[4. Gnostic Myth –
Literally fucking everything. A Non-Exhaustive review.]

It’s honestly kind of weird to me how skeptical people are on this point, so before we dive deeper, let’s recap the sheer breadth of references to Gnosticism in Homestuck.

For starters, no less than three–up to potentially five–of the human kid’s chumhandles reference Gnosticism. You’ve got the stunningly obvious ones, Jade and Roxy: gardenGnostic & tipsyGnostalgic are as direct as it gets.

Then there’s Dirk’s chumhandle, timaeusTestified, references Timaeus, a philosophical dialogue by Plato that named and described the Demiurge, the architect God who shaped the material world. The Gnostics would later adopt this idea for Yaldabaoth, the evil ruler of physicality.

And given the number of references to Gnosticism seen here, Occam’s razor suggests two others are likely specifically Gnostic references, too:

Dave’s turntechGodhead references, well, the Godhead. Seemingly a general name used for the “Unknowable, Unseen” nature of a variety of Gods across different traditions, Godhead is one of many terms used for Abraxas in Gnostic myth.

And Jake’s golgothasTerror, commonly understood to be a reference to Christian myth, also easily reads Gnostic. Golgotha is the hill Jesus died on, but Jesus is as prominent a figure in Gnosticism as he is in Christianity.

Moving away from the simple chumhandles, Jake himself suggests quite a bit of Gnostic influence–particularly through his reflection of the mythological image of Abraxas, much as Lord English reflects the mythology behind Yaldabaoth.

There’s a pretty direct link in the ABRACADABRA reference from Jake’s BARK book (for which Abraxas is already considered a potential root word), but it’s also worth considering the way Carl Jung’s 7 Sermons to the Dead describe Abraxas. Two references are of particular interest to us.

It is the monster of the under-world, a thousand-armed polyp, coiled knot of winged serpents, frenzy.

The first is this, due to the similarity of language. Jake’s Angel-emanating Hope bubble could certainly be described as a coiled knot of winged serpents, for one thing. But more interestingly…

It is the lord of the toads and frogs, which live in the water and go up on the land, whose chorus ascendeth at noon and at midnight.

Abraxas is described as the Lord of frogs, specifically for their amphibious qualities. This puts new shades of meaning on Jake’s establishment of The Consort Kingdom, as it makes him literally lord of the amphibians.

The Aspects in general already closely resemble the Gnostic concept of Aeons–being Idea-Gods bound to “Pairs” that are meant to create reality in harmony. But in particular, some esoteric elements of Aspect relationships make way more sense when parsed through a Gnostic lens, too–just as Ying-Yang philosophy can help us make sense of the Class system.

Light and Void’s status as complementary Aspects is more obvious once you consider Gnosticism’s dualistic divide between the World of Light/Ideas and the World of Darkness/Matter.

And Equius’ Void powers manifesting as super strength makes a lot more sense when you consider that in Gnosticism, the Physical realm was synonymous with the unimportant, the deceitful, and especially with Darkness.

On top of that, I’d argue that the Christian “biting of the fruit” imagery involved with the Alchemy tutorial also leans towards a Gnostic interpretation, as opposed to a more typically Christian one.

After all, biting the fruit doesn’t damn John to penance and suffering, as the Christian myth of Adam and Eve does to its protagonists. Instead, it begins an endless climb towards Enlightenment, as Sophia’s descent to physical reality does in the Gnostic myth.

And speaking of that Gnostic myth, Homestuck re-enacts it not once, but twice. Two different characters play out the role of ‘Sophia’, the Gnostic Aeon of Wisdom who attempts to interact with ‘the Unknowable’, and accidentally creates the evil God with absolute power over the physical world–Yaldabaoth.

In their acts of transgression against the boundaries of reality, these characters also create figures identifiable as “Yaldabaoths”–Gods who have complete mastery over the physical world, but cannot engage with the world of ideas.

The first of these characters is Dirk, who happens to have Yaldabaoth for a Denizen…although he never meets him, and in fact, loses his Denizen along with his planet in Collide.

Dirk’s act of creation without a partner results in AR/Lil Hal, who attains cyber-omniscience and orchestrates the events of Unite Synchronize.
Just as Caliborn is linked to Jigsaw, AR is linked to Hal 9000, from
2001: A Space Odyssey, also a mastermind figure with complete control over the surroundings of his victims.

Also like Caliborn, AR is set apart in the narrative by his inability to grow up instead of by an outright blindness to abstract thought. Eternal immaturity seems to be the mark of a Yaldabaoth figure in Homestuck, rather than a complete inability to perceive ideas.

Consider that Equius and Gamzee are similarly stunted–Equius through his existence as a ghost, and Gamzee through being just That Big A Douche I Guess. Or, if we want to be specific, religious idolatry so intense it stagnates his growth as a person.

The common denominator between all components of Lord English IS that stagnation. The same stagnation Bastian falls victim to under AURYN’s power. The same stagnation that drives Giygas to madness, and Pokey to the exploitation of the Nowhere Islands, countless other worlds, and ultimately,
to The Absolutely Safe Capsule.

Which brings us back to Lord English. Calliope is the second Sophia-figure to play out the Gnostic Creation myth–with Caliborn as the Yaldabaoth she produces, also marked by a link to Yaldabaoth as his Denizen.

In her case, the “Unknowable” element she attempts to breach is the playing of Sburb itself–which she identifies as a foolish act that allowed Caliborn access to the power to become Lord English in the first place. Aranea even describes Sburb as a game Cherubs were never meant to play.

And now that we’re here, let’s unpack Lord English as Yaldabaoth a bit more. Along this series, we’ve seen a number of archetypal Lord figures that Caliborn seems to be drawn from: Bastian, Giygas, Pokey…

But there’s one that we haven’t discussed yet.

