2019-04-02 10:03:19 ¶ ●

Rose Lalonde’s Land of Light and Rain is characterised in part by its shimmering rainbow water. Why does it look like that? Perhaps it’s because it’s covered in a thin layer of oil?

Let’s look at this sequence. Rose Lalonde stabs an ogre in the eyes and rides its corpse down a LOLAR waterfall.

As pointed out in Andrew’s commentary:

> …this attack presages the moment when Rose does the exact same thing to Guy Fieri as a fifty-something-year-old in an alternate universe.

Which we can see here:

Notice that this is a waterfall of the blood of all of Guy Fieri’s victims.

You’ll also notice that in the first few panels of the former sequence, the ogre bleeds some kind of black substance out of its eyes, as opposed to blood. I’m inclined to think that, since the first incipisphere underlings we see are oil imps who leave trails of black liquid after them everywhere they go, this liquid coming out of the ogre’s eyes is also oil. It’s worth noting also that this is a lime ogre, and that in real life limestone is heavily associated with hydrocarbons like oil, often containing pockets of it inside.

So in these two parallel instances, we have an ogre bleeding oil from its eyes and a man bleeding blood from his eyes, both falling down a waterfall. In the latter instance, the waterfall is stained with blood; so in keeping with this parallel, it follows that the former waterfall would be stained with oil, right?

Oil, of course, is primarily associated with John’s Land of Wind and Shade, but John and Rose’s worlds have always been connected by similar (Wind and Rain) and opposite themes (Shade and Light). The waters of LOLAR were intended to be polluted from a very early stage, in fact, albeit by a different chemical, if Andrew’s Book 2 commentary is anything to go by:

> I also had the idea that these 4 substances [oil, chalk, amber and uranium] would serve as various contaminants on their planets, in ways relevant to their personal quests. John’s planet and all its pipes were clogged with oil, Rose’s ocean planet poisoned in some way by excessive chalk, which the islands were made of. Dave’s planet was covered in gears, which would be gummed up by sticky amber sap. And Jade’s was going to be in some way affected by fallout (nuclear winter?).

But what could it possibly mean? It’s hard to say. The topic of liquids with a colourful oily film on the surface has been touched upon once before in the comic. Rainbows - the result of mixing Light and Rain - are associated with the Time aspect, as is oil itself.

A symbol of Lord English’s malevolent omnipresence? It’s been suggested that oil is representative of English’s corruption, since it was the same technique that John used to get rid of both LOWAS’ oil and Caliborn’s Special Stardust glitches.

A symbol of obscured information? Crystal waters of the sort found on both Rose’s planet and her fellow Light player Vriska’s are a symbol of knowledge and divination, and being a Light player seems to involve “seeing through” things that obscure the truth, like the opaque surface of a magic cueball. With oil covering all of LOLAR’s oceans, the whole planet becomes a magic cueball - note that this interpretation works whether LOLAR is polluted by oil or chalk, and that chalk is applied to a cuestick before a game of pool.

2019-04-03 5:11:24 ¶ ●

All of the kids’ lands seem interconnected in ways that seem significant but I can’t really say how.

The Lands of Wind and Shade and Light and Rain are one big example. It was four whole years ago when Homestuck was just beginning to wrap up when I first noticed that after LOWAS’ quest is over, it seems destined to basically become a Land of Light and rain; with the heavy clouds gone, the Shade should turn to Light, and with a native population of amphibious salamanders, there’s going to need to be some Rain to fill in the now empty canals and oceans, right?And I just recently talked about some other connections the two lands could have.

LOWAS and the Land of Heat and Clockwork, too, seem to have connections. LOWAS’ native materials are all industrial; crude oil and other products of mining. But the culture of LOWAS is largely agricultural, and the bare minimum machinery there is all pneumatic. LOHAC, on the other hand, is a hub of crude industry. The symbol associated with oil is even a gear, and is later used to represent LOHAC itself.

LOHAC seems to connect to the Land of Frost and Frogs, too. Like LOWAS and LOLAR, the planets represent opposites, Frost and Heat. But there’s a fundamental similarity, too, in that both planets are tectonically active. LOFAF begins to heat up when the Forge is stoked, and LOHAC is covered in lava from the very beginning.

Another interesting possibly connection can be found in some of Hussie’s Book 2 commentary regarding his initial plans for the Lands:

> I also had the idea that these 4 substances [oil, chalk, amber and uranium] would serve as various contaminants on their planets, in ways relevant to their personal quests. John’s planet and all its pipes were clogged with oil […] Dave’s planet was covered in gears, which would be gummed up by sticky amber sap.

Sap, of course, comes from trees, of which LOHAC has none. LOWAS has a few, but by far the largest population of healthy-looking plant life lives on LOFAF.

Of course, it needs to be mentioned that fireflies, seemingly native to John’s world, have also been found encased in amber, seemingly native to Dave’s world. And that in popular culture - in Jurassic Park in particular - the notion of insects encased in amber is interconnected with the idea of genetically modifying and breeding frogs, ala LOFAF.

