To look at this from another angle, captchaloguing an item, in plain terms, logs that item as a captcha. Since these captchas are limited to 8 characters in length, there’s a limit to how many items can possibly have codes and therefore, presumably, how many items can possibly be captchalogued. If someone’s paradox ghost contains the whole of their DNA, and the number of possible biological organisms outnumbers all the possible captchalogue codes, then it stands to reason that an item this complex simply could not be captchalogued. It would have to be “compressed” in some way to fit the 8-character code length; or in more Platonic terms, the paradox ghost would have to be made more “basic”, more similar to the fundamental idea of a paradox ghost.
unraveling the fact that sburb’s heroes and their sprites share an ectobiological essence has opened up a lot of avenues of thought, particularly with regards to hussie’s theory of Selfness; the idea that new characters in the comic build off of earlier ones, containing certain platonic traces of earlier ideas in the story. Jane contains aspects of Feferi (or Feferi contains “Janeness”; Book 4, page 332), Calliope contains Nepeta-ness which holds traces of Jade-ness (pp. 149-151).
when a sprite not only represents the ghost of your dead ancestors but is actually made up of the same DNA that you were born from, we can begin to apply this concept almost literally. Roxy’s sprite being made in the image of Nepeta and Feferi indicates that Nepeta and Feferi’s essence is in Roxy, Jake’s sprite containing Sollux and Eridan shows us that Sollux and Eridan’s concepts live on in Jake, etc.
i’m certain i came across some kind of commentary from the author that describes Jaspers as a sort of family totem animal of Rose’s, which would be another major indicator in this direction, but not being able to find it again after the fact is a major reason i haven’t written in any more depth on this topic…
with that in mind, it’s interesting to note that despite andrew himself ascribing Feferi’s essence to Jane, it’s Roxy whose ancestral ghost takes Feferi’s form, implying that there is some shared heritage between the two girls. (being first generation paradox clones, both of their genes come out of the ether, so despite not being actually related, it stands to reason that some of their core concepts might stem from the same source.)
Feferi’s nurturing nature might imply that she represents motherhood, a trait that Jane and Roxy do share (compare with malo’s recent musings on Feferi and Gl’bgolyb as dark mirrors of Kanaya and the Mother Grub). an interesting consequence of that line of thinking is that there is no shared ‘fatherhood’ gene between Jake and Dirk… but of course, despite the both of them being biological fathers, they’ve never truly succeeded in filling a fatherly role.
naturally Dirk’s ancestral spirit is himself, because that’s who damn raised him, but he’s also part Equius. an obvious choice even on the surface level, but also worthy of note is that the Heir is a son figure. Dirk contains “son-ness”, but no “father-ness”, and indeed has literally no father of his own.
