I’ve been reading a lot of interesting thoughts about Dirk’s character and the latest update today, but I’m kind of surprised that I haven’t seen anybody talking about Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff. Because this sequence:
Whether or not it was an intentional allusion, this similarity prompted me to think about the connections between Dave, Dirk, their bros, death, and Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff. I propose that Dave and Dirk’s reactions to their bros’* deaths (specifically, the allusions included in these reactions) are indicative of the differences in the relationships that the two characters have with their bros.
*(Yes, I am conflating Dave and Dirk’s bro here, but only because Dirk himself conflates the two in the same way. So when Dirk is reacting to Dave’s death in the latest update, I think we can assume that he’s also using Dave as a stand-in to mourn his own bro.)
(This is super-long, so it’s continued under the read more.)
A few weeks ago, I examined the implications of Rose’s mysterious “W,”. In the latest update, we’re presented with a similarly cryptic monosyllable from a Lalonde. But since this utterance has three times as many letters, it must be three times as complex. So I set to work.
By now, everybody’s figured out that “sup” is an obvious reference to the sup squark, which is the sfermion counterpart to the up quark predicted by supersymmetry theory. And sure, it’s pretty clever. Squarks are “shadow particles,” which ties into Roxy’s void theme. There’s the standard numerology shenanigans: sup squarks (and all sfermions, for that matter) have a spin value of 0, as opposed to fermions, which have a spin of ½, or, in other words, .5 spin. 0, ½, .5. 1025. Child’s play. Plus, the callback to Problem Sleuth is cute. But it all just feels too easy. There’s gotta be more going on here.
And then it hit me. All of the dozens of referencestoadvancedsupersymmetrytheory scattered throughout the comic have been leading up to this moment. The sup squark’s superpartner is, naturally, the up quark. And the up quark’s counterpart in the first generation subset of matter is the down quark. (I’m sure I don’t have to explain how this corresponds to the alpha and beta sessions, and how the electron and the electron neutrino fit into this analogy.) Down. We have to flip it downways.
“sup” becomes “dns.”
DNS is a common abbreviation for 3,5-dinitrosalicyclic acid, a simple if somewhat obscure aromatic compound. DNS is a vital hint to the what the future of Homestuck holds, and, luckily, I’m here to decipher it for you. Stunning (and entirely serious) revelations after the cut.
3,5-dinitrosalicylic acid is primarily used to test for the presence of reducing sugars in urine and blood. If sugar is present, the yellow DNS reacts with it to form dark brown 3-amino-5-nitrosalicylic acid.
Now, why does this color change happen? It’s because unlike DNS, 3-amino-5-nitrosalicylic acid strongly absorbs light with a wavelength of 540 nanometers. This is what 540nm light looks like:
Look familiar? It should. It’s almost identical to the color of the Green Sun (and, therefore, the first guardians). Compare.
Most recently, the Green Sun has shown up on top of Lord English’s golden staff, and, correspondingly, as the laser sight on his assault rifle. The similarity in color is particularly noticeable in this panel:
The staff is, as you’ll recall, currently being held by robo Spades Slick.
Time to put the pieces together. When a solution of DNS reacts with sugar, 540nm wavelength bright green light is absorbed and therefore neutralized. By the way, note how similar the color of the .5% sugar/DNS solution above is to that of Crowbar’s juju breaker, which has similar neutralizing propreties.
So, with her “sup” comment, Roxy is hinting that sugar can counteract the power of the green sun, and work as a kind of juju breaker to it. The hints have been there from the very beginning. Cake is one of the first items that was weaponized in the comic, and it has been a constant presence ever since. John’s Dad seems to recognize its power most of all. He uses cakes in his battles with imps; during [S]Descend, while on Grandpa’s battleship, Rose’s mom is holding her gun and he holds a cake; and just to be safe, he carries a cake recipe at all times in his wallet. The most important ingredient in this recipe: 1 ½ cups sugar. (Another clear quantum mechanics reference, since 1 ½ is the cumulative spin value of a lepton and a photon.)
