The other day I was in the process of making a post about how interesting it is that Homestuck’s God of Death is an enemy to ghosts rather than a protector of them and what sort of symbolic implications that had, but I got distracted before I could post it. Which is a good thing, I think, because while I’ve been thinking it over since then it’s occurred to me that Homestuck doesn’t just have the one God of Death. It has Lord English and the Dead Cherub, a direct analogue to Problem Sleuth’s personification of Death.

What’s especially important about this is that Lord English isn’t just any old Angel of Death; he’s referred to by some of his adherents as “THE ANGEL OF DOUBLE DEATH”.

While Death is distracted, a number of stragglers appear to be wandering out of the afterlife.

Death in Homestuck is just another stage of life’s journey, and that’s not just in the sense of God Tiers or Ultimate Selves; anyone who dies and goes to the dream bubbles is allowed to continue participating in and contributing to the story, just like in Problem Sleuth, wherein the ghosts looked after by Death were essentially free to move in and out of the living and dying realms as they pleased.

This is essentially the difference between the Dead Cherub and Lord English’s roles in the afterlife; while Calliope is a guide and protector, Lord English is a destroyer. A similar duo can be found in real-life mythology; the Hellenic pantheon had a God “of the Dead”, Hades, who looked after the realm of the dead, and God “of Death”, Thanatos, who represented death itself.

(Perhaps coincidentally - or perhaps not! - Lord English’s concept also seems to align closely to the Bang! Pow! Boom! character from the Insane Clown Posse’s Dark Carnival mythos; a continuous explosion who tears through the afterlife, taking the souls of the wicked and excess dead caught in its blast to Hell. The Bang! Pow! Boom! record notably came out the same year Homestuck started, and saw the debut of the iconic “Miracles” track).

DAVE: yo terezi weve got a grim reaper too
DAVE: shit isnt that novel

Like many concepts in Homestuck, the trolls seem to be aware of this “two kinds of death” thing in a strange thereabouts way. As I’ve speculated before, trolls may not be very concerned with what happens in the afterlife, because Alternia is populated with ghosts in a way that, for whatever reason, Earth isn’t. The Alternian mythos has no need for a character with “a SKULL” and “a BLACK ROBE” to guide ghosts to the afterlife because Alternians take the afterlife and the immortal soul for granted. Instead, fitting with their morbid culture, they’re more concerned with fearing and worshiping an Angel of Double Death who might have the power to destroy even that immortal soul.

This even fits with the two cherubs’ aspects, Space and Time, and Alternian culture’s preoccupation with the latter; Space represents creation and birth, and as such is connected to death as a form of rebirth, while Time represents destruction, associated with Lord English’s purely destructive role.