2024-10-27 13:40:50 ¶ ●

so long as I’ve been talking gravity, it feels like I’m obviously missing something by not talking about the Green Sun, which formed the gravitational center of Homestuck’s cosmos long before black holes became part of the equation. it’s emblematic of Lord English, obviously, the villain who keeps our heroes gravitationally bound to their homes, but that felt too simplistic… I think I’ve hit on something more solid, though.

> Cascade, part 6.

in the sense that the Green Sun - being composed of the rendered-down remains of both of Homestuck’s universes - is a very literal representation of the comic’s incestuous slurry of ideas, Dave and Rose emerging from the Sun’s radioactive green sludge very much reads as their being reconstituted from ectoplasm. indeed: Hussie suggested years ago that to “die spectacularly in an explosion of green fire” is actually a requirement for reaching the god tiers without a dream self, and while this doesn’t turn out to be exactly true, the central premise remains; the old self must be immolated completely to make way for the new self. in this exact same way, trolls find themselves gravitating toward the cocoons they were born from and are completely destroyed via explosion in the process of ascension - for Dave and Rose, the Green Sun is the figurative birth-cocoon they return to in order to be broken down into slime and built back up again.

(so it’s interesting, at the very least, that the very same black hole that usurped the Green Sun’s position as the center of reality is now the cocoon Vriska Serket finds herself trapped within - complete with lain-thick imagery of fire and death!)

> p. 2728

compare as well the Matriorb and Tumor, obvious visual twins which also serve the same purpose as malignant growths which must kill their previous host so as to give rise to a new brood. for Rose, in particular, the gravity that keeps the suburban family unit together - the Green Sun’s gravity - is also the gravity that pulls her toward the familial role Sburb has lined up for her, that of the mother. and the icons of the Green Sun hidden, womb-like, within the guts of Rose’s planet tell us everything we need to know about the role the Green Sun is supposed to play in this motherhood destiny.

(from Hussie’s commentary in Book 5, p. 271: “This is another one of those things that makes it feel like this quest is narratively what is demanded of her […] it’s supposed to feel that way to her, and has a strange sense of obligatory gravity surrounding it.”)

Scratch’s deception regarding the Green Sun then takes on a characteristically insidious subtext: he’s tricking Rose into giving birth. and not just to the Green Sun, or to Lord English, but - in the characteristically incestuous, cyclical nature of things in Homestuck - to her own ascended self! and as such, in the inverse: when Rose flies out to the Furthest Ring believing that she’s about to defy the role Sburb has laid out for her by aborting the Tumor, she’s also unknowingly setting out to abort herself - a “suicide mission” in more ways than just one.