Now the picture’s starting to become clear. Robo-Spades will, at some point, show up wielding Lord English’s scepter. He’ll attempt to attack someone with it, but at the last second, Jane’s dad will jump in and auto-pastry it. The temerity of this shenanigan will instantly deplete SS’s prankster’s gambit, causing it to explode from the sudden stress, much like Kanaya’s Flighty Broads And Their Snarky Horeshitometer did earlier. The blast from such an exceptional prank will be so powerful that the metaphorical game construct of the meter will manifest in the physical world of the comic, destroying the scepter, and possibly even Spades Slick himself (a nice inversion of John’s Dad’s death by Jack Noir’s hand). This will also be an appropriate callback to Problem Sleuth, where sugar was the primary means of attacking Demonhead Mobster Kingpin.
Destroying LE’s scepter will have significant consequences, which I’ll soon explain. But first, you might be thinking that I’m stretching things too far. That I’m seeing patterns that aren’t actually there. Well, rest assured, I have more proof.
Recall the association between sugar and 540nm light. If you take that particular shade of green and invert the color, you get this:
Ring a bell?
That’s right, it’s the color of TaB. The soda that has… no sugar in it. That just can’t be a coincidence.
If you still don’t believe me, consider this. Roxy’s dns comment refers not only to the Green Sun itself, but also indirectly to Bec, one of the first guardians who draws his power from it. Bec takes his name from Henri Becquerel, the French physicist who received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903, along with Marie and Pierre Curie, in recognition of their work on radioactivity. Keep that information in mind.
With your doubts laid to rest, let’s move on. Now that Jane’s Dad has destroyed the Green Sun-topped scepter, the Green Sun itself will also be destroyed, following the laws of supersymmetry that have already been discussed. Once this happens, God Cat will lose his first guardian powers. Without them, he’ll be useless to the Condesce, who will release him from her control. How ironic that a cake, an emblem of the Condesce’s Betty Crocker empire, will come back to haunt her like this.
Now that GCat is free of the batterwitch’s influence, he will, naturally, befriend Roxy. Because Roxy and cats is a Thing. Before we continue, let’s go back to dns. This combination of letters has two other important meanings, both of them related to British trains.
Know what else is Welsh? That’s right, the name of Caledfwlch. And what else is English? Right, Lord English! Roxy’s dns therefore also contains a hint that Lord English will be stabbed with Caledflweltwch.
Everything’s starting to come together now. Another color parallel comes into play here: GCat is white. The exact same shade of white as Caledfwlweftewch! Surely not a coincidence.
The word “white” has five letters. The same as the number of squares in the SBURB logo. But the logo also has a triangle. Triangles have three corners and three sides. 3+3=6. There are six letters in “God Cat.” But that phrase also has a space in it. An empty space. Empty is a synonym for void. Roxy is a void player! And “Roxy” is an anagram of “X or Y,” evoking a Cartesian coordinate system. The implication is that we need to choose between vertical and horizontal progression. Both the DN&S railway line and the Glamorgan line (which includes the DNS railway station) run from north to south. It would seem, then, that the correct answer to the “X or Y” question is Y, the vertical axis, which corresponds to north/south on a map.
But not so fast. Remember, “sup.” The sup squark, which differs from the up quark by ½ spin. We need to flip this problem turnways by half a spin too. The answer, then, is in fact not Y. It’s X. Horizontal movement. The blade of the Welsh Caledfwlchwfcwhfwchfwlflwfwwfch doesn’t follow the north-south Glamorgan line, but instead takes a sharp right turn and plunges into the bright green English countryside.
And that’s what’s up, Roxy. That’s sup.
**UPDATE: after considering some new data, I’ve produced more completely serious analysis on this subject! Click here to read it!
It’s the first letter of her next word, “what,” yes. But it’s also the fulfillment of an obligation, the settling of a debt. Remember the magnetic W?
Let’s look back at where it came from. On page 2266, Rose examined at her refrigerator, “whose surfaces have customarily served as the battlefield for a chilly siege of PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE one-upmanship.”
(Lest we forget, the item Rose used to alchemize one of her most iconic outfits was originally a gift from her mother.)
Later, Rose uses her umbrella. Due to sylladex shenanigans, everything else she’s carrying falls out of her inventory.