Possibly this represents a symbolic cycle of worlds. LOFAF heats up to become like LOHAC, which churns out pollution to become like LOWAS, which when cleaned up becomes like LOLAR. This sort of cycle is already represented in the comic by the Land Gates, which take the player from one planet to another in a cyclical motion.

LOHAC’s quest or lack thereof kind of throws the first big obstacle into the equation. LOFAF becoming warm and LOWAS becoming clean are part of their beneficial world-altering quests. LOHAC becoming more polluted doesn’t really seem to fit in with that theme, and its quest, from what the comic shows us, just seems to be initiating the Scratch. How does that fit in? There’s a couple ways you could interpret it.

Dave’s general role in the game tends to be breaking things so they can be fixed later. That’s how the Scratch is initiated, too; through Beat Mesa being damaged. So LOHAC being messed up so that it could be fixed a different way is consistent with that.

The Scratch itself is also consistent with this scenario. In a Scratch, a world is reset so another set of heroes can attempt to save it. See above. But a Scratch is also what allows Lord English to make himself a part of a world, and if oil is a symbol of Lord English’s corruption, this also makes sense.

Another explanation could merely be that as a Time player, Dave’s land is naturally out of sequence with the others.

The second missing link in the chain is the one between LOLAR and LOFAF. How does a chalky ocean world become like a frozen jungle planet? Like LOHAC’s, LOLAR’s Land quest is much less understood than LOWAS or LOFAF’s. We know she has to play the rain, but what does that mean?

> JASPERSPRITE: All the life in the ocean and all the shiny rain and the songs in your head and the letters they make [will tie together].

> JASPERSPRITE: A beam of light i think is like a drop of rain or a long piece of yarn that dances around when you play with it and make it look enticing!

> JASPERSPRITE: And the way that it shakes is the same as what makes notes in a song!

> JASPERSPRITE: And a song i think can be written down as letters.

> JASPERSPRITE: So if you play the right song and it makes all the right letters then those letters could be all the letters that make life possible.

Jaspersprite seems to heavily imply that playing the rain involves rearranging genetic code in the water (G, C, A, T - note three of those are also notes you can play on an instrument) in order to make the ocean it flows into capable of creating life. Genetic coding is exactly part of LOFAF’s quest, so that’s a connection; but also filling an ocean with genes in the hope of creating life is kind of primordial, and remember Jade’s quest is also primordial because frogs + bugs stuck in amber = dinosaurs.

Andrew also has this to say about what he initially planned for LOFAF:

> Jade’s [planet] was going to be in some way affected by fallout (nuclear winter?).

Obviously nuclear war doesn’t happen on LOLAR, but Rose’s role does end up involving a nuclear explosion when she heads out to detonate the Tumor. This is a parallel to Dave’s quest, because it’s another personal quest that doesn’t exactly pertain to her land, and it can also be read as having a double meaning. Rose thought she was going to blow up the sun, which would be kind of like causing an eternal winter, but actually she just caused a large atomic explosion. In supporting this reading, LOLAR itself seems to be covered in hints of some kind of future atomic disaster, like this giant carving of the Green Sun:

It could also be worth noting that nuclear fallout is associated with mutation and messing up genes, and that some of LOLAR’s shiny mutant genewater is pouring out of floating shells, which is another word for bombs.

One final morsel for thought: oil is the remains of dead animals. If we take for granted that LOLAR’s oceans are covered in oil, and we assume that this oil contains the genetic code necessary for Rose’s quest, and we imagine that LOLAR’s oil comes from LOWAS, which comes from LOHAC, which comes from LOFAF, then the oil that becomes LOFAF’s frogs would ultimately be derived from the frogs themselves, making the frogs a sort of symbolic paradox clone.

2019-04-03 8:28:50 ¶ ●

tumblr user blaze-kitty brings up a good point in the tags of my land cycle theory: how does chalk come from LOWAS?

well, as I pointed out in my previous post, on the topic of LOLAR and oil, one of Rose’s other grist types, limestone, is commonly associated with oil, and commonly contains oil and gas pockets within it. this is because limestone, like oil, is derived from living organisms, being composed from calcium carbonate, found in living organisms and their skeletons.

all of LOLAR’s main grist types come from limestone; chalk is a variety of it, and marble forms when limestone metamorphoses under extreme heat and pressure.

so basically, while LOLAR’s grist doesn’t necessarily have an obvious source on LOWAS, it comes from the same place as LOWAS’ fossil-fuel themed grist types, forming another connection between the two lands. amber is similar, but it comes from dead plants rather than animals - like tar, another of LOWAS’ grist types.

2019-04-11 15:36:19 ¶ ●

I sent this to @mage-of-homestuck as a series of asks earlier today, but I feel like it’s worth its own post here for posterity’s sake.

The letters B and O are of particular importance in Homestuck, particularly in that sequence, BO.

