sally-october:

lime-bloods:

Homestuck’s Gnosticism: The Conflict

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That Homestuck is “a Gnostic story” seems to be widespread knowledge, but I think there’s limited understanding as to what that actually entails. often you’ll hear that Roxy and Jade “have Gnostic themes” about them thanks to their chumhandles, but little elaboration on the matter.

The central cosmic conflict in Gnosticism is between two aspects of God, each with their own worlds; the feminine aspect, called ‘wisdom’ or Sophia, represents the world of the spiritual, while the ignorant masculine Yaldabaoth rules over the physical, the world of the flesh. This is also Homestuck’s central cosmic conflict (Yaldabaoth’s in-person appearance being but a small clue), and most readers will be able to identify the basic shapes these two forces take in the comic; the motherly female Muse oversees Space, and is locked in eternal combat with her brother the patriarchal Lord of Time.

==>, ACT 7

It’s common to hear of Space and Time represented as the aspects of creation and destruction respectively, and this holds true to a point. But something that is crucial to understand is that while the Muse of Space is ostensibly our heroine, and the Lord of Time is our primary villain, creation and destruction are, in and of themselves, morally neutral acts. Indeed, the Muse’s ultimate spell is not to truly create anything, or even to put an end to the Lord’s destruction, but to condemn him to the same destruction for all eternity.

This is because, while creation versus destruction is the battlefield on which much of Homestuck takes place, Homestuck is only superficially “about” creation and destruction. The creation myth serves as a backdrop to the personal arcs of the characters, but also as a veil hanging over deeper themes.

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i vehemently disagree with some of this, especially the idea that sburb being about breeding is a 'smokescreen’ because the comic has a lot of interlocking themes that only work when understood together and the gnostic stuff i think is a sub-set of the theme of reproduction rather than the other way around (yaldie re-produces reality the way an artist re-produces an idea (and maybe they’re both re-producing the shadow of the far place into substance the way parents re-produce their own soul/mind shadow into substance in a child), and the feminine/masculine element of yaldie and sophie feeds into I think a broader point being made about parenthood rather than vice-verse). However it’s still a great analysis of this specific thread of gnosticism in homestuck as a whole.

I think we basically agree, though, just in different words? it’s not reproduction as a whole that I’m dismissive of, but rather the idea that the life cycle of Paradox Space can be broken down into opposing moral forces of “creation” (good, Skaia) and “destruction” (evil, Noble Circle). Homestuck demonstrates that reproduction requires both of these things; as you point out, to reproduce is not to create from nothing, but rather is another form of craftsmanship or demiurgon. a birth always requires a death, usually delivered in the form of a meteor. this is the truth that becomes apparent only after we dispense with surface level notions of birth being strictly good and death being strictly bad.

forgottenhomestuckfacts:

(panel source)

Rose’s shirt used to have the official Squiddles logo on it, but she defaced it to make the “mean”-looking logo she wears today.

Early Homestuck merchandise contained references to this, including a similarly defaced Squiddles poster, and the official Rose shirt of the time “actually [appeared] to be defaced, with ink missing around the eyes and mouth area”.

(Submission courtesy of @mmmmalo!)

lime-bloods:

if Homestuck is a comic making commentary about comics, I wonder if there’s anything at all to Lord English being connected not just to real-life English colonialism, but also to the British Invasion movement in comics history..?

I don’t know how much merit there truly is to this as a serious analysis, and I suspect not much at all, but a thought I want to get down before I go to sleep and forget it; Beforus being a planet where those with super powers looked after those who didn’t, transformed into Alternia where those with powers abuse them and oppress everyone else, kind of does look a bit like English did a “comics deconstruction” on them

if the twist is rose lalonde made the dark gods i’m gonna be so mad. but dirk making the most archetypal “here’s my fanadventure fanspecies named after a mythological creature” thing imaginable almost kind of evens it out

dingodad:

okay tereziiii give us that theatre girl realness!!

this is going back over old news, but the connection didn’t occur to me until just now, seeing two unrelated posts in close proximity: the presence of human paraphernalia (a globe depicting the Earth, a bedframe for her cocoon) in Fiamet’s residence (top) no doubt has something to do with her axolotl lusus having been sighted on Earth in the past?

lime-bloods:

this is going back over old news, but the connection didn’t occur to me until just now, seeing two unrelated posts in close proximity: the presence of human paraphernalia (a globe depicting the Earth, a bedframe for her cocoon) in Fiamet’s residence (top) no doubt has something to do with her axolotl lusus having been sighted on Earth in the past?

add another missed connection to this pile; the mossy stone walls and floor of Fiamet’s place obviously indicate she literally lives in this cherub temple revealed in an earlier sahcon presentation, so speculation that an older portal lives here would lend itself to the idea of some earlier exchange between the two planets.

