All of the kids’ lands seem interconnected in ways that seem significant but I can’t really say how.
The Lands of Wind and Shade and Light and Rain are one big example. It was four whole years ago when Homestuck was just beginning to wrap up when I first noticed that after LOWAS’ quest is over, it seems destined to basically become a Land of Light and rain; with the heavy clouds gone, the Shade should turn to Light, and with a native population of amphibious salamanders, there’s going to need to be some Rain to fill in the now empty canals and oceans, right?And I just recently talked about some other connections the two lands could have.
LOWAS and the Land of Heat and Clockwork, too, seem to have connections. LOWAS’ native materials are all industrial; crude oil and other products of mining. But the culture of LOWAS is largely agricultural, and the bare minimum machinery there is all pneumatic. LOHAC, on the other hand, is a hub of crude industry. The symbol associated with oil is even a gear, and is later used to represent LOHAC itself.
LOHAC seems to connect to the Land of Frost and Frogs, too. Like LOWAS and LOLAR, the planets represent opposites, Frost and Heat. But there’s a fundamental similarity, too, in that both planets are tectonically active. LOFAF begins to heat up when the Forge is stoked, and LOHAC is covered in lava from the very beginning.
Another interesting possibly connection can be found in some of Hussie’s Book 2 commentary regarding his initial plans for the Lands:
I also had the idea that these 4 substances [oil, chalk, amber and uranium] would serve as various contaminants on their planets, in ways relevant to their personal quests. John’s planet and all its pipes were clogged with oil […] Dave’s planet was covered in gears, which would be gummed up by sticky amber sap.
Sap, of course, comes from trees, of which LOHAC has none. LOWAS has a few, but by far the largest population of healthy-looking plant life lives on LOFAF.
Of course, it needs to be mentioned that fireflies, seemingly native to John’s world, have also been found encased in amber, seemingly native to Dave’s world. And that in popular culture - in Jurassic Park in particular - the notion of insects encased in amber is interconnected with the idea of genetically modifying and breeding frogs, ala LOFAF.
Possibly this represents a symbolic cycle of worlds. LOFAF heats up to become like LOHAC, which churns out pollution to become like LOWAS, which when cleaned up becomes like LOLAR. This sort of cycle is already represented in the comic by the Land Gates, which take the player from one planet to another in a cyclical motion.
LOHAC’s quest or lack thereof kind of throws the first big obstacle into the equation. LOFAF becoming warm and LOWAS becoming clean are part of their beneficial world-altering quests. LOHAC becoming more polluted doesn’t really seem to fit in with that theme, and its quest, from what the comic shows us, just seems to be initiating the Scratch. How does that fit in? There’s a couple ways you could interpret it.
Dave’s general role in the game tends to be breaking things so they can be fixed later. That’s how the Scratch is initiated, too; through Beat Mesa being damaged. So LOHAC being messed up so that it could be fixed a different way is consistent with that.
The Scratch itself is also consistent with this scenario. In a Scratch, a world is reset so another set of heroes can attempt to save it. See above. But a Scratch is also what allows Lord English to make himself a part of a world, and if oil is a symbol of Lord English’s corruption, this also makes sense.
Another explanation could merely be that as a Time player, Dave’s land is naturally out of sequence with the others.
The second missing link in the chain is the one between LOLAR and LOFAF. How does a chalky ocean world become like a frozen jungle planet? Like LOHAC’s, LOLAR’s Land quest is much less understood than LOWAS or LOFAF’s. We know she has to play the rain, but what does that mean?
JASPERSPRITE: And the way that it shakes is the same as what makes notes in a song!
JASPERSPRITE: And a song i think can be written down as letters.
Jaspersprite seems to heavily imply that playing the rain involves rearranging genetic code in the water (G, C, A, T - note three of those are also notes you can play on an instrument) in order to make the ocean it flows into capable of creating life. Genetic coding is exactly part of LOFAF’s quest, so that’s a connection; but also filling an ocean with genes in the hope of creating life is kind of primordial, and remember Jade’s quest is also primordial because frogs + bugs stuck in amber = dinosaurs.
Andrew also has this to say about what he initially planned for LOFAF:
Jade’s [planet] was going to be in some way affected by fallout (nuclear winter?).
Obviously nuclear war doesn’t happen on LOLAR, but Rose’s role does end up involving a nuclear explosion when she heads out to detonate the Tumor. This is a parallel to Dave’s quest, because it’s another personal quest that doesn’t exactly pertain to her land, and it can also be read as having a double meaning. Rose thought she was going to blow up the sun, which would be kind of like causing an eternal winter, but actually she just caused a large atomic explosion. In supporting this reading, LOLAR itself seems to be covered in hints of some kind of future atomic disaster, like this giant carving of the Green Sun:
It could also be worth noting that nuclear fallout is associated with mutation and messing up genes, and that some of LOLAR’s shiny mutant genewater is pouring out of floating shells, which is another word for bombs.
One final morsel for thought: oil is the remains of dead animals. If we take for granted that LOLAR’s oceans are covered in oil, and we assume that this oil contains the genetic code necessary for Rose’s quest, and we imagine that LOLAR’s oil comes from LOWAS, which comes from LOHAC, which comes from LOFAF, then the oil that becomes LOFAF’s frogs would ultimately be derived from the frogs themselves, making the frogs a sort of symbolic paradox clone.