“I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God,”

–Exodus 20:2-6, King James Bible

YHWH, Yahweh, The Tetragammatron: The Lord God of Christian tradition.
Yaldabaoth as originally envisioned by the Gnostics was not just a random evil God, but explicitly a criticism of the spiritual movement that would eventually consolidate into mainstream Christianity as we understand it.

As such, Lord English borrows quite a bit from the Abrahamic God of Christian tradition. Down to his very name, in fact. After all, the Bible’s first introduction to God is…

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

-John 1, King James Bible

And words factor strongly into our own Lord’s construction of artifice and suffering. Doc Scratch’s precise lies of omission, The Condesce’s indoctrination of the masses through subliminal messages, movies and fiction informing the biases and self-loathing of Dave, Karkat, Jake, Dirk and almost every other character…

Culture is one of the antagonists’ most powerful tools, and that culture is transmitted through language. Indeed, you could say a common Language–a common Word–is the only thing truly binding all our protagonists together, across timelines and universes and bloodlines and species.

Lord English indeed.

And even Lord English’s very existence mirrors the
Abrahamic All-Father, distributed as it is in a structure reminiscent
of a Holy Trinity.

You have Lord English as Father….

Caliborn as Messianic, Dark-Enlightenment Bound Son….

And Lil Cal as ever-present, indecipherable but suggestive Holy Ghost.

Moving back towards Lord English’s Yaldabaoth influences with this new context, I think it’s worthwhile to revisit the Realistic Red-Yellow Sun I’ve previously argued acts as a stand-in for his influence.

The sun is the mark of the nature of a Universe, and the Sun Dave sees when traumatized by his physical surroundings is the same as the one Terezi sees when being blinded by Vriska, and which all Trolls except Kanaya are noted to suffer the light of. It is bright red-orange, angry and hot and suffocating, a spiral of red in the sky that–

Wait. Wait a minute. A red spiral?

Yep, a red spiral. Pretty much the exact red spiral on Caliborn’s cheek before predominating, in fact. Caliborn even depicts the sun in that exact way in his rendition of Dave’s rooftop Ascent, marking the reality of Homosuck with his personal symbol.

He even does it on the exact same page as John bemoaning the mangling of their own story. And let’s not forget that John’s primary conflict during this whole section is the simple, astonishing shittiness of the reality that Caliborn has constructed.

Caliborn’s main form of aggression towards the characters isn’t any particularly hostile overture towards any one of them, but rather the construction of the inherently flawed and horrible reality they are all striving to escape from.
Just as with Yaldabaoth’s subjugation of humanity.

And the nature of their escape is, fittingly, best exemplified with the sequence in which John finally masters his powers. Typheus floods the chamber in Oil, encasing John in the raw, physical reality of his own imminent drowning. Suddenly, John’s existence is focused entirely on the material plane…and simultaneously, John is drowned in darkness.

Jade tells us that the only way for John to truly free himself was to imagine a third option, outside the binary–Die or Escape–presented to him.
Her language is specific: John needed not to “find” or to “notice” a third option, but to “Conceive” it: To Create, or bring into being.

And the moment he comes to that realization and begins thinking in terms of the World of Ideas, he is suddenly encased not in Darkness, but in overwhelming Light. John reaches Enlightenment over his world, and so masters his physical circumstances. Jade even references John achieving mastery over an explicitly “Confining” reality!

And the duality of that wording–The “Confining” reality and the “Conception” of Ideas–brings us to a final Gnostic symbol, and to the nature of our Protagonists’ final victory over Lord English.

And that is the symbol of the Cosmic Egg.

A motif that recurs in many of Homestuck’s influences.

The Childlike Empress enters a Cosmic Egg in order to force Bastian into saying her name, thus ending the old iteration of Fantastica and giving birth to the one Bastian will give form and texture to in the second half of the book.
In The Neverending Story, the Egg is both the jail cell of the world, and it’s origin.

Mother 3 features not one, but two Cosmic Eggs. You have the Egg of Light, an Egg containing all manner of true secrets about the world–including memories of the apocalypse scenario that led to the creation of the Nowhere Islands.

But it can be said that the Nowhere Islands themselves are an Egg, trapping the Dark Dragon within. To awaken the Dark Dragon is to destroy the Islands–the shot featured above of it’s back rising from within them is, after all, the final shot of the game. And yet, to do so is necessary for a free world to be born.

Now, Cosmic Eggs are by no means explicitly Gnostic symbols (though I could easily argue both The Neverending Story and Mother 3 are pretty Gnostic works in and of themselves). But there’s a particular concept in Gnostic literature relevant to understanding Homestuck’s relationship to the image.

A concept quoted to excellent effect in the following clip, which I highly suggest you watch:

But here’s the original quote anyway, since I trust you’ll find it relevant:

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God’s name is Abraxas.

— Max Demian, from Demian by Herman Hesse

The birth of a bird requires the destruction of its own world–and such an act is apocalyptic, no matter how confining the bird’s reality.

And this sentiment certainly pervades Homestuck. Dave has an egg as his Cruxite item. Calliope and Caliborn are born from a literal Cosmic egg.
Trolls and Humans alike must destroy the eggs of their home worlds to be born into Sburb, and Ascend to Godhood.

But we can go further than that, right? Surely there’s a symbolic egg in this story worthy of all my pretentious as hell build up? Of course there is. In fact, there’s likely two, though, in the end, they are one and the same.

The first of these is the Cueball, which has it’s origins in Caliborn’s God Tier clock. It seems to be a sort of ticking pendulum item, but by breaking off the timer it’s linked to and destroying his clock, Caliborn gains a permanent, unconditonal immortality, and invulnerability to all things
except Cueball-infused weaponry.

Such as the weaponry Jade has Dave make in the Pre-Retcon timeline.
She claims to get her intel from the Condesce and identifies the Cueball as an item Lord English is somehow vulnerable to.
Dave, however, has a different idea:

And as it turns out, Dave’s impulse is also pretty on the money!

After all, the nature of Lord English’s indestructibility is tied to a certainty that he will never, ever change. Lord English will not grow or have any ideas other than what he had already decided on in his youth–befitting his status of Childlike Emperor and Yaldabaoth.