I doubt Fiamet has been on the quest herself, but perhaps her lusus has been on scavenging missions through the portal and brought back souvenirs for her charge? the Christmas lights on Fiamet’s bedframe might even suggest a New Perigee’s Eve connection, since that’s the holiday where a lusus goes out scrounging for shitty gifts…?

never picked up on the revolutionary overtones of Vriska finishing off her parasitic lusus with a “Guillotine de Marquise” before… which is a little ironic given that we later find out the guillotine has that name not because it was used on a marquise but belonged to a marquise. so it’s a particularly heavy handed example of Vriska literally LARPing as a renegade.

Hussie’s commentary on the spider execution scene specifically wonders if it’s “reasonable to ask: did [Mindfang] have to guillotine her own spider mom too? Maybe it’s becoming a Serket family tradition”, seemingly having forgotten that Mindfang’s lusus was swallowed whole by a dragon. but Mindfang’s life did end on a revolutionary chapter, so perhaps the core of this assumption isn’t totally worth throwing out…?

karcatgirl-vantas:

loki-zen:

it’s a common misconception that maths is all theoretical; they actually keep the 0 in a vault in France and u can go look at it if u got connections.

most numbers can only be found in the platonic realm of forms but there are a bunch of seven-digit primes that physically exist inside british museums as a holdover from the days when britain had colonies inside the platonic realm of forms

dingodad:

so like have we had the discussion about vriska’s powers being different to (vriska)’s in that she can control humans yet

there’s actually lots of stuff worth speculating on re:mind control in this update. we see earth vriska use scorpio powers, symbol and all; extended zodiac rules would seem to state that earth vriska must be bound to the light aspect like alternian vriska is. but this update also suggests our vriska doesn’t have luck powers; so is vrissy light bound but with no aspect powers, because sburb isn’t actually going to happen? or does she have different psychic powers and a different aspect binding, and is hs2 saying the two are related?

this update also has jane’s security forces wearing mind control tiaras, which it must be assumed the condesce built because despite all her experimentation, she was never able to mind control humans (she was only ever able to control jade by manipulating her animal half). so is that still true, and vrissy has power beyond the condesce’s? or have the rules simply changed now that we’re in a new reality?

tangential Jade / Jadesprite / general sprite thoughts.

the Condesce can only control Jade through a mixture of scorpio and taurus powers; seemingly she puts the human half to sleep and awakens the animal half. we know that having her “animal half” awakened doesn’t turn Jade into Bec; the “Grimbark” Jade still expresses Jade’s personality and inner feelings, simply in a more uninhibited, animalistic manner. so she doesn’t have Bec’s feelings or personality, but simply Bec’s “nature”.

this makes intuitive sense when keeping in mind what we already know about sprites, which is well-trodden ground; they’re ghost images, which contain the “essence” of someone and not really their lived experiences. and most people, i think, understand this intuitively when it comes to Jade. we don’t refer to her as “part Bec”, but as “part dog” (or “part first guardian”).

so we can probably universalise this for other characters who contain sprite essences. we know, for instance, that Lord English is “part Arquius”. but it should also be understood that Lord English always has been chiefly Caliborn, in exactly the same way Grimbark Jade never stopped being Jade. so we should probably think instead of English having Equius and Hal’s “nature”, without actually having their personalities on any upper level of consciousness.

(Gamzee is still a wildcard, even with this considered, since we’re not dealing with a sprite Gamzee but a “real” Gamzee. I still maintain that Gamzee is essentially subservient to Caliborn, and therefore would remain as such in the same body; but are we still dealing with a character who is just as much Gamzee as he is Caliborn? or does it only being “half a Gamzee” included in Lil Cal’s gene pool change things?)

we might assume that the two-faced Gamzee is himself composed of “human” and “animal” half, and that by absorbing “half a Gamzee”, Caliborn inherited only the animalistic shadow-self; a fitting fate for a character who is master of chucklevoodoos - the art of manipulating these subconscious shadow-forms - and a character who is, in all the ways that matter, the Incredible Hulk.

but it might also be argued that Caliborn, too, is simply one-half of a person, having expunged his sister personality? and that by putting two halves together, we still end up with a being who is one full half Gamzee. and if this is the case, is it not just as likely Lord English is a submissive Caliborn half attached to a dominant Gamzee half?

or perhaps it is the point that Lord English is composed entirely of two shadows with no real “face”; he is the Incredible Hulk, but one without a Bruce Banner: the very concept of the shadow self made incarnate. in which case the question of whether he “is Caliborn” or “is Gamzee” is entirely secondary to the fact that he “isn’t” Andrew Hussie, having been constructed from pieces of the author rearranged into the shape of an anti-author. (read: Lord English is God’s Hulk)