Rose leaves the magnet behind on the busted transformer:
It’s just a stupid magnet. And yet, 1410 pages later, she has it again:
She alchemizes it with one of her mother’s bottles of vodka. Apparently, Rose went back to transformer by her house after entering the session and retrieved the W from it.
So: Rose’s mother gave her the W. Rose took it, lost it, retrieved it, and combined it with alcohol, something closely associated with her mother (and something else of hers which Rose herself would later adopt as her own).
And now, on page 8877, the circle is finally completed. Rose probably lost track of the magnet itself ages ago, but she still has the letter. So a Lalonde mother once again gives her daughter a W. And Rose, three years and 6607 pages later, returns what she took. Maybe she decided it was worth more than 12 cents after all. The economy and whatnot. Maybe she forgot to sew the plastic shut, and this was the next best thing. Maybe it was a coup de grace of one-upsmanship. Or maybe it was, after all this time, a sincere gesture of appreciation and gratitude to her mother.
Taking the W left an “unsightly void” in the pack. But, tragically, returning the W required the eternal loss of the Seer’s sight, and left the Void emptier than ever.
I’ve been reading a lot of interesting thoughts about Dirk’s character and the latest update today, but I’m kind of surprised that I haven’t seen anybody talking about Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff. Because this sequence:
Whether or not it was an intentional allusion, this similarity prompted me to think about the connections between Dave, Dirk, their bros, death, and Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff. I propose that Dave and Dirk’s reactions to their bros’* deaths (specifically, the allusions included in these reactions) are indicative of the differences in the relationships that the two characters have with their bros.
*(Yes, I am conflating Dave and Dirk’s bro here, but only because Dirk himself conflates the two in the same way. So when Dirk is reacting to Dave’s death in the latest update, I think we can assume that he’s also using Dave as a stand-in to mourn his own bro.)
(This is super-long, so it’s continued under the read more.)
Before I get into the specifics of the deaths, I want to talk generally about Dave and Dirk’s relationships with their respective bros. Or at least, how these relationships appear on the surface. Dave’s bro is portrayed as an untouchably cool (if somewhat weird) dude that Dave idolizes and wants to emulate. Dave expresses unbridled admiration for him: “God you hope you can be as good as your BRO at [irony] some day. You’d never tell him that though.” Note that in this statement, Dave subtly puts himself down: he’d never tell his bro, because this isn’t a sentiment a cool person would have.
Speaking of “down,” Dave also constantly uses language of spatial relations when talking about his bro, and especially his bro’s irony: echelons, tiers, strata, levels. The implication always being that Bro is at the highest position, and Dave is trying to climb to meet him. The idea of Bro being higher than Dave is always present, sometimes subtle (consider the triple instance on this page, when their relationship is described as one-upsmanship, and Dave knows deep down that he isn’t ironic enough to understand the gauntlet that his bro is throwing down), sometimes not subtle at all (Dave needs to literally ascend to the roof of his building to fight his brother, who, after beating Dave, flies up into the sky).
Dave’s friends recognize this pattern, and try to urge Dave to break it. John writes in his birthday letter that Dave just needs to “get out of your bro’s shadow and spread your wings dude!!!” This is, I think, the best summary of how Dave and his friends see Dave’s situation: he is in his bro’s shadow, and he’ll never get out without serious effort.
Dirk, on the other hand, expresses admiration for his bro, but in a much more detached way. He explicitly explains their relationship in his conversation with Jane on page 6157:
TT: There’s dignity in taking up the work of our familial predecessors, even if what they did was insanely fucking stupid. GG: Is that a note of bitterness directed at your superstar brother I am detecting? TT: No way. He’s awesome. TT: I’ve told you, I don’t begrudge any of his success. TT: I’ve also told you he isn’t my real bro even though I call him that. We’re related through an esoteric process of genetic reamalgamation. GG: Oh lordy. Yes, yes, I know. I don’t need another ironic lesson in science fiction! TT: Alright. My lessons are rad as fuck, but suit yourself. TT: The point is, obviously his satirical methods have flaws, and whatever tempered brand of hero worship I might be practicing isn’t keeping me from seeing that. GG: Flaws?? Talk about understatement. Those movies are unwatchable. GG: Unless your name is Jake English. TT: Yes, spectacularly so. But they will have profound historical significance. Mark my words. TT: And flaws aside, it’s a legacy I’m proud to inherit. My duty isn’t to appropriate his methods with absolute loyalty, but to apply reason and improve upon them. To leave my own mark. TT: To perfect the art of irony.
