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…