With the Platonic theme in mind, it probably makes a lot of sense that the character associated with Timaeus would become one of the most powerful and important to the story.
Like the land dwellers and sea dwellers on Alternia, trolls and humans become the two races who are, in Equius’ words, obligated to be at odds. This parallel between land/sea dwellers and trolls/humans is actually foreshadowed pretty early in the comic, when Feferi’s lusus tells her she’s destined to UNITE THE TWO RACES. Feferi interprets this as obviously referring to the land and sea dwelling races, but it later comes true in her instrumentation of the dream bubbles that allow the humans and trolls to meet. This parallel is interesting enough on its own, because Feferi herself contrasts racial unification with the prophesied extinction of trollkind - i.e. Jane’s goal as Empress of Earth C - and it’s ghosts from Feferi’s dreambubbles that are able to turn the tide of the race war.
It’s Gamzee’s important role in the Candy version of the Epilogues that gives us the most new information, though, because it finally offers some idea of what the dynamic between the subjugglator Highbloods and the sea dwellers, who are described as two distinctly operating parties, particularly during the class war instigated by the Signless:
Combined with the fact that the land dwellers are described as a self-governing body within the empire that the Condesce controls by leveraging oppression upon through the subjugglators, the picture painted of Alternia’s political situation is a complicated one. But Gamzee - representing his ancestor the Grand Highblood and the rest of the purple caste - walks the circus tightrope between lackey to the Empress and leader of the oppressed by bEiNg PoLiTiCaLlY nEuTrAl, BrOtHeR. He’s able to act as the strong highblooded enforcer of Jane’s regime while also claiming to look out for the little guy (in proper juggalo fashion) - as symbolised by the dual aquatic and terrestrial nature of the Capricorn.
The nature of his religion - of course a parallel to the Grand Highblood’s position as an important figure in Alternian religion - also seems particularly geared toward manipulating trolls specifically, targeting their perceived prior sins as a race as something that needs to be ‘redeemed’. This could be taken as a sinister version of the real-world ICP’s practices, using imagery of gangs and violence to market their spiritual message to a stricken lower class, or more generally as a parallel to the opium of the people interpretation of religion; either way it gives us a lot to think about with regards to the role the subjugglators played among the rest of the land dwellers back on Alternia.
The ~ATH programming language is able to tell when something dies because it runs on the very same network as the clock that tells when something dies.
This scene from Collide almost looks like it could be a lineup of Homestuck’s big bads; a Jack Noir with the power of the Green Sun (represented by the Green Sun cane), Lord English, and then Dirk Strider.
When Act 7 seemed like the end-all of Homestuck, one symbol seemed to be set in stone: the colour black represented the story - what is canon - and the colour white represented what was outside the story, or outside of canon. Black is the colour of the space that acts as the backdrop to the Medium and the void of the Furthest Ring, while white is the colour of the extracanonical space that peeks out from underneath when the black space is blown away.
The white house juju that gets John “un-stuck” from canon is a representation of this; a “white hole” to outside of canon. The similar white door that appears in Act 7 to usher the heroes into their new universe - a white frog, as opposed to the black frog created by Karkat and the other trolls - served to cement the same concept, acting as a gateway for the characters of the story to finally leave it.
So it only followed that if a “white hole” was one that led out of the story, a black hole was one that led back into the story; that by creating the black hole by the Green Sun, the Dead Cherub was intending to doom Lord English to forever be trapped within Homestuck itself.
The Homestuck Epilogues seem to throw a spanner in this very straightforward machine, though. The black hole the Dead Cherub created seemingly took Lord English and the rest of those who fell past its event horizon to exactly the same place the white door did: not only the supposedly extracanonical Earth C, but the Candy timeline, which seems to be regarded by many of its inhabitants as even less canon than its Meat twin.
So what does this mean? Is the running hypothesis for black/white symbolism just way off the mark? Or is the situation regarding what is and isn’t inside canon more complicated than the story’s residents seem to understand? I think a good argument can be made for the latter.
One prominent piece of evidence is the logo for the Epilogues themselves, which feature black/white duality heavily; one side of the story canon, the other outside of canon. But perhaps more importantly the logo uses a black-within-white/white-within-black motif akin to that of the yin-yang part of a taijitu, symbolising the ways that two aspects of a duality feed into each other: canon begets noncanon, noncanon begets canon; noncanon contains canon within it, canon contains noncanon.