That’s more or less the extent of their relationship as it’s explicitly described. After all, the dudes never met. We get a sense that Dirk has general positive feelings towards his bro, but Dirk insists that he doesn’t see him as perfect and doesn’t worship him. Dirk respects his bro, but wants to put his own personal stamp on his legacy.
So, in summary, Dave idolizes his bro and can’t escape being like him even if he tries; Dirk admires his bro but wants to differentiate himself. Or at least, this is how the characters themselves see it. However, the reality is the exact opposite. Dave has succeeded in breaking out of his brother’s shadow even if he and his friends don’t realize it, and Dirk is trapped by his ancestor’s legacy far more than he wants to admit.
Now, let’s talk about death. Dirk’s unique physical breakdown that complements his emotional one is, of course, stardust-glitch-related. (Whether/how much the glitching is being prompted by his own emotions is up for debate, I think.) But I see another reference in it: the slowly-building distortion over several panels is very similar to some of the Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff comics. (As far as I can remember, it was never definitively established whether the SBaHJ comics as such exist in the post-scratch universe. But I think it’s safe to assume that Dirk’s bro’s films would use similar effects.) Obviously, the “glitching” that’s happening to Dirk looks like the jpg artifacts in almost everything SBaHJ-related. But several of the comics also end with a slow “fadeout” effect, either with a repeated panel getting smaller, an image getting large and, as a result, extremely grainy, or an actual fading out. All of these effects are combined in this comic. To my eye, what’s happening at the bottom of that comic is extremely similar to what happens to Dirk. Also interesting to note: the pixelated fadeout in this particular SBaHJ comic begins after Hella Jeff laments his inability to fix a problem.
Then we have Dave’s reaction to his bro’s death. He also (inadvertently) responds to it with a reference: he does an acrobatic fucking pirouette off the handle (and immediately thereafter identifies it as such). Not an allusion to SBaHJ, but instead an allusion to this conversation (and many after it), in which he tells Rose that he will perform aforementioned maneuver if he sees “one more soft bulbous bottom being like kind of jutting out or impudent or whatever.” In other words, he’ll perform an acrobatic fucking pirouette off the handle in order to escape his bro’s puppets.
I’ve talked about Dave’s relationship with puppets at length before, but here’s the gist of it: Dave starts out asserting that puppets are awesome. The best thing around. Obviously they have to be, because his bro is into them. Right? Right. Puppets. Awesome. That’s really all there is to say on the matter. But as the story progresses, Dave starts to crack. He first admits that “theyre sort of starting to freak me out a little,” and though he still tries to assert they’re awesome, he sounds moreandmore desperate. Finally, he drops the pretense, and admits that he hates them. “puppets arent cool theyre shitty small fake people who haunt your dreams and grin like permanent assholes”
This last comment, which is probably his strongest expression of anti-puppet sentiment, happens immediately after he discovers his bro’s dead body. Which makes it even more fitting that he perform the acrobatic fucking pirouette at this moment: it’s a symbol of his final escape from the puppets, and with them, his bro’s shadow. The sword that impales his bro may not break, but something else certainly does. I’m definitely not saying that Dave realizes that there was nothing admirable about his brother or that he no longer feels anything for him or anything like that. But I do think that in this moment, Dave makes a big step in his journey toward maturity and independence. He’s certainly not there yet (he still isn’t), but it’s progress.
This wasn’t an abrupt change, though. In fact, we can see that Dave’s been distancing himself from his bro for quite a while. Take, for example, his decision to wear John’s Stiller shades. By wearing them, he’s choosing to replace the triangle-style shades which match his bro’s, and which he’s been wearing since “birth.” If this isn’t a symbolic gesture of independence, I don’t know what is.