It’s those two letters that get quirked in the word sym69ls; B is also quirked as the number 8, whose significance to the story is obvious. The letter O appears in the names Doc Scratch, Snowman and Lord English, and is rendered in a special way in all 3 of them - white, black, and flashing pool ball style, respectively, signifying the letter O representing pool balls. The letter O is also associated with the number 0, like in Aradia’s quirk which forms part of the t1ck / t0ck binary.

By forming the numbers 6 and 9, B and O make up the two halves of a double ouroboros, forming a duality between the two characters. This duality manifests in a few ways.

The phrase ‘Alpha and Omega,’ from the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, means ‘beginning and end,’ and was popularised by a line in the bible describing God’s eternal existence. B and O make ‘Beta and Omega’ instead, which is particularly relevant to Homestuck because the comic began with a Beta rather than an Alpha. It also connects to the idea of Lord English as God, because English couldn’t enter the Trolls’ universe until they scratched, meaning he skipped the Alpha phase and began at the Beta phase.

With O as zero and B as eight, and eight representing an infinity, O and B can also represent ‘nothing’ and ‘everything’. With the letter O representing Doc Scratch (who is also member number 0 of the Felt) during his Intermission and the number 8 representing Snowman, the letters are also connected with white and black, as well as creation and destruction.

It might also be worth bringing up that O and B are prominent letters in the word ouroboros itself (though not so much in Homestuck’s own rendering of the word, ‘uroburos’). They also appear together in the name Caliborn, which might have something to do with the sym69ls themselves, given that speaking the name appears to have a power of its own.

2019-04-11 16:18:57 ¶ ●

> CG: THIS GAME IS KIND OF A GAME OF A MILLION GUIDES.
> CG: EVERYWHERE YOU TURN THERE’S ANOTHER WAY TO FIGURE OUT WHAT’S GOING ON, SO PLEASE, GO SECRETE ME AN EARTH RIVER THROUGH YOUR STRANGE HUMAN TEAR DUCTS.
> CG: YOU’VE GOT SPRITES, EXILES, GUARDIANS, CONSORTS…
> CG: TIME HOPPING FUTURE SELVES, MYSTICAL DREAM ORACLE DOPPELGANGERS…
> CG: AND IF THAT WASN’T ENOUGH, YOUR PARTICULAR GROUP OF PLAYERS IS LUCKY ENOUGH TO HAVE US TO GIVE YOU THE SCOOP ON STUFF.
> CG: THROUGH A SORT OF SUBVERSION OF THE WHOLE DAMN THING.

this particular tirade of karkat’s seems a particularly egregious hint that Homestuck’s author is dead and that the task of interpreting it lies in the hands of the reader.

in fact if I didn’t know better, I might say that those last two lines are telling us: “given the online new-media nature of Homestuck, I, the author, am also here to interact with you, the reader, and provide further information about my work, thus subverting the entire concept of death of the author itself by allowing the author’s own words to influence interpretation of the text”

2019-04-11 16:25:39 ¶ ● ⬈

lime-bloods:

> > CG: THIS GAME IS KIND OF A GAME OF A MILLION GUIDES.
> > CG: EVERYWHERE YOU TURN THERE’S ANOTHER WAY TO FIGURE OUT WHAT’S GOING ON, SO PLEASE, GO SECRETE ME AN EARTH RIVER THROUGH YOUR STRANGE HUMAN TEAR DUCTS.
> > CG: YOU’VE GOT SPRITES, EXILES, GUARDIANS, CONSORTS…
> > CG: TIME HOPPING FUTURE SELVES, MYSTICAL DREAM ORACLE DOPPELGANGERS…
> > CG: AND IF THAT WASN’T ENOUGH, YOUR PARTICULAR GROUP OF PLAYERS IS LUCKY ENOUGH TO HAVE US TO GIVE YOU THE SCOOP ON STUFF.
> > CG: THROUGH A SORT OF SUBVERSION OF THE WHOLE DAMN THING.

> this particular tirade of karkat’s seems a particularly egregious hint that Homestuck’s author is dead and that the task of interpreting it lies in the hands of the reader.

> in fact if I didn’t know better, I might say that those last two lines are telling us: “given the online new-media nature of Homestuck, I, the author, am also here to interact with you, the reader, and provide further information about my work, thus subverting the entire concept of death of the author itself by allowing the author’s own words to influence interpretation of the text”

well shit, in a subversion of a subversion, Andrew’s commentary on this page pretty much vindicates this reading of the conversation:

> The first four lines Karkat says here literally sound like they could be a disgruntled Homestuck fan talking smack about me as they scan backwards through the story. Which sounds like a funny thing for me to say—and it is—but it’s also not that remarkable, since at any given moment Homestuck is full of surrogates for various factions of the readership. Basically any character who is viewing the actions of other characters on a screen can be seen as a consumer of that story through some form of in-canon digital media. Whether they type in character commands like the exiles, or use Trollian to skip around the “archive” in a nonlinear way like the trolls do, for the sake of “adventure analysis” or to heap scorn on those involved, every narrative-viewing character is temporarily filling the role of the Homestuck reader from a certain angle.