The egg, by contrast, is a symbol of inescapable change. The Cosmic Egg is the promise of apocalypse–that nothing is eternal, and that eventually, every world ends so another can be born. Seeing as that is a premise Caliborn so strongly rejects for himself, it is a reasonable element to counter him with.

Turns out Dave is right in identifying it as an egg! The Cueball that is Doc Scratch’s head does, after all, get used as a Literal Egg again and again–
Lord English asserting his dominance over both the Cueball and Calliope in his hatching from Doc Scratch.

But in the end, the Cueball reaches Lord English in a different way.
He turns out to be able to stop the physical reality of the Cueball, but not the fundamental idea of it. In fact, in his attempts to do so,
he ends up creating it.

Because the true Cueball turns out to be the Ultimate Juju–in other words,
the Story of Homestuck itself!

Tex Talks has already made this case for Act 7′s language, but it’s worth repeating because the visual language is so clear and simple.
Before the Juju manifests as the House shape, it materializes as a simple white orb–indistinguishable from the Cueball.

And Vriska, standing straight and rigid like a Cue Stick, uses it like one–the Juju slamming down a shockwave and unleashing–something–at Lord English, something that will presumably pocket the 8-balls in the Black Hole that has just been created behind him, and thus ending Lord English’s Game of Billiards.

And all the while, the domain of Paradox Space that all of our characters have been trapped inside? The game space that Lord English spent countless strange eons creating? All of that falls apart around us– Lord English’s world meeting its Apocalypse right as his being is finally hit with the symbol destruction and rebirth he strove to avoid for eternities.

And the Beta kids trapped inside the Juju shine and buzz within, the metaphorical Bird fighting its way out of its shell. It’s not just them, either. The Dreaming Dead in the Void, in need of a savior?
The Alphas, Waiting once again at the end of the Masterpiece?

The Betas may have been physically trapped in the Juju, but the entire cast has been trapped in the egg known as Homestuck from moment one–fighting to be free of the tyranny of Lord English’s constructed narrative. Struggling to be born.

Until now. All that’s left to find out is whatever the Epilogue has to show us.
The nature of the world about to be born. Will we see a black End Screen, as Mother 3 gave us? Will we chart the new forms of Fantastica, as Bastian once did? Or are we in for something entirely different?

I honestly don’t have a fucking clue. But I’m excited to find out.

That’s all for now. I love you.

Keep rising.

Thanks to @betweengenesisfrogs for pointing out the link between Lord English and Cosmic Eggs! I would not have figured this shit out without you.

Also thanks to banditAffiliate for writing about Lord English’s obsessive displays of dominance over his two weaknesses–Calliope and the Cueball.
Fantastic stuff!

[Master Post]

[Patreon] [Hiveswap Discord]

Keep rising.

[3. Earthbound – The two Yaldabaoths,
Dramatic Tension & The Diegetic Reader (That’s You!)]

[Spoilers for Earthbound:Beginnings, Earthbound, & Mother 3]

Most know by now that Earthbound is referenced every time we say the word “Homestuck”. It’s built into the name:
To be Stuck at Home. To be Bound to Earth.

And fittingly for a reference which such pervasive impact on our understanding of the comic, Homestuck styles itself as a spiritual successor to Earthbound in a number of ways.

Both Earthbound and Homestuck begin with a set of four kids who go on an adventure together. Both feature kids with psychic powers, friendship, and the meaning of growing up.

But there are three particular similarities to Homestuck that I want to present you with here. In these three areas, Homestuck and Earthbound/Mother are notably alike:

The Characters:

1) Both feature a unique execution of dramatic tension and narrative stakes for the characters.

The Player:

2) Engage in heavily metatextual, diegetic relationships between the World/Story and The Player/Reader.

The Antagonists:

3) Are God-Like, Authoritarian powers that cannot engage with ideas. In other words, they operate as Yaldabaoths.

These antagonists are who I want to talk about first. We will proceed from number 3 up to number 1, talking about the context of the games and tying it into the comic further as we go.

I’ll ask you to be patient with me if you don’t see much about Homestuck at first–there’s a lot of setup work to do.

Without further ado, let’s begin.

3) The Antagonists.

Side A) Earthbound – The War on Giygas.

Earthbound is the story of a boy named Ness, and his neighbor, Pokey Minch. One day, a meteor lands in their town, a time-traveler called Buzz Buzz appears from within. Buzz Buzz tells Ness he has come from a bad future, where an alien overlord named Giygas has cast the world into eternal darkness.
Only Ness and his prophecized friends can stop Giygas.

From then on Earthbound is mostly a fun, sweet adventure romp for our Protagonists. Pokey goes on an adventure of his own, acting like a cruel child whilst striking deals with agents of Giygas and steadily gaining more and more power, both in business and through the dark forces Giygas employs.

Then we skip ahead to the very end of Earthbound. Where we get one of the most horrific and memorable boss sequences in gaming.

Giygas is explicitly unfathomable, indescribable: Giygas is Eldritch in the true “Man was never meant to see this” sort of way. Giygas isn’t explicitly A God, but rather an alien. But he certainly acts like a God. His influence makes inanimate objects animate, makes animals aggressive, lures people into cults and evil deeds.

He’s tapped into the centers of power and wealth in society. Giygas is nowhere, and yet everywhere. He is, in short, the God of the material world Earthbound’s kids wander through. Their Yaldabaoth.

And interestingly, as with Yaldabaoth, Pokey describes Giygas as being “an all-mighty Idiot”–unaware of himself or what’s happening around him.

Giygas shares similarities with Bastian and Caliborn, too–in Earthbound: Beginnings, he’s driven insane by a song that reminds him of his mother.
Like Bastian, Giygas has connotations of warped, eternal childhood.
But unlike Bastian, Giygas does not escape his damnation until he dies.