And then, there’s Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff. SBaHJ is an ironic website that Dave compares to his brother’s sites, but the comic itself was born of an effort to differentiate himself from his brother. This is what he says to Terezi after showing her his “Cool Dude and Stoner Lou” comic:
TG: im not thrilled with this direction though i think its too much like my bros stuff TG: need to figure out my own ironic statement to make TG: spread my wings you know”
And then he does just that with SBaHJ. Dave’s friends (and Dave himself) keep telling him that he still needs to spread his wings, but he has already started to. He still admires his bro, but he’s beginning to forge his own way. And the “pirouette off the handle” reference is the symbolic moment that represents the complete break.
Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff gives us a good transition to Dirk. For someone who wants to “improve on” his ancestor’s legacy (the most prominent aspect of which is the SBaHJ films), Dirk sure has a lot of unaltered Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff accessories in his room. Other than the horse images and a single map, every poster on his wall and picture on his flatscreen is directly from Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff. He has a complete set of SBaHJ plushes. Hell, he’s even tattooed Jeff’s face (his brother’s legacy) on his arm.
Dirk eventually explains that he got all these SBaHJ accessories directly from his bro:
TT: He left some supplies for me here. Like a lifetime supply of orange soda in the crawl space, along with a fuck ton of SBaHJ merch. It was like discovering my own personal holocaust of bulbous jutting bottoms. TT: Plus some weapons, some other gear. And a killer pair of shades.
This snippet also shows us that Dirk has had at least one success at breaking away from his brother: he added AR to the shades his bro left him. Whether or not this is an improvement would depend on who you ask, but it’s undeniably a case of Dirk leaving his own mark. Still, compare it to Dave’s symbolic shades gesture: Dirk is changing the function of his shades while keeping the appearance identical, unlike Dave, who completely replaced his bro’s shades with some of an entirely different shape and style.
Also, consider the layout of Dirk’s apartment: “You never leave your room through the actual egress. Your bro blocked the door ages ago with this totally pimp stone bust. You give CAPTAIN SNOOP a little nod of approval every time you walk by to go to the bathroom. You like to think he nods back in a way that is so smooth and so subtle, he literally doesn’t move at all. The thing is too heavy to move out of the way, and in any case you don’t really want to. You just use a different exit to your room.” This seems like a direct parallel to the safe in John’s house and the refrigerator in Jane’s: when the child is old enough to move the heavy object, it means that they’ve become a man/woman. Plus, all the other busts in encountered in MSPA stories have had treasure inside of them, implying they’re meant to be broken open. The Snoop bust is a test that Dirk’s bro left for him. But Dirk isn’t even interested in attempting this test. He’d rather routinely inconvenience himself by using a different doorway than change something that his bro put directly in his way to challenge him.
Even though Dirk copies so much directly from his bro, he does have two seemingly-unique hobbies: robotics and puppetry. (And horse appreciation, I guess, but that’s not so much a hobby as it is a beautiful and complex lifestyle.) Here’s how Dirk describes his puppets: “Smuppets are a lovable sort of plush of your own design. You love everything about puppets. You’re always thinking about the craft of their production, their operation, cool new designs and such. If the cosmos didn’t have more important plans for you, and if the world weren’t so fucked up, you’d make a run at fame and fortune with your own puppet enterprises, just like your BRO did with all his weird shit.” So Dirk isn’t going to pursue his puppetry hobby beyond the theoretical, but given the current state of the planet earth, that’s totally understandable. What’s most interesting to me here, though, is Dirk’s assertion that the smuppets are “of [his] own design.” Are they really? Because they look awfully similar to the Bro, Jeff, and Geromy plushes that Dirk’s bro left for him. Plushes which, remember, Dirk described as having “bulbous jutting bottoms.” “Bulbous” and “jutting,” of course, being words associated with smuppets. It seems to me that Dirk adapted the smuppets from his bro’s SBaHJ merchandise. Now, this could be considered an example of improving on his ancestor’s legacy. I’m inclined to be less generous, though, because of the “of your own design” line. Dirk has unconsciously plagiarized from his bro, not adapted from him.