2019-04-11 16:47:15 ¶ ●

And of course right after that exchange is the first time the author avatar character appears in the comic, with a recap that literally interprets the comic’s events for us no less. I should have more faith in my interpretation of the text!

2019-04-12 8:10:22 ¶ ● ⬈

dingodad:

> Equius seems to be using ‘STRENGTH’ in this case to allude to nobility, rank and leadership, which makes sense because it’s kind of his thing; society is controlled by the strong in his eyes and in the Alternian mind in general.

> When Dave denies being strong, he denies that he’s the King Arthur figure that SBURB wants him to be, which is why John shares the Heir class with Equius and Dave has a serving class instead. Davesprite even alludes to this directly in the very next conversation:

> > DAVESPRITE: maybe if john was to try with his pure heart and shit it woulda popped out like a champagne cork and fuckin hero confetti woulda blasted him in the face
> > DAVESPRITE: but you
> > DAVESPRITE: we
> > DAVESPRITE: we had to break it

> What broken weapons have to do with being King, though, I’m not quite sure.

(in reference to this exchange)

2019-04-12 8:13:37 ¶ ● ⬀ ⬈

dingodad:

> dingodad:

> > Equius and Dave both have a thing about being emasculated - Equius through deliberately trying to be dominated, and Dave through the trauma associated with his Bro’s macho guy training - and the symbolism behind both of these characters wielding ‘broken weapons’ is obvious.

> > I think Equius tries to appeal to Dave’s sense of masculinity because he feels that since they were raised under similar toxic conditions - Equius on Alternia, and Dave by his Bro - they have shared experiences and common ground between them.

> > And their brief rap battle indicates that thanks to their respective upbringings they DO have some similarities, but when Equius tries to tell Dave they both break weapons because they’re ‘strong,’ Dave rebukes him: “I don’t break things because I’m strong…”

> > > TG: im not that strong ok
> > > TG: just cause i broke a cheap ass sword doesnt make me the fucking hulk

> > “…I break them because I’m fucked up.”

> > This difference in outlook between the two is made very clear by this exchange between them just a bit earlier in the same conversation:

> > > CT: D –> The adult human who trained you
> > > CT: D –> And taught you the ways of being STRONG
> > > CT: D –> Remember
> > > TG: you mean the guy who spent years beating my ass down with a puppet
> > > TG: yeah i remember

> > Dave is well aware that Bro’s training did him more harm than good. He’s just very lowkey about it until it’s addressed directly.

> It’s interesting that Dave brings up ‘the fucking Hulk’ specifically here given that the radioactive green giant is one of the aspects of Lord English. One of Dave’s lines in his rap just a few pages earlier actually made me think of Lord English in the same way;

> > TG: hes paradoxically me but richer and surlier

> Surly actually comes from an obsolete English word ‘sirly,’ as in ‘similar to a sir,’ which was used to refer to Lords and other nobles.

> This is relevant because we now know that the reason Lord English is so jacked and sirly in the first place is because he is part Equius; so this whole conversation is actually Dave unknowingly comparing himself to Equius. It’s likely Equius acts as a stand-in for Bro himself in this conversation, given the similarities between the indigoblood and Dirk.

(in reference to this exchange)

2019-04-16 7:39:35 ¶ ●

The use of thread or fiber as a symbol of fate dates back to Greek myth, with the three Moirai, or Fates, spinning, measuring and cutting the thread of life. In Homestuck this symbol translates to the use of fibers as symbolic of timelines.

The Felt, in addition to being named after a material composed of fibers compressed together, are repeatedly implied to be made of the stuff;

> Are you telling me these fuckers are literally made of felt???
> WHAT’S FELT.
> It’s the fabric they put on pool tables.

Rose Lalonde, the Seer of Light capable of reading the one most fortuitous timeline, is frequently seen carrying a ball of yarn; one long thread (she also uses it on to whack her Time player on the head on more than one occasion). The needles she uses to work her yarn are also the same kind used to work the Land of Heat and Clockwork’s Beat Mesa.

Perhaps at more of a stretch, the trolls’ time player Aradia is associated with rams and sheep, which are bred for their wool.

The phrase ‘fabric of spacetime’ is used a couple of times throughout MSPA - once in reference to English’s coat (which it stands to reason might be made from the same stuff as his leprechauns’ skin) and once in Problem Sleuth (in a sequence often connected to Kanaya, who decorates her hive “with FLORA and FABRIC, as delicately or aggressively as inspiration demands,” possibly symbolic of her role as a Space player) - showing the obvious connection between the Space and Time aspects, with fabric being composed of fibers woven together each way.