And there are fates even worse than death. Such as the fate reserved for Pokey Minch, who against all odds, is the more interesting of the two–and the more relevant for Homestuck.

Let’s talk about Mother 3.

Side B) Mother 3 – No crying until the end.

Mother 3 is not as happy a game as Earthbound. Where Earthbound concentrated it’s gloom and despair into intense climaxes while being generally upbeat, Mother 3 is bittersweet and tragic throughout–though still plenty beautiful and joyful when it wants to be.

Like Homestuck, it has an unusual structure of Acts–8 instead of 7, but also of variable lengths, including a chapter that takes up almost half the game.
Playable characters vary with each section, but the bulk of the game features Lucas, his dog Boney, and their friends Duster and Kumatora.
So again: Four protagonists.

Set in the post-apocalyptic Nowhere Islands, Mother 3 tells the story of the fascist, totalitarian Pig Mask Army’s encroachment onto the idyllic, peaceful lives of the Nowhere Island natives.

As it turns out, the Pig Mask Army is led by the megalomaniacal dictator Pokey (Japanese name “Porky”) Minch, who discovers the ability to travel spacetime and escapes the final battle against Giygas.

Since then, he’s traveled countless worlds and lived through millennia, conquering and exploiting all unfortunate enough to be caught in his way.

All the while, never truly growing up.

Sound familiar?

Now, one interesting parallel about Pokey is what he does to the world he rules over. Just Lord English does to the Troll’s universe–and more indirectly, to both Human universes–Pokey manipulates and exploits The Nowhere Islands through a number of tools.

He’s got the authoritarian power regime also in place on Alternia, of course.
But Pokey dabbles in genetic modification and playing with the nature of life as well, just as both trolls and humans were genetically exploited by Lord English’s agents. Most of the enemies in Mother 3 are chimeras: amalgams of animals and machines, cruelly spliced together.

And Pokey also attempts to shape culture on the Islands to his liking, distributing “Happy Boxes” that look like televisions and seem to encourage a sort of shift towards crass materialism and an acceptance of the Pig Masks’ fascist dominance.

I note these similarities mostly because through Pokey we get a direct linking between the idea of a God-Like Yaldabaoth figure and the idea of a tyrannical, authoritarian dictator.

This is an area of Lord English’s insidious evil mostly delivered to the audience through implication and background information, so I think it’s worth the time to draw it into focus.

And the similarities between their atrocities might give us some context between the similarities at the end of their stories. Because, again like Lord English…

Master Pokey can’t die.

But he is defeated, as his machine runs out of power. And so, lacking other options, Pokey plays his trump card.

One that proves to be the end of his influence in the story.

“Oh, my! As evil as old Porky here is, I feel bad for him now. It’s true that the "Absolutely Safe Capsule” that the Mr. Saturns and I developed together can protect one from every manner of danger. It IS an absolutely safe capsule, but once you enter it, you can never exit it…
Even what’s outside of the Absolutely Safe Capsule is absolutely safe.
I did tell Porky in a hushed voice that he shouldn’t use it yet… But all he can do now is live for eternity inside the capsule, in absolute safety. Who knows, in a way, he may’ve gotten exactly what he wanted.
What do you think? Is it wrong of me to think this way?“
— Dr. Andonuts

Once Pokey seals his life into the capsule, there’s no longer an out for him. Not ever again. In a way, Pokey’s fate may indeed be one worse than death. And it’s one that seems to be echoed by Lord English, since after all…

Lord English cannot die, but he is defeated.

Specifically, Act 7′s visual language suggests he’s pocketed in the Black Hole that Alt!Calliope created. As a Black Hole is a gravitational singularity, once there, Lord English would be trapped–no amount of Time powers would let him come out, and First Guardian powers would no longer work either, since they rely on the Green Sun’s power.

An immortal, tyrannical kid–denied his playground for eternity.
Pretty fitting, I think.

But Lord English is only one part of the story, and I think the relationship between the protagonists and the Player/Reader is the more interesting area of Earthbound to explore. Because…didn’t I mention?

In the Mother series, there is another God.

It’s you.

2) The Player

Both Earthbound and Mother 3 explicitly address your existence in the context of their worlds. Both games, in fact, pause entirely just to ask you your name. In Earthbound, this role is taken by Tony, Jeff’s canonically gay friend. He calls Jeff, and in the process brings up a prompt for the Player to input their name.
This can seem like a bit of cheeky fourth-wall breaking, but consider:

You are the unseen hand behind the characters’ every action. You lead them through their world just as Giygas does for Pokey. You’re never viewed, but always present, witness and privy to all things.

And in the final boss battle (you did watch that, didn’t you?), when all else fails, Paula’s prayers reach the people of Earthbound who care about the four chosen children…including you. Your name is the final name given, praying for the protection of Ness and his friend. Your prayers are the power that end Giygas.

Mother 3 makes it even more explicit. In this game, you’re asked your name by an unseen voice, while Flint prays at an altar in the only Church in the game. Depicted on the front of it are the Light and Dark Dragons of Nowhere Island, the latter of which is the subject of an apocalyptic prophecy we’ll talk about soon.

A good question to ask at this point is: Why does this matter? And the answer is that because we’re given the God’s-eye view of these games, the context of our engagement with them is diegetic: explained by the narrative itself.

Like Bastian reading The Neverending Story, we’re not just observers consuming the content of these games. At least as far as the stories within are concerned, we are active participants. We are part of the story.

And this is true of Homestuck, too. Doc Scratch is a smarmy asshole, but he directly acknowledges the reader. He even credits us with more of an impact on the story than our protagonists. And on some level, this is true.

We HAVE had a direct impact on the story, through command prompts and fandom memes and all sorts of other engagements that ended up shaping the way Homestuck has been told. We’ve always been part of the narrative.

Hell, we’ve always been depicted in it. The MSPA Reader is a template, a schematic stand-in for all of us, just as the Human characters we love are blank templates for a multitude of more specific body headcanons.