The black poison appears in the Candy timeline infecting Jade, allowing the Dead Cherub some influence over a timeline she otherwise considers “inconsequential”. Meanwhile the white poison afflicts John in the Meat timeline - a part of the Epilogues which it should be mentioned largely takes place in the white space around the black hole, which is the most literal example of ‘outside canon’ that Homestuck has to offer. Despite all the posturing about Meat’s canonicity and Candy’s dubiosity, there is canon and noncanon contained within both.
It is also worth noting that the Dead Cherub considers the black hole to be “basically her,” and that the Postscript to Meat acts as a continuation of Candy, wherein the Dead Cherub - a Muse of Space, one who represents creation itself - literally eats Lord English, symbolically trapping him within herself. The swapping of the Postscripts reinforces the same concept presented by the yin and yang and the double ouroboros - that black and white flow in and out of each other in a cyclical manner - and Lord English’s becoming part of the Dead Cherub is proof that he is still very much part of the story. What that means, however, and what happens from now, is anybody’s guess.
Perhaps also worth mentioning is that Jack Noir, Ms. Paint and the Felt are among the periphery characters whose fates go completely unmentioned in the Epilogues, while other carapace characters like WV (and PM by association) are touched upon.
This passage from Andrew’s commentary in the Homestuck books has been brought up a lot regarding Dirk’s arc in the Epilogues:
Villains in Homestuck tend to be meta-villains. That is, they exist much closer to the surface of the story’s meta-bubble, and often interact with the way it’s told. For instance, Jack Noir is the original owner of the 4th wall … As a universal bureaucratic game construct, he can keep tabs on everything going on in the session, including just outside the story.
Though Jack Noir is a meta-villain, there are limits to this, possibly tied to his personality. It could be the scope of his ambition never includes messing with the story itself. His desire for power lies entirely within fictional parameters. Later, there are much more flagrant meta-villains … They live on the surface of the meta-bubble, and at times badly puncture it.
But I think perhaps the most intriguing part of this particular comment is that it’s immediately preceded by this pretty innocuous and pointless-seeming line:
This small, almost throwaway sequence where Andrew directly interacts with Jack Noir as a character is basically crucial to the mechanics of Dirk’s role in the Epilogues, because every other time a character receives commands it’s from another character in the story, like WV and the other exiles. But here we see that yes, the author of the story does have the ability to influence the thoughts and actions of characters through commands in exactly the same way: just like Dirk does with the rest of the cast in Meat.
This is where the story takes another obvious turn toward the great clusterfuckening, which every MSPA story builds towards eventually, even if it takes several years to get there. And I don’t mean the plot just builds to something complicated. I mean that literally every character in the story gathers together in a big stupid jumble.
Back when Collide and Act 7 dropped back in 2016, people asked a lot of questions. Without textual narration and with very little background information from the author, many aspects of the animations seemed to be more mysterious than they were helpful. Particularly mystifying were the black holes featured in both animations; in Act 7, one created by the alternate Calliope next to the Green Sun, which by all accounts as essential to Lord English’s defeat but whose specific purpose at the time was left vague; and in Collide, the hole left behind by the death of the possessed Jack Noir, which took half of Dirk’s Land of Tombs and Krypton with it before never being mentioned again.
Many seemed to take a key detail - the fact that the juju breaker crowbar and the fridge containing Gamzee were both conveniently caught in “Union Jack”’s blast - as a clue as to what these black holes were supposed to do. The crowbar and Gamzee both later appeared on Caliborn’s version of the Earth with no explanation as to how they got there, leading many to believe that the black hole created by Jack’s death is what transported them there in the first place, acting as a wormhole.
What the Epilogues say about the Black Hole Theory
While I obviously didn’t get every single detail correct, the Homestuck Epilogues essentially confirm outright the most important assumptions made in the Black Hole Theory.