2019-04-23 1:01:58 ¶ ●

## John English: Candy Corn Vampire and Night President

At the end of the Meat Epilogue, John is infected with some kind of poison that prevents him from regenerating. We aren’t provided with a Heroic or Just ruling on his demise, and his slow, painful fading away in Terezi’s arms seems uncharacteristic of a death afforded by the Immortality Clock. Most importantly, the Dead Cherub tells us that “[John’s] resuscitation remains a theoretical possibility for those still striving for it.” So it seems most likely that it is English’s poison that stops John from being revived instantaneously; possibly related to his breath that allows him to destroy ghosts.

This might seem like a strangely ambiguous end to the story of our protagonist since page 1 of Homestuck, but in truth, the Epilogue itself explains what this poison is; because in Candy, a version of Jade faces the exact same problem.

> JANE: Well, something is blocking my Life powers.

> JANE: It’s as if she has… a sort of poison in her. Not a literal poison, mind you.

> […]

> JANE: It’s attacking her on… perhaps this sounds crazy, but…

> JANE: A metaphysical level??

And we soon find out what that poison turns out to be; it’s the Dead Cherub, about to use Jade’s body as a puppet host. So if Jade becomes infected with Calliope’s poison and becomes Calliope’s host; is John, her brother, slated to become Lord English’s host now that he’s infected with Lord English’s poison? Let’s look at some other parallels in their situations.

Before becoming the Dead Cherub’s host, Jade falls through a black hole that represents Calliope herself. Before John is poisoned, he falls into Lord English’s mouth. Note that Lord English himself is like a black hole. Before Jade falls into the Dead Cherub’s event horizon, she receives a slice of the broken fabric of reality through her chest. John receives a similar wound from Lord English’s tooth; but it isn’t just any one of Lord English’s teeth. It’s his gold tooth, cracked off at the base. Where does Caliborn get his first gold tooth?

It’s a piece of candy corn he knocks from the header of the MSPA website. Just like the piece of the Furthest Ring that gets Jade, Lord English’s golden tooth is a broken piece of the frame that the story takes place in.

Let’s take the candy corn angle a little further. A fantasy creature well known for its ability to pass on likeness through a bite is the vampire; and importantly, Caliborn’s use of a candy corn tooth is a direct reference to a vampire within the MSPA mythos, the Candy Corn Vampire.

Beyond comparisons between Kanaya and human mythology, vampires are mentioned sparingly in Homestuck, but come up twice in the Epilogues. Once in mention to John recoiling from light as if he is one (noteworthy), and then another time in a strange sequence of internal monologue Jane has.

> […] Jane is pretty sure that Karkat Vantas would probably literally burst into flame if too many people happened to look at him at the same time, like a vampire walking out into the sun.

> Wait. Jane lowers the pillow from her face and stares at her brass-and-glass art deco ceiling. Was that vampire thing xenophobic against Kanaya? Or whatever it was that Kanaya was supposed to be? No, of course not, she assures herself. With trolls it was the other way around: vampires were the only members of their species who didn’t balk at the sunlight. Another reason Karkat would make a poor president. Unless… he ran as the Night President? No, the idea is foolish. Best not to give him any ideas. There can only be ONE president.

The title ‘president’ here is obviously being used in the same sense as in US politics, but it also merely means ‘someone who presides’. This paragraph and a half invokes a very easy to read concept; two beings, one presiding over Day, the other presiding over Night. Light, and Darkness. And the latter is a vampire. It is possibly worth noting that the word ‘preside’ is mostly used in reference to the Green Sun, which later becomes a black hole, which is actually the Dead Cherub. And just like Lord English and the Dead Cherub, vampires and the sun are mortal enemies.

Jane rejecting outright the idea of a dual presidency is also an obvious reference to the dual juggalo presidency of Earth B2. This is important because Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope are two of the characters in Homestuck who are implied to be the subjugglator religion’s Mirthful Messiahs. Andrew’s commentary in Homestuck book 4 has this to say about the Mirthful Messiahs:

> […] the Mirthful Messiahs can refer to different “mirthful” pairs of people, depending on at what point in the story the idea is discussed.

But what we do know for sure about the subjugglator religion is that it heavily concern a “paradise planet,” which Earth C is compared to again and again. So who do the Mirthful Messiahs refer to now that the story is at a point where the subjugglators’ paradise planet actually exists? The invocation of this question speaks volumes on its own.

Let’s take the vampire connection just a step further before it starts to wear thin. If John / Lord English is some kind of cosmic vampire, is there a similar but contrasting creature that Jade / the Dead Cherub can be compared to? Perhaps a werewolf. Werewolves receive very little attention in MSPA - even less than vampires; Problem Sleuth, from whence the Candy Corn Vampire originated, did not have any kind of werewolf monsters in it. But it is worth pointing out that by the time Kanaya was introduced to the story, Hussie had at least heard of Twilight, which can probably be credited with putting vampires and werewolves at odds with each other in modern western fiction. And werewolves do receive three mentions toward the very end of Homestuck, all in reference to Jade in her “grimbark” state, which puppet Jade is directly compared to.