And this has important implications for how we, the readers, might best engage with Homestuck.

Because the fact that our window into its world is diegetic means that it is presented through us through an explicit frame, a frame that is narratively constructed.

And frames have limits.

1) The Characters

Whenever I hear people say Homestuck is a tragedy, or that it’s headed for a sadstuck ending with the Beta kids stuck in the Juju in the Masterpiece, I honestly can’t help but laugh. You don’t need alternate timelines and sacrificial lamb versions of our protagonists to secure a happy ending in Homestuck.

Homestuck itself is practically a loop of impossible-seemingly, absolute-dooming circumstances…

met by perseverance and good cheer.

And when all’s said and done, the story pretty much always breaks in favor of the latter. Remember that one of the fundamental rules of Homestuck’s universe is the “Do As You Will” principle–everyone always gets what they want.

Caliborn gets to be LE, as does Gamzee. Arquis gets to fulfill the out-of-nowhere heroic destiny he wanted, and finally proves himself to the Alphas in an act of atonement. Lord English gets his eternity of destruction, and Vriska gets to be the great Hero she always wanted to be.

But our protagonists? The Alphas and Betas? They just want to live in peace. Their desires are compatible with the wills of all the other characters.

Lord English’s will is not, and he’s trampled the agency of every other character a million times over to get where he is. That’s what makes him a tyrant, and that’s what dooms him to his Absolutely Safe Capsule. Karma is an established force in Homestuck, and LE will pay his due.

And in this extremely-dire-until-the-very-last-second approach, too, Homestuck seems to be standing on the shoulders of giants.

Because this big buildup to a Big Dramatic Tragedy of an ending is pretty much exactly Earthbound’s M.O.

Earthbound’s final boss isn’t just one of the most horrifically well-executed eldritch monsters in gaming history.
It’s also set-up as what amounts to a suicide mission.

Earthbound’s protagonists time travel to a monochrome greyscape (in robot bodies) fully knowing there’s no way back from their battle with Giygas. And the battle with Giygas does indeed kill them–here you see the wreck of their robot selves. It’s pretty much deus ex machina when their souls wander back into their bodies shortly afterwards.

Even more interesting to me, however, are the parallels we find to Mother 3′s ending.

I’m going to take a time out from Homestuck for a second and talk about Mother 3 for a second, because this moment is too important to me to waste frivolously, or subject to my overwrought explanatory dialogue with without giving you the option to watch a scene that’s Undertale-level good.

Unless I’ve already succeeded in getting you to stop reading, drop everything, and go find a translated version of Mother 3 now (you can’t play it in english without emulating, since it was never released in the US), I would really appreciate it if you took the time and sucked up the spoilers and watched this ending cutscene.

It’s a work of art. A heartrending, heartfelt symphony to the pain of loss and the fear of something changing forever. Mother 3 is a game about the Apocalypse.
A game about CAUSING the apocalypse, to be precise.

Your final moments with the game are spent watching Lucas pull the final needle that binds a dragon bigger than the world, and the only hope is that Lucas’ good heart will pass on to the Dragon and make a good new world to come.
Nothing else is certain.

And the shots we see aren’t encouraging: Immediately after pulling the needle, the world begins to fall apart. Earthquakes rise and wreak havoc. Twisters of water dominate the sky and ocean. Meteors fall from the sky, and as if rising from an enormous egg, a vast, black back archs out from under the world we came to love.

And then we cut to black, and the End screen pops up.
We never see these characters again.
Only…

Only we do get to talk to them. Once this question mark pops up, you can move around in this black screen-with ‘You’ represented by the END? depicted- and occasionally, you’ll bump into…words. Words that say things like:

And

You get glimpses of things you can’t talk to, like…

And best of all, this is where the game brings out its ace.

Because this is where the name you gave in the church comes into play. At the end of it all, all of the characters in the cast not only tell you they’re ok, but recognize you. Thank you. Love you. Treat you like a friend, say goodbye, invite you back over, and wish you well in life.

In Mother 3, you play as the God of the old world, the world bound by the rules the cast had to play by. By playing through to the end, you set them free.

And by treating you as a real part of its world, Mother 3 invites you to consider its characters a real part of yours. Invites you to think of them not as characters, but as friends. As people. If that sounds familiar, it’s because Undertale built a whole damn game out of the concept.

But the same approach has always been in Homestuck’s DNA. These characters were always people first and characters second, and we were always privy to a limited frame.

That frame is Homestuck, which until The Masterpiece and Lord English’s defeat, has belonged to Caliborn. This has always been the story of his circle–the Alpha Timeline–and the context it crafts out is his childish empire.

Next time, we’ll talk more about Homestuck’s Gnostic themes, and just what it is *exactly* that our protagonists are escaping from.

For now, I’ll leave you with this song.

If this piece interested you in Mother 3, I suggest checking out Tom Ato’s legendary fan translation for the game. Mother 3 is a masterpiece, and I owe both it and Tom Ato my life in some ways. It’d make me really happy to know even one more person has been touched by their work because of me.

[Master Post]

[Patreon] [Hiveswap Discord]

Keep rising.

Hey, I am LOVING your writing on the Gnosticism themes on Homestuck–I hadn’t thought about the Aeons as Cherubs yet, and that’s fascinating stuff. However, a couple comments and leads: I don’t think Abraxas is ever referenced as Sophia’s partner, or at least, I haven’t found a source making that claim. far as I can tell, Abraxas was the name of a totally different god later attributed to the Ur-God that generates the Aeons, by Carl Jung in the 7 Sermons to the Dead (1)

betweengenesisfrogs:

That paper describes Abraxas as the ultimate, invisible God
that unites all opposites into one being, as well as the Lord of frogs and
amphibians (puts a whole new spin on consorts and BSlick, not even to mention
Jake’s consort kingdom, huh?). I also think the most obvious analog for Aeons
are actually the Aspects themselves–it’s important that the world of the
Pleroma is also the world of Ideas, and that Yaldabaoth is a “blind”
god because it cannot perceive the Ideas that created it.

