The jagged profile and segmented form of this building on LOCAS give the appearance of Equius climbing into the midsection of a imperial drone in order to reach his gate. The belly of the drone becomes akin to the bucket it carries: it’s yonic imagery, like Tavros flying into a huge red X when Vriska was hating/hitting on him (x) (Though I’m not as sure about the latter half of that link as I used to be)
More interesting to me than the building’s role in hammering in the SBURB IS ABOUT REPRODUCTION theming is its re-use as Darkleer’s hideaway… or its reappearance in Roxy’s dreams for that matter.
The first time I picked up on sex/death intermingling in Homestuck was when it became apparent that the denizen Vriska wanted Tavros to fight was actually herself (linked above), and that her campaign of harassment was at least in part intended to make Tavros angry enough to kill her – which is basically synonymous with her attempts to bang him. “Too l8 to kill me, too l8 to kiss me,” says Vriska, lamenting Tavros’s failure to use his lance as she lay in her bed.
Curious to me now is that 1. the exposition on troll romance immediately follows Tavros’s visit to Vriska’s house and 2. Hussie’s commentary makes a weird comment wondering how on earth the kids are supposed to fill those buckets anyway. Hussie jokes (?) about the answer being vomit, and fanon has largely settled upon some sort of mutual masturbation for bucket filling purposes. But given the ambiguity of “genetic material”, the sheer amount of blood spilled over Vriska’s quest bed, I wonder if the buckets literally just get filled with. Blood. Which would further complicate the problem of distinguishing romantic and platonic hatred.
CCG: I CAN’T STAND TO LOOK AT YOUR DUMB PURPLE WORDS ANYMORE. CCG: NEXT TIME I SEE THAT SHITTY COLOR YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT’LL BE COMING OUT OF YOUR BODY. CCG: AND NO, FOR THE LOVE OF FUCK, THAT WAS NOT INNUENDO.
Equius’s jam session (teehee) with Dave is another good example. This first line is a reference to dominant genes in the slurry, transposed onto motifs of blood and rapping:
TG: on earth class is sorted out by who can drop the most delirious flow
CT: D –> I see CT: D –> So, in other words, a sort of b100d letting ritual CT: D –> To assess whose pulse is steadiest and thus whose flow is the most STRONG
But eventually Equius returns to sex:
CT: D –> Yes CT: D –> Those are the sorts of assertive statements which could get me CT: D –> Flowing
Tbh I’m not sure if the above really implies that trolls literally spill blood for reproductive purposes or if the interplay of fluids from sex and aggression is purely symbolic… but I think there’s more to be said of the association, at least. Equius pouring his own blood into a tin can to reproduce Aradia becomes more overtly sexual either way. As well as Karkat’s MY HATE IS THE LIFEBLOOD THAT COURSE THROUGH THE VEINS OF YOUR UNIVERSE, which bookends his caliginous entreaty to John… (We’ve already discussed how the instillation of life is sexualized in Homestuck, but this adds a more literal dimension to things)
My thought splits in several directions here.
1. I think the drone’s head (and His Honorable Tyranny, to whom they also bear resemblance) have a head shape similar to that of Homestuck’s preferred bearded dragons – though I’m not committed to the notion, not yet at least. The real driving force for a sense of parallel would be that
2. Given that sex is linked to death, the drone’s dual buckets bear a certain resemblance to the scales of justice associated with Terezi. Like Judgement Day has arrived, but instead of weighing your heart against a feather, the heart’s contents are being measured… (I once saw a post alleging that the posture of the drone invokes the skull of the Doom aspect – given that the Doom of Doomsday means judgement, that would supplement this nicely)
3. Aradia’s comments about Time players needing to die a thousand deaths to satisfy the master they serve (Lord English) suddenly (tentatively) sounds a lot the blood demanded by the imperial drones? Which if the other points stand, would further the parallels drawn between Lord English and dragons
4. Oh god I just realized something fucking amazing
If His Honorable Tyranny is effectively a dragon, the left shot not only tells us that Mindfang defeated him, but that she decapitated him? The foregrounded bloody cane acts as substitute for the severed head of the “dragon”. That’s so cool.
But then going to the drone-torso house makes it seem as though she’s returning the unencumbered head to a fresh body? Which is a motif we also see with eg Jane and Dirk, when decapitated domes are promptly impaled on spikes…