To finish off this train of thought, take note of the use of the term ‘puppet’. The way the Dead Cherub controls characters in the Epilogues is compared to puppetry multiple times. This is hardly surprising, given the prevalence puppets and puppeteers maintain throughout Homestuck. But it’s notable because Lord English has used a puppet body as a host before; and one with similar canon-breaking power, symbolised by the same white orb that John’s own source of power sometimes manifests as.

Could John Egbert’s dead body potentially be the next host of Lord English, just as many of Homestuck’s earliest and most prevalent theorists once predicted would happen to his father Jake English?

2019-04-23 2:43:34 ¶ ●

## Pick Your Poison

(A companion post to John English: Candy Corn Vampire and Night President)

Poison is not a word that gets grown around a lot in Homestuck. The most consistently it gets used in quick succession is when referring to allergies and peanuts. Another few times are in reference to Dirk’s influence of his peers and Jade’s skewed perception of hers; both of which are certainly interesting, but not quite the same as the two kinds of metaphysical poison that finally come into play in the Epilogues.

One poison is created by Lord English, and the other by his sister, the Dead Cherub. If we ignore the fact that the more technically correct term for injected animal poison is ‘venom,’ this is fitting, because they are both snake monsters after all.

The symptoms of the Dead Cherub’s poison appear to include blackening of the eyes. This connects her poison to another ink-black product in Homestuck decribed as ‘poison’ - the Black Liquid Sorrow Gushers. This isn’t a completely random connection, either, because the term ‘Black Liquid Sorrow’ refers to a substance that comes from a very relevant character; Problem Sleuth’s Death.

The loss of his beloved weapon has caused Death to shed another tear of black liquid sorrow - from his eye, no less.

The Dead Cherub is the spitting image of Death; a skull-like face in a simple black hood, and now being followed around by a character who was once described as the “H4NDM41D TO TH3 M4ST3R OF D34TH“.

So if the Dead Cherub uses a black poison, what kind of poison does Lord English use?

If what a lot of people say about these black and white snakes being central to Homestuck is true, then it would only be fitting that Lord English’s poison is a white one. And as it happens, there is a special white substance that is referred to as poison both in Homestuck proper and in the Epilogue.

> I COULDNT RISK MESSING WITH HIS SWORD, WHICH I UNDERSTAND TO BE THE ONLY THING IN REALITY THAT IS POISON TO MY INVINCIBILITY.

> The weapon—the unusual material it’s made out of—is poison to English.

These two lines refer specifically to Dave’s Welsh sword, Caledfwlch, but the second one specifically mentions the strange material it’s made out of. We know what this strange material is; it’s the same stuff the magic cueball is made out of, which Andrew’s author avatar also acknowledges as English’s kryptonite when threatening to use the White Magnum, which shoots tiny cueball bullets.

But neither of those lines refer to it as poison used by English; just poison that can affect him. Why would he use the same poison that is his weakness?

Well, it is worth remembering that each of those snakes in the spiral sucker juju is its own ouroboros; the codes for the individual green and red suckers are “UrobUros" for Calliope’s and “uROBuROS” for Caliborn’s. Each is a snake eating its own tail, before they are joined to make the two snakes in the spiral sucker; before the two poisons are pitted against each other.

And this is consistent with how English himself uses white cueball-themed weapons. Doc Scratch, the personification of the cueball, is first English’s servant, and wields the White Magnum himself, before it is then turned on him by Spades Slick in [S] Cascade. The white house juju works in the exact same way, and this cyclical nature is mentioned directly in the text:

> VRISKA: It was supposedly a weapon that once 8elonged to him.
> VRISKA: 8ut he could never use it without altering its nature.
> VRISKA: Meaning he could only use it once.
> VRISKA: So he did.
> VRISKA: After that, it could only 8e used again one more time.
> VRISKA: And only as a weapon against him.

So is it possible that the white snake is coming around to bite its own tail once again, and put the power of the white poison back into Lord English’s hands?

As one final note; there is one topic in Homestuck that sees the word ‘poison’ come up over and over again, more times than any other topic. It’s used to refer to sopor slime, to sugary drinks, to catnip, and finally in the Epilogue to tobacco. That’s three substances which are used in Homestuck as metaphors for drugs, and then one substance that is an actual drug. And what else is compared to a drug in the Epilogue?

> JOHN: well, what the fuck do i know. the only illicit substance i’ve ever done is lick that STUPID trickster lollipop.

2019-04-23 6:17:21 ¶ ●

Dirk’s apparent villainy could be seen as showing us that achieving the Ultimate Self is not always an objectively positive thing. Rose was a hero in both of her incarnations across the scratch, and the same could be said for basically all of the other kids save for perhaps Jake, who has all of John’s apathy and none of his drive.

But Bro is a version of Dirk who is explicitly a bad person. His intentions are benevolent to an extent, just as Dirk’s are; but the way he goes about them are undoubtedly evil, and Dirk himself seems to realise this. So by becoming his true self, Dirk is not just becoming the sum of all his good deeds; his the sum of all his bad deeds as well.