The Ideas angle also
links into the Ur-Self stuff you talked about with Davepeta. I think Hussie
covered that pretty thoroughly, because the Ur-Self is just another branch of a
topic Hussie already covers from Act 1: Platonic Realism, and the expression of
the pure realm of Ideas in the world of Material reality. My next two videos
are covering the links between Gnosticism and Greek theory of Platonic Realism,
but in the meantime Tex Talks’ alchemy stuff breaks the latter down v well.

Oh, also notable is
that Yaldabaoth is described as having created “seven heavens” in the
sky–lending additional weights to the Seven Gates leading to Skaia, as the
characters must Ascend the gates much as humans must Ascend to the Heavens to
reach Pleroma 😉 And you are indeed correct that Skaia is the metaphysical
manifestation of Pleroma–hence why it acts as the Sessions’ Sun. It also gives
off Light, but Skaia’s Light is more focused on Ideas.

At last I finally have a chance to post your very helpful
correction! Sorry it took so dang long! XD

Yeah, I was totally wrong on Abraxas when I said he was Sophia’s
counterpart Aeon. I think I must have decided that because 1) it seems weird to
me that we wouldn’t know the name of that Aeon, but mythological systems are
weird and arbitrary like that I guess 2) I misread one of my sources, which referred
to Abraxas as “in Pleroma with Sophia,” which is still technically true, but as
it turns out, true in a more general way. I’ve corrected the original post. Won’t stop
old reblogs of it from going out, but ah, that’s the nature of the tumblr beast.

I’ll have to look into Jung’s take, but I’m intrigued. I
think Abraxas predates Jung, existing in earlier Gnostic systems (but not all
of them) and I think he does start as a separate god originally. But I LOVE
that he’s associated with amphibians! That’s fantastic. That really ties him closely
into the system of Sburb, even more than I originally thought, and suggests
that Hope is somehow tied to the unlimited creative potential of Skaia.

Also, I was looking into Abraxas, and as far as I can tell
he seems to have been a Hellenistic-Roman god of curses and power, of a type
that was pretty common in that period of history—gods whose long, bizarre names
were written on papyri and stones to summon the god’s magic power, frequently
as a curse to bring down your enemies. Variations on Abraxas’s name were
common, and in fact (I made sure I double-checked this this time, ha!) this
does appear to be where we get the word ABRACADABRA, from tablets and similar
riffing on ABRAXAS. Or Abraxas is a riff on ABRACADABRA and similar bizarre
power-god names. Which is fascinating in its own right, but on top of that, it
occurred to me…

Writing ABRAXAS like this might look something like:

And oh my god Jake is closely associated with Abraxas as his
denizen and Roxy even wonders on that page if he was writing ABRACADABRA and this just ties
Jake and the mysteries of the Hope aspect even more closely into Gnosticism,
and fuck, Homestuck really is the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t it? Fucking
love it.

You’re right, Homestuck has always engaged pretty closely
with the platonic/archetypal nature of its entities, all the way from Act 1
onward! Thanks for pointing that out. It’s interesting to see how it becomes
more explicit (and more focused on characters) later on, but it’s so satisfying
to notice how the seeds were already there. I like the Platonist Forms connection
lots of folks have made; I’ll admit Platonism isn’t my area of expertise,
though. I tend to approach this much more from a Lit Crit/ Structuralist theory
of ideas. But it kind of comes to the same result, doesn’t it? Structuralist concepts
and Platonism get along pretty well, the only difference is that one’s encoded in
language and one in the universe. Given that Homestuck’s a linguistic-narrative
structure that represents a cosmic structure, it’s a pretty fantastic marriage!

Seven Gates / Seven Heavens is another SWEET CATCH, thanks! Sevens
are a pretty classic magical number, but they don’t appear super often
Homestuck outside the acts and the gates, do they? Curious. Very curious.
Another echo of Narrative as Cosmos, Story as Gnosticism? From what I gather
the archetypal power of sevens historically comes from the seven visible
heavenly bodies, (the sun and moon plus the five visible planets), and that’s
probably pretty closely tied to the Gnostic idea of Seven Heavens. Which all
ties in very nicely with the planetary and cosmic structure of Sburb. Excellent
stuff.

Thanks so much for writing in! I always look forward to
hearing your ideas. 😀

I can’t believe I missed this until just now when I needed to dig up your post on the Gnostic stuff and LE as Yaldabaoth, but all of this is great and i need to save it now, thanks

OFF-THE-CUFF HOMESTUCK THOUGHTS #5: ACT 6 HOMESTUCK AS NARRATIVE REBELLION, OR: ARCS ARE DEAD, LONG LIVE ARCS

betweengenesisfrogs:

DISCLAIMER FRAMEWORK

[CHECK THE TAG FOR MORE THOUGHTS]

[Note: This one’s a doozy! Still kind of off-the-cuff, in
that I tried not to stress out about getting everything perfect, but I did do
some revision to make my ideas more clear. That’ll probably be the norm from
here on out. Hope you’re in the mood for a long read and a wild ride!

…Seriously, this shit is like twenty pages in Word.]

In my previous posts, I’ve discussed a number of ideas
present in Act 6 and Act 7 Homestuck that I think contribute powerfully to the
ending of Homestuck, especially on a thematic level.

I’ve discussed Homestuck as a meditation on the nature of a
self divided across the many timelines of a dispassionate cosmos, and argued
that the Retcon, far from a drastic change in storytelling, is a continuation
of that long-running theme. Is victory meaningless if one’s original self isn’t
around to claim it, or can a coherent, archetypal identity can be understood as
existing beyond all of one’s disparate selves? In the system of Skaia,
Homestuck asks, how do we live?

