is produced by Gamzee, and given to the B2 Courtyard Droll, who then passes it on to the imprisoned B2 Jack Noir. Jack then stares into Lil Cal's eyes, which gradually turn into flashing pool balls. He becomes hypnotized by Cal and stabs his own eyes out to replace them with Cal's, thus beginning the End of Act 6 Act 5. It's possible that Cal's "spirit" or "curse" was transferred to B2 Jack and this is the end of Cal's long journey.
Caliborn's session
It turns out that B2 Cal was not destroyed, and escaped the Red Miles when Earth was transported to its new orbit in an unknown universe. He was therefore brought into Caliborn's game session along with the rest of the planet.
While aiding Caliborn in session, Gamzee excavates B2 Cal and gives him to Caliborn, who abandons his original juju and makes Cal his new juju, with surprising enthusiasm given his previous fearful thoughts about the puppet. He explains that he previously feared the curse Cal contained, but he became relieved and excited when, in his communion with Cal, he realized that the curse would be brought about by himself. He does so by eventually using Cal as a vessel to contain his soul. Once his soul is placed inside, it seems to retroactively exist in whichever instance of Cal is currently the Juju. This would explain why B1 Cal, an entirely different instance of Lil Cal that never came into contact with Caliborn, was able to produce Doc Scratch and use its curse on Jack Noir.
At the time when the Alpha players lie in their Quest Crypts, Gamzee arranges the delivery of B1 Cal, along with Crowbar's crowbar and an assortment of knives, to B2 Jack Noir. As soon as Jack picks Cal up, the curse within causes the puppet's eyes to become rapidly alternating pool balls and compels Jack to saw off his leg and gouge out his own eyes, so that he may replace them with a Prospitian spire and Cal's eyes, respectively. After releasing a massive blast of energy that destroys a large portion of Prospit, Jack is wreathed in an aura of rapidly varying colour, complementing his new resemblance to Lord English. Presumably, this marks the destruction of B1 Cal, thus completing the inevitable enforcement of the rule that there can only ever be one permanent version of any given juju. And it makes sense that it worked out this way specifically, as the newer version of the juju is usually the one that remains while the older one is done away with or becomes the newer one.
Trivia
- Lil Cal shares his name with a character that Andrew Hussie created ages ago.
- Lil Cal's namesake is also related to Caliborn, albeit in a roundabout sort of way, seeing as Cal was inhabited by his soul at one point,
hence, Lil Cal. - In Cascade, Cal was shown to be sitting on Gamzee's lap during a certain critical moment. This makes him a candidate for the "most important character in Homestuck". This title is very fitting, as he seems omnipresent and has connections to multiple universes and characters, not to mention two major antagonists taking a liking to him, and two others heavily referencing him, with shared traits like head shape, eye shape, candy-red cheek symbols, and a single gold tooth.
- As of this page, the likelihood that he is the most important character has been increased.
- While Juju rules technically should not have allowed there to be two separate iterations of Cal, the B1 version and the B2 version, it's worth noting that he rode on a meteor with a Prince of Heart, and Heart is associated with both souls and splintering.