One of the main things connecting the two separate timelines in the Epilogues - Meat and Candy - is the black hole created by the Dead Cherub, which consumed the Green Sun and then the fabric of Paradox Space itself. This black hole does not lead to Caliborn’s SBURB session as originally assumed, but it does lead to the Earth in Universe C - the same Earth Caliborn later goes on to inhabit. It’s through this black hole that multitudes of ghosts arrive on Earth C.
The black hole isn’t the only portal through which inhabitants of the dream bubbles are able to arrive on Earth, however.
Meenah jumps through a server in the Furthest Ring and later falls through the sky in Earth C in exactly the same manner as the ghosts who fell through the Dead Cherub’s black hole. The implications of this are clear: the black hole and the pool ball server both lead to the same place. What remains unclear is how exactly these two portals come to be linked with the Immortality Clock.
Revisiting the black holes
Case I: [S] Caliborn: Enter
The black hole from Caliborn: Enter remains the most straightforward example: the dried up Earth C, including everything on it, is sucked into the black hole to where Caliborn’s session takes place.
However the information provided to us by the Epilogues forces us to rethink a major aspect of the Black Hole Theory: either the assumption that all black holes lead to the same place has to be discarded, or the exact logic regarding where a black hole leads to is more complicated than was once thought.
The Epilogues show us that the black hole in the Furthest Ring takes things to Earth; so how can the Earth itself be pulled through the same kind of portal? Keeping in mind that black holes also represent portals back into the story, it makes sense that a black hole would be what pulls an old, dead planet back into relevance in a SBURB session. But how can it practically happen?
One possibility is that, since the Dead Cherub’s black hole is connected to the Candy reality specifically, Caliborn’s Earth is actually from the Meat reality, and fell through into the Candy reality when Caliborn entered his session.
Another possibility involves the Immortality Clock. If the black holes initially led to the skies above Earth C, but later became connected to the Immortality Clock like the pool ball server did, it’s possible that after being sucked into the kernelsprite black hole, the Earth emerged from the Immortality Clock, with the clock itself sitting in its core.
Since we already know what the Caliborn: Enter black hole actually did, there’s little to be discussed in that regard. But the question of how it did what it did could be important to figuring out the functionality of Homestuck’s other black holes.
Case II: The Dead Session
In stark contrast to the kernelsprite black hole, where the black hole that appears when Skaia collapses in the center of Caliborn’s session leads is a complete mystery. Its purpose is clear: to clear the Dead Session of unwanted variables like Prospit and Skaia and to act as a “pocket” for the pool ball planets caused by its destruction. Where these objects go once they cross the event horizon, however, is unknown. If all the other black holes in Homestuck lead somewhere, it’s only safe to assume this one does, too; but the Epilogues give us no new clues.
As such, the old theory regarding this black hole is still the strongest: when the pool ball planets fall into it, they come back out of the Immortality Clock as miniature - or rather, correctly-sized - pool balls; the same ones which Lil Cal is supposed to have his eyes replaced with and which Jack Noir later takes out in order to become Lord English himself. It is worth noting that just as in Homestuck, the actual origin of the flashing pool ball eyes Caliborn himself wears during his Masterpiece is not touched upon at all in the Epilogues.
Case III: [S] Collide
The Homestuck Epilogues essentially affirm what many had already suspected; rather than merely spaghettifying or destroying the parts of the Land of Tombs and Krypton caught in its blast, the black hole created by the death of the Jack Noir version of Lord English sent the essential contents of Dirk’s planet to Earth C, where they would later form part of Caliborn’s own quest. Among the more likely objects transported by the black hole are the denizen Yaldabaoth, who would have been somewhere in LOTAK’s core, and the juju breaker crowbar, being wielded by Jack/English at the time of his death.
It was previously assumed that the fridge containing Gamzee was also among the items transported by this black hole; however Gamzee’s being freed in the Candy epilogue obfuscates this possibility somewhat.
Case IV: [S] Act 7
While the exact design of this black hole is made explicitly clear in the Epilogues, unfortunately my speculation that Caliborn absorbs the power of his own future self is no longer possible, and the exact fate of Lord English’s power, which now resides within the Dead Cherub, is unknown.
A New Hypothesis?
Homestuck is a story of constantly escalating stakes, frequently prefiguring events in the greater narrative with less severe events in games of Sburb. Two prominent examples are Lord English, who acts as a culmination of previous villains like the Becquerel-powered Jack Noir and the Black King, and the destruction of the A and B universes by The Tumor, which builds on the prior destruction of Alternia and Earth by the Reckoning.