I’ve also discussed Homestuck, especially Act 6 Homestuck,
as a Gnostic work, the story of an escape from a cosmic tyrant, a Demiurge
whose ultimate weakness is that he cannot see the limitations of the domain
he’s been given. In the same post, I discussed how this realm of the Demiurge,
Lord English’s domain, is constantly paralleled with the space embodied by
Homestuck itself, and how the kid’s departure from the story evokes their
escape from this tyrant’s space-time domain as it reaches the end set for it by
Paradox Space. From the system of Lord English, Homestuck asks, how do we
escape? And at the same time, in the system of narrative called Homestuck, how
do we find meaning within its limitations, and how do we escape them?

These themes work together. As we’ve seen, they echo and reinforce each
other, provide parallels and points of contrast. In fact, I’d argue that each
of these different themes are diverse manifestations of one larger theme, in the
same way that individual selves in Homestuck can be thought of as
manifestations of one larger Self. This overarching theme is present throughout
Homestuck, but it reaches its culmination in Act 6 and 7, in a finale that
drives it home in a different ways. To understand Homestuck is to understand
this theme.

If someone were to ask me, “What is Homestuck about?” this
would be my answer:

Homestuck is an
exploration of the tension between abstract, impersonal systems and individual,
personal experiences of those systems.

Abstract, impersonal systems are everywhere in Homestuck,
systems that don’t always align with the desires, emotions, and goals of the
main characters. The central question of Homestuck is how these characters will
choose to understand the systems that govern their lives, and how they will carve
out meaningful lives in relation to those systems. Gnosticism, metafiction,
divided identities, and Sburb itself all play into this theme. As Homestuck’s
characters decide how to live their lives within these many interconnected systems,
they suggest possibilities for our own lives, for we readers also live in a
world that also contains many systems and forces outside of our control. In
their choices, we find opportunities and implications for how we should live.

You’ll notice I said there’s a tension, rather than an opposition,
between individual experience and abstract systems. I think that gets closer to
the truth of what Homestuck is trying to say. Characters in Homestuck sometimes
reject its systems altogether, but just as often they exploit them or find
identities for themselves within the constraints/opportunities of those
systems. While Caliborn’s Gnostic-style
domain of control is presented in a negative light, as something worth opposing
and escaping, other systems, like Sburb itself, are presented in a much more
ambiguous light, challenging us to decide how we feel about those systems and
the possibilities they present within their rules.

I’ve talked about several of these systems in my previous
posts, but today I want to talk about one I haven’t yet dug into in detail.
Narrative itself.

Narrative in Homestuck, the power a story holds over its
characters, is another system which the characters of Homestuck are constantly
fighting, exploiting, and embracing.

Because another word for those abstract systems in Homestuck
is…

Arcs.

Keep reading

This is honestly like the best writing on Homestuck’s themes I’ve read since, like, basically @sam-keeper ‘s stuff?

God I’m so glad this exists. God I hope we’re able to like, as a community uncovering these themes, like…make them accessible to people more. this stuff is so cool but also it’s so…important, to me? as a person? god

i’m emotional and crying and really pensive, just, just please read this ok? Read this and also everything on Homestuck sam ever wrote cause she was here like back in 2012 and we’re all more or less catching up.

HSE – Alchemy Pt. II: The Cruxite Artifact

Hey, everyone. In this episode, we finally close out the tutorial section and unpack some of the deeper philosophical implications Homestuck works off.

That means going into the Biblical references built into the Alchemy system. We contrast the book of Genesis against the Gnostic creation myth, go over what Gnosticism entails in some detail, and what the main difference is between Gnosticism and traditional Christianity.

What do both stories tell us about Homestuck’s priorities? What does it mean for Homestuck to so strongly embrace the latter? And what does that approach say about the idea of original sin?

Coming soon, we’ll have a short video on the Medium, covering the general layout of a Sburb game. After that, we’ll open up the next round of video votes, giving Patrons the ability to choose what game mechanics in Sburb they want me to cover, and in what order!

That’s all for now.

Keep rising.

HSE – Alchemy Pt. II: The Cruxite Artifact

I JUST FINISHED THE REVOLUTIONARY GIRL UTENA ANIME AND IT KILLED MY WHOLE FUCINH LIFE. WHERE IS MY CHILD UTENA AND ANTHY IM FUCKIN HAPPY FOR U, U HAVE NO IDEA okok breaaathiiiing. I have classes in 6 hours. My heart is on the floor and I need content, any tips? Also, should I watch the movie? The homestuck ending didn’t hit me this fucking hard in the head w/ the ending. Also do u have opinions on the ending of utena? I sorely need to hear someone’s else on this (1/2)

(2/2) oh and thanks?? Ur anthy malice tag was what piqued my interest in the anime, but I’ll pass for callmearcturus ask box too, because a gifset in their blog was the last drop in the glass that drowned me in utena hell. But anyway, love u and thanks! Have a nice day/night :*

Ok so (1) ha ha you forgot to hit anon the second time so now i get to follow a new Utena blog >:))

But (2) Watching the movie will not help you at FUCKING ALL in understanding the ending other than making some fairly obviously implied things more explicit but the entire movie is a goddamn trip so I do definitely reccomend watching it, if only for the lesbians and eye candy and surreal symbol dream logic. It’s a fun watch.

I have opinions on the ending of Utena, but like…Utena’s literally as dense as Homestuck and as meaningful to me, I could spend years of my life talking about Utena. If you have particular questions, it would help.

For now I’ll say that I think Utena’s Gnostic references and themes are as important to it as Homestuck’s. Akio and Caliborn are directly comparable as Yaldabaoth figures, and Anthy and Calliope are directly comparable as Sophias. It’s incredibly fascinating stuff to consider. So if you’re interested in both properties and want to figure out their endings in more detail, I suggest looking into that stuff.

I swear this isn’t on purpose, but I’m actually posting the next Homestuck video in the next couple days, which happens to go into the Gnostic stuff in some detail. That might be a good place to start, if you’re interested. At least that’s what I intended it to be, so I certainly Hope I succeeded!

