recently I’ve been wondering again what Gl'bgolyb was doing on Earth, especially if all she was accomplishing there was ruining the Condesce’s plans… I’ve been bouncing around comparisons between the emissary and Maplehoof which haven’t really seemed to amount to much beyond “they were both cloned”, still leaving open the question of why the Condesce would clone such a problematic element. but if the Condesce really were, to coin a phrase, “pulling a Watchmen” on the governments of Earth, that would go some way toward explaining how having a genocidal monster on her side might have proved beneficial?
the rule of movie posters in Homestuck suggests we read further into this… and though the still itself is from the 2009 film, Jane’s “[c]omics aren’t really your thing” comment would seem to imply it was intended to represent the comic book character. as it’s equally likely, I think, that Jake would be interested in Watchmen as a comic book or Watchmen as a movie from the 2000s, both of these possibilities are worth examining. though I’m yet to see the film, my understanding is that it’s widely considered to be a pretty good adaptation, with the major change that there is no Gl'bgolyb in Snyder’s version of the story, and Manhattan himself is the threat used to unite humanity.
taking into account that Jake’s movie posters all fall into three categories - blue women, treasure hunting and overt references to Lord English - the fact that the funny mustache he’s drawn on Manhattan evokes a certain “wouldn’t it be funny if there was a version of Jake English that was an omnipotent radioactive man!” seems significant. certainly if “pulling a Watchmen” aligns with Gl'bgolyb’s promise to “UNITE THE TWO RACES”, the fact that Meenah tries to use English as a common enemy to bring the humans onto her side would make him a good Manhattan.
on the other hand, if we continue thinking of Gl'bgolyb in terms of Meenah’s disgust with sex and reproduction, it might also be relevant that Jane “felt kind of weird about having his BLUE MUTANT PENIS dangle over [her] head” while she slept. that she decides to cover it up with what she identifies as a “TROLL HOWIE MANDEL”, which she calls “even more obscene”, could even be taken foreshadowing Jane’s counter-disgust with the troll mode of procreation… Manhattan sitting on the same page as Swanson, who seemingly inspired Jane’s later foray into politics, would definitely suggest an intertwining of the two.
I was just about ready to dismiss “Meenah on Mars” - and the incidental appearance of the new supreme court justice Guy Fieri, who would go on to become the Condesce’s High Chaplain of Interstellar War, further implying that Meenah’s business in our universe extends beyond just the Earth - as just an aborted plot thread, or something intended for Hiveswap (it’d fit perfectly with the conspiratorial tone of the connections between Earth and Alternia, though it doesn’t appear in the Skaianet Systems outline)… but the fact that it’s only a few hundred pages after the Dr Manhattan stuff that we get a good look at Alternia’s pink moon and see that it’s literally just pink Mars keeps nagging at me!
is The Joke behind Meenah storming off to the moon in a huff that she’s “pulling a Dr Manhattan”? or are we even supposed to believe that, in imitating the modus operandi of her mentor Doc Scratch, the Condesce literally took a moon from her home universe with her, and that our Mars is a relocated Alternian pink moon? Mars being artistically rendered as pink in Watchmen, and all…
the one thing stopping me from fully committing to Jane’s neighbouring Manhattan and Swanson posters deliberately foreshadowing her future is that there’s surely no way Andrew would have Jane proclaim “detective stories are just so swell” on the previous page and NOT have her be totally obsessed with Rorschach, a character who is both a noir detective AND a racist conservative loon
as fun as it is to imagine that Mars is the Condesce’s pet moon (hey. if Caliborn can carry his planets around in his eyeballs, what if that’s what the pink gem in the Condesce’s crown is), interpreting the text based on extratextual elements like a NASA photograph of Mars is such shaky ground… if we accept that the pink moon is Mars because it “looks like” Mars, then what does it mean when the climax reveals LOWAS is just a blue tinted moon
as fun as it is to imagine that Mars is the Condesce’s pet moon (hey. if Caliborn can carry his planets around in his eyeballs, what if that’s what the pink gem in the Condesce’s crown is), interpreting the text based on extratextual elements like a NASA photograph of Mars is such shaky ground… if we accept that the pink moon is Mars because it “looks like” Mars, then what does it mean when the climax reveals LOWAS is just a blue tinted moon
It might help to know what the orbs nearby are derived from… Alternia looks a bit like a grayscale Venus but I’m not sure, and I can’t get a read on the green moon at all.
Though I will say, the way Alternia’s ocean is all crowded onto the lower corner makes it look like one of Vriska’s busted 8 balls.
Alternia’s actually the northern coast of Eurasia, with the Russian island of Novaya Zemlya prominent visible toward the south pole:
to my mind, the fact that the globe of Alternia is its own unique “asset” so to speak, having been warped from what it originally looked like, kind of sets it apart from the smaller planets that are wholesale copy pasted from other celestial bodies… but I guess if someone wanted to make a good argument that part of Alternia got transplanted onto Earth in the form of Russia I wouldn’t be in any position to really dispute it
apparently LOLAR is based on photography of Venus, too… while LOHAC doesn’t seem to have any natural basis, LOFAF definitely looks like it’s Something, too, I just don’t know if there’s any existing documentation as to What, exactly. Alternia seems to have been the turning point where Andrew started favouring original globes over NASA photographs through Act 6, but he still used Mars for the pink moon, and by the time we get to Caliborn’s planets we’re back to using pictures of Venus. shakier and shakier
“this picture i got off google has been corrupted with photoshop drawings, your quest is to return it to its Platonic state by getting rid of all this shitty oil/rain/snow/whathave you” certainly has a simple elegance to its symbolism
the fact that Caliborn’s first black hole starts sucking up the red sun is significant to a degree; it forms a prominent symbol that prefigures Calliope’s consumption of the Green Sun. but notably, it only ever forms a symbol. we never actually see the slow process of the red sun’s death come to a conclusion, and as such we never actually see the last part of this warning come to fruition: “eventually… the entire solar system”. this feels pointed given how much I’ve been talking about the weird pseudo-importance placed on the planet Mars, or the fact that Venus shows up in both the kids’ session and Caliborn’s session…
of course, we don’t know for sure that Earth C even had a neighbouring version of Mars (or Venus, or what have you): it’s a totally new universe, so we could probably be safe in assuming it doesn’t. but as much as I insist that Alternia’s green moon is Snowman’s black planet, repainted and repurposed, the aborted Snapchat storyline did seem to be building up the Land of Frost and Frogs as a potential green moon candidate by having the Felt build a new Felt Mansion there out of green wood.