So it only follows that the end of Homestuck itself would parallel the normal end of a Sburb session; the Reckoning, whereby people and objects are sent hurtling toward Skaia and subsequently transported to a planet, foreshadows the Rapture - which Act 7 is referred to as on the Homestuck story map - where the Green Sun - a sun at the center of the story much like Skaia - sucks in people and objects who later find themselves on Earth C. New arrivals on Earth C are even accompanied by impact craters much like meteors, and the terms ‘Reckoning’ and ‘Rapture’ are essentially synonyms in that they both refer to the Biblical apocalypse.
The Green Sun’s similarity to Skaia could be significant for more than just aesthetic parallel reasons, though; when assisted by a powerful temporal event like a Scratch happens, Skaia can create healthy offshoot timelines by duplicating the objects sent through its defense portals and sending them to different points in time.
The Meat and Candy timelines in the Epilogues are noticeably similar to this concept, so the question has to be raised; when an object falls through a black hole, could it be duplicated across both of these timelines? Specifically, could objects that fall from the sky in the Candy timeline also pop out of the Immortality Clock in the Meat timeline?
This hypothesis simplifies some things by explaining why black holes and server portals sometimes lead to the sky on Earth C and sometimes lead to the Immortality Clock. It is also heavy in symbolism; if the Candy timeline beyond the black hole’s event horizon represents the Dead Cherub (Calliope) herself, then the Immortality Clock at the center of Caliborn’s land could similarly be seen as representing himself.
Thus, if my older speculation that Caliborn absorbed Lord English’s essence after destroying the clock is true, then he is absorbed by Calliope in the Candy timeline and by Caliborn in the Meat timeline; befitting of their dual cherubic nature and rivalry. It is also worth noting in this respect that the icon for the Candy epilogue is two intertwined spirals of green and red - symbolising a fusion of Calliope and Caliborn - while the icon of the Meat epilogue is purely red.
If Meenah also appears on Caliborn’s Earth through the Immortality Clock, it would also explain the origin of another of Homestuck’s more mysterious jujus; the Ring of Life and Void, which Caliborn appears to have acquired around the same time as the house juju and his flashing pool ball eyes with little explanation. This explanation fits with the alternating nature of the Ring; if Meenah was using it as a Ring of Life when it was taken by Caliborn, it would then become the Ring of Void that he uses to POOF!!!!!!!!!!! away the juju chest with John and the other Beta kids inside.
Of course, this hypothesis comes with its own complications. With the Ring comes not only a second living Meenah, but also a third John alongside another Terezi to arrive through the Immortality Clock. Under normal circumstances these would be standard Homestuck fare; but if the Epilogues aren’t already the end, this story is surely coming to a close soon, and it’s unclear what role these duplicates would play in that.
Interesting to note: the Sepulchritude climax of Problem Sleuthfeatures a combination of both of Homestuck’s two poisons, a potent example of the ‘combining of opposites’ motif used frequently regarding snakes and cherubs in Homestuck.
Lord English’s Caledfwlch seems to be deliberately modeled after Problem Sleuth’s Tetrixcalibur, with the same short sword design and flared guard. They’re both also named after the same legendary sword from British folklore.
The attack also features the word ‘PAX’ - Latin for peace.
Like Problem Sleuth, a cherub must be able to reconcile both halves of the ouroboros in order to achieve their ascended, winged form; symbolic of the Ultimate Self achieved through reconciling all of one’s selves.
Though Problem Sleuth’s Gambit Schemata don’t see much reference in Homestuck aside from their seemingly superficial connection to Trickster Mode, they do serve a fun bit of foreshadowing regarding Jack Noir; just as Problem Sleuth’s Candy Corn Vampire transformation relates to his associated candy, candy corn, Jack Noir’s associated candy as seen in the Intermission is scotty dogs, and he later transforms into a powerful doglike monster.
What it took me longer to realise, though, is that just as a Gambit Schema requires the carving of the transformation’s face into a pumpkin, one of Jade Harley’s first appearances features her beside a pumpkin carved with…
