English’s journey through time taking him back and forth from Beforus to Earth over and over and over ad infinitum via the power of a symmetrical (al)chemical reaction obviously makes me think of Primer, whose back-and-forth time travel is inspired by the symmetrical back-and-forth behaviour exhibited by electrons as per the Feynman diagram. so that made me wonder if there’s a chance this is deliberate, and that maybe Primer gets referenced somewhere in Homestuck.

from what I can tell it doesn’t, and the word “primer” only comes up in Andrew’s book commentary… but he exclusively uses it to refer to time travel? not just once but three separate times? which is a totally insane coincidence but also absolutely not intentional, right? like, Primer is such a quintessential “difficult to understand time travel movie” that it would make perfect sense for him to do this as a gag, but the fact that he never calls it up in any way makes me really hesitant to think of it as a deliberate gag