Jane, conversely, could be a good example of how reaching the Ultimate Self can save someone. John specifically cites Nanna as an adult version of Jane who was a good person, and not remotely evil! Nanna had first-hand experience with how bad the Condesce was, and was able to avoid becoming that kind of person herself. If Jane had been willing to absorb that part of her Ultimate Self, she may well have avoided straying down the path she did.

2019-04-23 6:32:27 ¶ ●

Perhaps “one can only achieve their Ultimate Self if they want to achieve it” is something that wasn’t dug into deep enough in the Epilogues.

2019-04-25 13:34:42 ¶ ●

> I wonder how much facetious housework mom had to do to gain the XP necessary to score the IRONIC NEGLIGENCE technique in her GUARDIAN RUBRIC menu? Maybe she had JUST earned it with that bit of faux-mopping she did a few pages ago. She was probably dying to try it out in battle.

I love this line from Andrew’s Homestuck book commentary on page 388 because it raises the possibility that all of Rose’s Mom’s pretentious ironic housewife shit is just a weird kind of XP grinding, and none of that ever really got any satisfactory alternative explanation.

Is this made funnier or somehow more significant by the fact that Roxy is a gaming enthusiast in the Alpha timeline? Probably not.

2019-04-28 14:30:21 ¶ ● ⬈

mage-of-homestuck:

> # Regarding the Dolorosa’s page in the [o]termission

> I realize the jadebloods are uniquely equipped to raise mother grubs and young trolls and all, or such is their social obligation, but the line “forbidden from visiting the surface” strikes me as odd now. It’s a known implication that some facet of their rare caste’s biology causes their unique transformation into rainbow drinkers, but now I wonder if that ONLY happens upon extensive exposure to sunlight, and keeping them trapped in the caverns is a political tactic to prevent their gaining immortality?

> …the HEINOUS BROODS OF THE UNDEAD […] crawl from the sand at sunrise to feast on the light and the living.

The text supports the idea that the Alternian undead are photosynthetic, as does the name ‘rainbow drinker’ in itself.

2019-04-29 6:05:52 ¶ ●

This description of musclebeasts from [S] Equius: Seek the highb100d caught my attention because it follows pretty much the exact format that descriptions of the zoologically dubious; Nrub’yiglith’s vocalisations cause bones to explode, Oglogoth causes a random galaxy’s children to frown by grinding its teeth, and of course, Gl’bgolyb’s Vast Glub kills every troll in the Empire. Is it practical or meaningful that these two groups of beasts could be connected?

Musclebeasts are associated with the night (and on the same page where the Alternian undead are associated with the daytime; worth noting that Rose’s Horrorterror-fueled “grimdark” transformation is referred to as a complement to Kanaya’s sunlight-powered rainbow drinkerism). Equius, is, of course, a Void hero, and he wears the kind of shaded sunglasses that conceal the true nature of demons like Horrorterrors. His shades are also broken, which evokes the image of the broken windows that cause zoologically dubious beasts to spawn (a fact that has led some to consider broken glasses a symbol of Void).

The only other weak connection I can muster is that Doc Scratch considers the Emissary to the Horrorterrors Gl’bgolyb a pet he gave to the Troll race as a gift, in a manner perhaps not dissimilar to Rose’s mother giving her Maplehoof.

2019-04-29 7:04:37 ¶ ●

## Ghost, Frog, Robot, Fairy: The Metamorphosis of the Ultimate Self

Adapted from an original post on /r/homestuck

Once I got to really thinking about the Epilogues, one of the things that started to stick out to me very quickly was that it seemed kind of arbitrary who got to attain their Ultimate Self and who didn’t. Why Dirk and Rose, and not other high-power characters like Vriska and John?

But now it’s hit me; what connects Rose and Dave and Dirk all together, other than familial relation, is that they all spent time as a sprite.

Why is this significant? First of all, the ascended essence of a person is compared directly to a kernelsprite in the epilogue;

> Obama is holding his hand up, and floating just above his palm is Dave’s ascended essence. It flickers wildly in his hand like a little kernelsprite.

The second thing that came to mind was a specific exchange between Kanaya and Aradia, where they’re talking about transformations:

> AA: you are undergoing a metamorphosis which you have been groomed for since you were very young
> AA: much like i was for my various personal iterations including this one
> GA: You Mean
> GA: Being A Ghost And Then A Frog And Then A Robot And Then A Fairy
> AA: yes!

This dialogue was fresh in my mind because I’d recently seen it suggested that it was a reference to Lord English, and his being composed of a ghost (sprite), frog (cherub), robot (AR) and fairy (Gamzee). But with the Epilogues in mind, I think the significance of that line may go deeper, and refer to the stages of transformation that culminate in the Ultimate Self.

