That Homestuck is “a Gnostic story” seems to be widespread knowledge, but I think there’s limited understanding as to what that actually entails. often you’ll hear that Roxy and Jade “have Gnostic themes” about them thanks to their chumhandles, but little elaboration on the matter.
The central cosmic conflict in Gnosticism is between two aspects of God, each with their own worlds; the feminine aspect, called ‘wisdom’ or Sophia, represents the world of the spiritual, while the ignorant masculine Yaldabaoth rules over the physical, the world of the flesh. This is also Homestuck’s central cosmic conflict (Yaldabaoth’s in-person appearance being but a small clue), and most readers will be able to identify the basic shapes these two forces take in the comic; the motherly female Muse oversees Space, and is locked in eternal combat with her brother the patriarchal Lord of Time.
It’s common to hear of Space and Time represented as the aspects of creation and destruction respectively, and this holds true to a point. But something that is crucial to understand is that while the Muse of Space is ostensibly our heroine, and the Lord of Time is our primary villain, creation and destruction are, in and of themselves, morally neutral acts. Indeed, the Muse’s ultimate spell is not to truly create anything, or even to put an end to the Lord’s destruction, but to condemn him to the same destruction for all eternity.
This is because, while creation versus destruction is the battlefield on which much of Homestuck takes place, Homestuck is only superficially “about” creation and destruction. The creation myth serves as a backdrop to the personal arcs of the characters, but also as a veil hanging over deeper themes.
i vehemently disagree with some of this, especially the idea that sburb being about breeding is a 'smokescreen’ because the comic has a lot of interlocking themes that only work when understood together and the gnostic stuff i think is a sub-set of the theme of reproduction rather than the other way around (yaldie re-produces reality the way an artist re-produces an idea (and maybe they’re both re-producing the shadow of the far place into substance the way parents re-produce their own soul/mind shadow into substance in a child), and the feminine/masculine element of yaldie and sophie feeds into I think a broader point being made about parenthood rather than vice-verse). However it’s still a great analysis of this specific thread of gnosticism in homestuck as a whole.
I think we basically agree, though, just in different words? it’s not reproduction as a whole that I’m dismissive of, but rather the idea that the life cycle of Paradox Space can be broken down into opposing moral forces of “creation” (good, Skaia) and “destruction” (evil, Noble Circle). Homestuck demonstrates that reproduction requires both of these things; as you point out, to reproduce is not to create from nothing, but rather is another form of craftsmanship or demiurgon. a birth always requires a death, usually delivered in the form of a meteor. this is the truth that becomes apparent only after we dispense with surface level notions of birth being strictly good and death being strictly bad.