I WILL SAY THIS MUCH: I think Utena herself is perfectly fine. She just left Akio’s world, but Akio’s world is not reality. Anthy went to find her. And find her she will.

You can’t deny a goddess, after all.

ps: @alotofmomos @nelfes hey looks like our efforts helped reel one in!!! Anthy’s Malice >:)

Curious about your statement that Homestuck is anti-materialistic. Homestuck as a series revels in the detritus of pop-culture ephemera – from Stiller Shades to to the Con-Air Bunny. It’s a series cluttered with material to the point of almost fetishizing referencial material goods. What could be more materialistic then a game whose end-goal is to earn enough treasure with which to purchase your own personalized universe?

Baaasically I don’t think Homestuck is anti-materialistic in the sense that it hates the possession and use of material goods. I think Homestuck is anti-materialistic in the Gnostic sense, ie: In the sense that suggests Material reality isn’t necessarily True Reality, and that the world of ideas and thought is the world of spiritual good.

Pop-Culture isn’t just a series of material possessions. It is, by it’s nature as culture, a collection of Ideas about reality. Some of those ideas are fun, useful, or empowering to the characters. Some of those ideas hold them back and diminish them.

Homestuck suggests that while plenty of stuff in the Material world CAN be good and can reflect the true world of ideas in beautiful ways–filling it with Light–a lot of the Material world contains false information that should be disregarded, and that includes oppressive social constructs like Heteronormativity or the Hemospectrum.

Material reality is best experienced when guided by insight from the world of true ideas–the world of Light–basically.

Notably, the Hemospectrum is a physical time loop. It doesn’t occur as a byproduct of any one person thinking it’s a good idea. It’s established top-bottom by LE, in service of his quest for power and dominion over all things, including Trolls.

And LE gets the information about the Hemospectrum from Equius and Gamzee, who inherit and enforce it respectively–meaning his understanding of the Hemospectrum had a physical source. So the Hemospectrum is sourced in physical reality, and coded to some extent as Void and Rage.

Whereas true ideas, like Vriska and Terezi or Dirk and Jake or Rose and Kanaya’s feelings of romantic love for each other, are coded as Light. They aren’t taught these feelings–they discover them by thinking things through for themselves.

And the acquisition of Light involves casting aside that false information taught to the kids from their physical worlds–whether it be heteronormativity, gender essentialism, the hemospectrum, or troll ideals of violence.

Am I making any sense? Explaining this stuff as it exists in my head is really, really hard.

(i’m reading your newest essay and dying dude.) worth noting: cherubs, the only love they can have revolved entirely around cruel, destructive procreation and i think is the pinnacle of their solitary lives. the only contact cherubs have with each other is procreative and violent.

Aaaah shit you’re right. It also has massive implications for the Physical world–it denotes what areas are subject to destruction or to protection. Fuckkk cherubs are cool…

True Light, False Light: Yaldabaoth, Racial Identity, and Gnostic Horror

Hey peeps. So watching the responses to @sam-keeper ‘s thread on how we treat fan creators (which, hearteningly, most people seem to agree with), I noticed Hussie and Homestuck being set apart from the others due to Hussie’s reputation.

I’m not super interested in discussing that. But among the details people cited, between the confused, misinformed history revisions and the outright made up stuff, there were people making pretty understandable and correct critique points.

One that stood out was the focus on Trickster Mode, and how Hussie seemingly mocked his progressive audience with the “Caucasian” joke, way back in the day.

And while I don’t think Hussie’s handling of race was perfect, I do think that joke was legitimately well-earned in the narrative, and that it wasn’t really understood. In my view. This isn’t a defense of Homestuck on racial terms in it’s entirety–I think mistakes were made at some points, for sure. But it is an alternate reading of the Caucasian joke that I think is actually pretty good and funny.

In the context of Homestuck, Trickster mode as a joke sides quite definitely with progressives, in fascinating ways that tie into Homestuck’s own consistent Gnostic logic.

I wanted to advance that reading and present a case for it here. Hopefully it’ll move you and you’ll find yourself enjoying the comic even more. Even if it doesn’t and you find you disagree, well…to spur on any conversation about the comic on this front at all would be just, dare I say it?

Peachy.

Curious to hear from you all. Gonna post stuff on Jane pretty soon too, and I am still working on that next video. For now,

Keep Rising.

True Light, False Light:
Yaldabaoth, Racial Identity, and Gnostic Horror

I really like the your interpretation of classpects and what they mean on a character to character basis. All of your fanfiction is also really excellent with the most consistent characterization that I’ve seen in many a year. You are like the wise elder of the Homestuck fandom in my eyes. Btw will there be an essay on the aspects themselves after you are done with the classes? Or will it be all the characters instead?

Thanks a ton, I’m happy to hear you’ve enjoyed my writing so much 🙂

I mostly think fandom has the Aspects figured out, so I’m pretty sure my writing is going to remain focused on other subjects for the moment. Tex Talks does a better job of breaking new ground than me there anyway, his videos are great pls check them out.

All I really have to add to the Aspect discussion is that they should really be understood as the obvious counterparts to the Gnostic Aeons–like the Aeons, the Aspects are Ideas. They come in bonded pairs, and are meant to create reality together. There’s definitely other analogs to Aeons in Homestuck: Rose, Dirk and Calliope all act out or relate to Sophia pretty strongly.

But Sophia herself is pretty much synonymous with the aspect of Light. And understanding the Aspects that way gives them a sense of divinity that adds weight to them, I think. It also makes it clear the Gnostic stuff suffuses every inch of Homestuck, as if that wasn’t already obvious enough.

[4. Gnostic Myth –Literally fucking everything. A Non-Exhaustive review.]

[3. Earthbound – The two Yaldabaoths, Dramatic Tension & The Diegetic Reader (That’s You!)]

[4. Gnostic Myth –
Literally fucking everything. A Non-Exhaustive review.]

[3. Earthbound – The two Yaldabaoths,
Dramatic Tension & The Diegetic Reader (That’s You!)]