The ‘ghost’ stage still refers to spritehood; ‘frog’ could be combined back into the sprite stage (or just as easily replaced with ‘cat’ or ‘bird’ or ‘troll’ for Rose, Dave or Dirk) or taken as a reference to the creation of the new universe. And that’s why Rose and Dave are put into robotic replacement bodies; because ‘robot’ is the next stage in the metamorphosis.

That also seems to be why Dirk is able to handle the ascension process, or at least reacts differently to it; because splinters of him have already manifested as sprites and as robots (you could argue that the version of him that became a sprite, AR, was also a robot himself).

The involvement of sprite selves is especially important because it’s the sprite version of Dave that first brings up the concept of the Ultimate Self:

> DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < everything that ever happens to every version of you is an important part of your ultimate self… like a superceding bodyless and timeless persona that crosses the boundaries of paradox space and unlike god tiers or bubble ghosts or whatever, it really IS immortal
> DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < but in your physical form there are all these partitions in your mind that prevent you from remembering any of that which makes your existence f33l totally linear
> DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < which is probably for the best!
> DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < in a regular body s33ing all that would be too overwhelming
> DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < in an advanced sprite form like mine tho its fine

The last two lines convey essentially the same reasoning as Dirk’s for putting Rose in a robotic replacement body; the physical, organic body can’t handle the strain of all of its selves, but other, more advanced bodies can.

The very nature of the sprites involves a property that is far more relevant to the realisation of the Ultimate Self, though, which basically went undiscussed until Homestuck: Book Two, which contains the following commentary on page 251 of Homestuck:

> The concept of prototyping in [SBURB] was always about distilling the prototyped elements into something more symbolic, more essential, and customizing the whole game according to the merged ideals of those components. Just a bit more of this Platonic nonsense that kind of goes unspoken, that is up until these books, when I had to go and totally de-unspeak it like a friggin’ loudmouth.

Andrew mentions this “Platonic nonsense” again in the commentary for page 1810, which helps clarify the point:

> …in this particular fictional realm, and especially where alchemy is concerned, the fundamental ideas the objects represent are more important than the objects themselves.

With this context, the importance of the kernelsprite in the metamorphosis becomes extremely clear: while the various splinters and selves of a person are merely reflections of a fundamental idea, by being prototyped, a person becomes the very idea that they represent.

Something that was frequently the point of conversation when the sprites^2 were first introduced was the fact that their designs incorporate dream pajama elements, even though none of their components were dream selves. The Ultimate Self being the end goal of existence offers some answers to this:

> TG: our dream selves kind of operate outside the normal time continuum i think
> TG: so if part of you from this timelines going to persist thats probably the way to make it happen

Dream selves can be used to absorb part of your self from another timeline, and are instrumental to the process of reaching the god tiers; so it makes perfect sense that a special kind of dream self would be involved in the ascension to the Ultimate Self.

I’m not forgetting that Jade has also been a sprite and a robot; but thanks to her special connection to the Dead Cherub, it appears she’s going through a much different ascension to the other characters. By literally eating her brother in the Meat Epilogue’s postscript and subsequently powering up, it appears the cherubic definition of ‘absorbing alternate selves’ takes on a far more literal meaning.

So with this in mind, the two parties formed by the end of the Epilogues seem to be composed of characters who have all been through - or are in the process of going through - the same sprite, robot, fairy metamorphosis: the original, Aradia, alongside Jade and Dave, and Dirk alongside Rose, as well as Terezi, who absorbed her ultimate selves in her own way, and John, whose status at this point is all but unknown.

2019-04-29 7:09:20 ¶ ●

Now that the theory that things sucked up by black holes end up in Caliborn’s world has been all but confirmed, it’s probably time to revisit the whole black hole theory.

2019-04-29 9:49:25 ¶ ●

Musing over the fact that Dirk was joined with Equius briefly during his process of ascension to his Ultimate Self, and wondering if Dirk therefore absorbed part of Equius’ essence into himself, I remembered this part of the Candy Epilogue’s postscript:

> [Rose] doesn’t really enjoy doing laundry or ironing silly anime ensembles, and she considers herself nobody’s maid. It’s just that there hasn’t been much to do on this ship.

The whole maid sequence confused me somewhat, because it didn’t seem particularly in-character for anyone involved. Which isn’t to say it’s particularly out of character: it just seemed like a lot of text dedicated to an event of very little consequence.

But Rose comparing herself to a maid actually tells us a lot, because it evokes another character who was very interested in the topic of maids and serving: Equius Zahhak himself.

Equius Zahhak; who created a robotic replacement body for the Maid of Time, supposedly to help her out but with the ulterior motive of manipulating her through her Heart:

> EQUIUS: D –> It’s a chip in your heart

If we take this as indication that Dirk might have absorbed part of Equius into his Ultimate Self, then we can probably assume Dave has absorbed Nepeta now that he’s Davebot. And with Dirk confident about a final confrontation between his son and himself, it’s quite possibly the old moirallegience between the indigoblood and the oliveblood will become relevant again, just as people predicted when it was first revealed Equius was part of Lord English.