The same goes for the robotics. It seems unique, but still has strong ties to his brother. Here’s how Dirk describes Squarewave and Sawtooth: “His name is SQUAREWAVE. You built him to have rap-offs with now and then. He’s an enthusiastic rapper, and gives it his all whenever you duel, but he’s pretty easy to destroy. You’ve never lost a match against him. You have only built one other rapbot besides him. His name is SAWTOOTH. You designed him to be unbeatable in a rap-off, and he is. You have never won a match against him. You hope to one day, but you’re not gonna hold your breath. His flow is just that insane. You keep one of his spare heads over there on your desk, but otherwise you don’t see much of him. It’s been months since your last encounter. He presumably spends his time traveling the world, annihilating any rapper foolish enough to challenge him.” Squarewave is, notably, the exact same height as Dirk. And Sawtooth is tall and slim, his figure greatly resembling that of the bro we see during Dirk’s relation of his famous rooftop battle. So, in other words, Dirk used his unique skill with robotics to build a lil’ bro bot that will always be inferior to the distant, godlike big bro bot.
Besides the shades, the only thing I can think of that truly fits Dirk’s goal of improving his brother’s projects is the bunny that he soups up for Jane. It was originally his bro’s, but Dirk stole it, installed a robotic core in it, and sent it to Jane in a gesture that was both ironic and sincere. This seems to be exactly what Dirk claimed he wanted his relationship with his bro to be like. I’m not sure precisely how to interpret this, but I think the important factor here might be Jane. Dirk’s showing that he can break out of his bro’s mold when he’s motivated by the emotions he feels towards his friends. But when he’s faced with the prospect of doing it on his own and for himself, he can’t quite get there. (Which, not coincidentally, is probably a familiar feeling for many people suffering from depression.)
But the bunny and the shades are the sole exceptions to the pattern that I can come up with. Other than that, Dirk is stuck emulating his bro completely. He’s reluctant to say it, but he is obsessed with his bro, and absolutely worships him like a hero, nothing tempered about it. It even shows in his vocabulary — or should I say, his brocabulary. Dirk, not Dave, is the one in his bro’s shadow, and the one who really needs to spread his wings.
So. Now we get to today’s update. Like I said earlier, I think that we can consider Dirk’s grief here to be concerning both Dave and his bro (in addition to, like, everyone else). We’ve seen Dirk and AR conflate Dave and “our bro” a couple times, such as here. This page also contains this notable passage from ARquiusprite: “I must say, while the troll part of me doesn’t give a silly figging shoot about any of this, the part of me that splintered from you has found the brotherly reunion to be everything which you and I dared not imagine, and more ” Dirk wouldn’t even admit to himself how badly he wanted to meet Dave/his bro. Not really compatible with the “we aren’t even really brothers; I respect him, but I’m not jealous; yeah he’s cool, but he’s not perfect” lines that he fed Jane.
This is (some of) what’s going on in Dirk’s head in the latest update. He is devastated that he can’t finally see the man (or even the copy of the man) who he’s based his identity around emulating. Dirk has been waiting and preparing for this reunion his entire life; of course he’s going to feel personally responsible for the disaster that prevented it. He can’t react to his bro’s death the same way that Dave did. Dirk is far too attached to / obsessed with the mythical fraternal figure in his mind to do an acrobatic fucking pirouette off the handle and away from him. As Dirk himself has said before, he, unlike Dave, can’t break. Instead, Dirk does exactly what he does best: he takes a page directly out of his brother’s Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff legacy and slowly splinters into an incomprehensible pile of pixels and jpg artifacts.
there is a small relief, knowing that Aradia was one of the few characters who wasn’t just DESTROYED by some… horrible plot decisions, or ooc actions. She had her part in the story while also being distant from the horrible story beats and i am SO happy for her! It’s kind of like when Game Over came out, and Aradia was one of the only characters who was still alive, and i felt grateful as well as an overwhelming despair for ppl who liked the other characters
anyways… It was Horrible. Awful. Homestuck was already awful but this is just something new. It MUST’VE been awful intentionally, and if not, then thats just really pitiful