the Epilogues never touch upon what happened to the kids’ leftover planets, but since we spent some time there in the Snapchat prologue, it doesn’t seem out of the question that it was intended for them to have been brought into the new universe and become the new solar system. prominently, Jade doesn’t seem to bring the moon with her when she relocates the Earth: but the Epilogues take for granted that the new Earth does have a new moon, and this fact is featured front and center on Snapchat. is that why the Land of Wind and Shade looks exactly like the Earth’s moon?
the fact that the cherub’s home planet is now “conspicuously” replaced by a large, red black hole is supposed to make us think of the black hole Caliborn creates when he enters his session: it’s supposed to tease the idea that Caliborn’s dad is in fact Caliborn himself. but now that we can be pretty confident Lord English isn’t going back in time to become his own dad any time soon, reading back on this line is just worrisome. part of me can’t help but wonder if Caliborn’s dad is Calliope, a cherub who we already know is alive potentially thousands of years before her own birth… but surely not. right…?
i am on record as having said myself that when you start having to draw a
timeline graph you have already lost. but maybe i wasn’t getting across
through text just how deranged i am being
mentioned this a bit on my other blog… Vriska’s reference to slime as troll “secretions” would seem to be in reference to sopor slime, lending support to the notion that the cocoon a troll sleeps in could literally be the cocoon they crawl out of post-pupation: in holometaboly (the complete metamorphosis from a larva to a pupa), the organism releases enzymes to dissolve itself completely before regrowing itself in its new form. if that’s what a cocoon is filled with - perhaps mixed with a little bit of the troll’s own dissolved form - then it would certainly qualify as “secretions”.
compare this to the trolls’ Quest Cocoons, which they find in place of Quest Beds; when a human lays down to ascend, they’re expected to undergo what Andrew calls in his commentary a “final nap”, but when a troll lays down, they don’t just sleep; their body is completely destroyed. the thought that trolls might dissolve completely in their sleep and reform upon waking immediately brought me back, surprise surprise, to my observations of Evangelion, where it seems the pilots are cursed to remain children forever by being dissolved and born again every time they enter the Eva. at first choosing to view sopor slime as something that originates from the troll’s own body feels at odds with the cherub poison interpretation… but perhaps the venom of the Lord of Time who can’t grow up should be an enzyme that forces you to pupate over and over forever?
(I briefly joked that “pie filling” actually being something that clowns secrete makes it fit more with the “weasel snot” and “elf tears” that come with it in Problem Sleuth - one or two people seemed to take this as a play on “cream pie”, which was unintentional; but if trolls did dissolve into green slime in their beds, then using that slime as their reproductive material would be about as close to an ectobiology analog as you could possibly get…)
clever wording here; for Jade to know English would be for her to “understand terror no human ever has”, because for a troll, that kind of terror is just nature. that’s why Karkat has to be the one to wise her up to it.
understanding that Karkat’s fear of the fourth wall and his fear of his own otherself are two intertwined snakes, though, this page also seems to be playing a little dramatic prank on us. “what’s the name of the guy who wears this coat? unrelated but let’s listen to Karkat right now.” Karkat’s own voyeuristic tendencies flare up as he begs Jade: turn off that damn window, or any old pervert will be able to see into your house!
possibly a game of Twin Peaks is being played here, too… Jade can’t ever know the name of the guy in the coat because that means knowing it’s really her dear old Grandpa. but of course this brings us back to my first point: to Karkat’s race, knowing that dear old Grandpa was responsible all along isn’t a revelation, it’s just life.
culturally we tend to associate spades with the ace, which is why it’s come to be a symbol of asexuality. but in this context maybe the number of the ace is more interesting; are spades the “becoming one” quadrant? when Jack reaches his ultimate form, “SOMETHING HIGHER THAN A QUEEN OR A KING“, John suggests he may have become “like an ace”. compare with Clubs Deuce, whose associated quadrant is threefold, but serves the primary purpose of making sure a pair remain two separate individuals… (his name also serves to contrast him with his Prospitian counterpart, Ace Dick… who eats all of his identical otherselves to become… Ace Dick!) think also of Kanaya, the pejorative village tricycle, whose unspoken Bit is that she likes to auspisticise people into two halves with her chainsaw.
wonder now, then, whether any instance of caliginous desire (caliginous… it’s been flagged up before but probably bears repeating here) might represent the same desire a cherub feels to complete oneself. tangenting on from last post, Karkat’s hatred for his own shattered otherselves becomes hate at first sight for the spade-wearing John… John represents many things Karkat longs to have, freedom chief among them, but does the flesh and Blood of Lord English recognise a future host of the spirit?
