obviously use of the sucker juju is supposed to represent a kind of psychedelic trip, but i didn’t fully realise until earlier today that trickster mode itself is all actually just an illusion!

the squiddles are images of the horrorterrors conjured up by the subconscious mind:

[…] I’ll state the obvious. Squiddles I guess are a sort of candy coated representation of the outer gods. Not literally. They are a brand in a fictional universe. A cartoon show. They were not necessarily conjured into existence by the gods, via dark conspiracy either. It’s more likely that humans created them as an echo of their subconscious awareness that these gods exist, and present them through this cute, approachable facade.

much later on, in-comic it seems to be suggested that squiddles are trickster horrorterrors:

which would seem to be a contradictory explanation; not really a big deal, since the squiddles and horrorterrors only exist at the periphery of Homestuck’s story, and the mystery surrounding them forms a large part of their mass. but then, years later still, Andrew seems to use the exact same wording as his Formspring answer when describing the trickster squiddles:

Jade first imagines she sees a candy-coated version of this disturbing eldritch abyss. Literally: it’s a Trickster facade. Squiddles canonically are known to be Trickster Horrorterrors. A perception of the beasts that is friendlier and more comprehensible to mortal minds. The illusion doesn’t last long, though. (Homestuck: Book 5: Act 5 Act 2 Part 1, p.291)

the wording here is pretty unambiguous; trickster mode is a “facade” and an “illusion [that] doesn’t last long”. long has it been obvious that trickster mode - thanks to the sucker juju, an invention of the race of cherubs, who are deeply concerned with storytelling - served as a method of hurrying along the story from the reader’s perspective, skipping over the grittier “meat” of the story in favor of more “candy”-oriented lighthearted content; but this seems to suggest that underneath the so-called candy-coating that meat was actually still happening, just obscured from view?

this made me wonder if the spiral image of the sucker had ever been compared to the spirals popularly associated with hypnosis; and of course it has!

i should have known Lord English’s T3RR1BL3 HYPNOT1C GL4R3 wasn’t just the ability to influence others on an individual level, but in fact the ability to create illusions over all of reality… manipulation and storytelling go hand-in-hand in Homestuck after all.