The Ring Of Void

i think the accepted(?) answer is that, at some point, due to some bullshit, it becomes the ring of life. but even then it's kinda fucking hard to tell what middle point would even lead there.

It was used in Caliborn's Masterpiece, actually!

Wait, no, disregard what I said. I'm wrong.

Its presence in Caliborn's Masterpiece, and I think some throwaway dialogue when the rings are introduced, seems to imply that Calliope would lose her Ring of Life somewhere in postcanon and it would become the Ring of Void that Caliborn wears in the Masterpiece. This has yet to be seen, and may never come to pass, like so many forgotten concepts in Homestuck.

i don't think they're the same ring, i think they're different rings, but the way the rings work is that when one turns up, the other disappears from use. this seems like it works on a diegetic level, like the ring would disappear after the moment in time depicted in the panels, but it actually works on a non-diegetic level. there's a legitimate case to be made that the ring of life first appears in problem sleuth's epilogue, missing from the weddinghearst, which AH (character) then brings into homestuck from problem sleuth, and that puts the rings at the scope of MSPA, and not the scope of "the medium".

the timeline these rings are working on isn't years in the past, years in the past (but not many), now, years in the future (but not many), years in the future, but the timeline between page 1 to page 8129. so i don't feel bad at all about suggesting that it does just disappear and reappear, in the same way that the retcon is more than time travelling operating on the construction of the story's timeline, but acting on the construction of the story itself.

caliborn does get it at some point (and uses it to banish the treasure after it's loaded), but he says he doesn't know how he comes into possession of it.

re: kevin

i do think with the fact that caliborn later gets it, it makes sense that it becomes the ring of life (isn't it kind of implied anyway by aranea stating that when one disappears, the other appears?), in the same way that other caliborn jujus (the treasure and cal, namely), become loaded and unloaded, thereby serving different purposes. it kind of makes sense as parallels - since death is kind of fake and gay in homestuck, in the sense that death =/= nonexistence, it makes sense that the opposite of "existing as physical flesh and blood" is "existing as invisible and intangible", so it certainly tracks if it's the same ring just loaded/unloaded. so the ring is just another cog of the bigger timeloop of caliborn's death/birth, in which the steps are implied but never explicitly shown. this does imply the ring is a juju, which is a conclusion i'm not sure i'm comfortable stating definitively because i don't think i know enough about the ways jujus work in homestuck to fully commit to the idea. would love to hear other people's thoughts!

i agree with what victoria said. i feel like its said somewhere that they just... cant both "exist" at the same time. that being, existing relevant to canon. so once one is lost, the other can be found. or when one is found, the other slips away. thats one of the reasons jegbert keeping the ring safe was so important-- they both needed to make sure they held on to it so nobody else could get it, but doubly so that the other ring wouldn't appear.

Yeah, I think the idea is not necessarily that the Ring of Void becomes the Ring of Life at some future point in its timeline, but rather that one of its enchanted properties is that every time it disappears it reappears as the Ring of Life, and vice versa. Though I think whether that makes them the same ring that changes states or two rings that cannot coexist is more of a quibble. I imagine the similarity to the cherubs is quite deliberate; their relationship to each other is really just a matter of perspective.

As others have pointed out, the last guy to be seen with it was actually Caliborn, who banished his juju chest into the Furthest Ring with it. Aranea's legend only says that the Ring of Void came from a void session, so I've wondered if that was misdirection: did it originate in Caliborn's session (since a dead session is a kind of void session), and pass from English to the Condesce to Droog? Caliborn says he doesn't know where his future self got it, though, so maybe not. It could well be that Calliope (or Meenah) lose their life ring somewhere on Earth and Caliborn picks it up as a void ring in the far future (realising the cherubic nature of the two rings).

In any case, the fact that it has an obscure origin and end point is all part of the point - that's what makes it so magical and therefore alike to a juju, as danya says.

I'm like obsessed with the Rings of Life and Void I think they are such neat concepts. They are two separate rings but they can't be narratively relevant at the same time. They can pass through dream bubbles and if you grab it in your dream, you end up holding it in real life when you wake up! Caliborn wears it in his masterpiece and uses it to be sneaky and hide his treasure and stuff. I think the wiki lists the timeline of when both rings appear in the comic? https://mspaintadventures.fandom.com/wiki/Rings_of_Life_and_Void