I was helped in putting together something pretty huge this week, Aspect-ways. Sometimes lately, I've been chatting with Taz (aka optimisticDuelist, @utopianparadoxist) and we discuss or debate over character and Aspect interpretations, or they link me some interesting thoughts they've posted blogways or from a third party. This time we were discussing a post they made on Void's potential connection to Gravity and all its potential conflated meanings, such as Love pulling things together, which they based on analysis stemming from @lime-bloods's Void/Home association theoryposts -- I was skeptical of this Gravity interpretation, for reasons I'll go into later below the cut, but one of those reasons was I felt as if paired terms between Light and Void are important when solidifying the domains of each Aspect, and I couldn't think of one for Void's "Gravity" that had a Light equivalent. For example, recently I had the belated inspiration in terminology, for instance, that Light is "Location" where Void is "Dislocation", a perfect tie between Light's links to Maps and Landmarks contrasting it with Pumpkin-like "disconnectedness from spacetime" and ability to appear anywhere, which I quickly added to the Aspect Duality post in late February (I should add the edit date in on that).
And while we were tossing the idea around, we stumbled on another set of even MORE important paired Light/Void terms that made me do an acrobatic pirouette off the fucking handle. I got permission to paste the conversation:
BOOTS: otherwise there might be other aspects that better fit what's going on
((does Light "Push" where Void "Pulls"? could that be it? no, that sounds more like Breath and Blood…))
((actually that might be really important to Breath and Blood, shit! wind pushes forward/outward, chains pull in))
TAZ: I think its pretty fair to say that its a nebulous and abstract reading where a lot of the evidence is hard to parse, like I said at the end of the post I definitely still feel like I'm missing stuff about Void
And I also agree that other aspects have a lot of room to play in this space and overtake Void in readings, primarily Heart and Blood in this context
BOOTS: ((and the "inescapability" of black holes carried Blood associations with other inescapable things))
TAZ: Indeed
TAZ: But isn't that part of the nature of Void? To be a subtle force that falls into the backdrop and lets other things more visibly take over?
BOOTS: you could call that descending into the Ocean, into the abyss over a cliff, into irrelevance; it's Descent, but not necessarily Gravi---
AAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
TAZ: Well this is exciting
BOOTS: LIGHT IS ASCENT, VOID IS DESCENT
TAZ: Yeah, I can see that
BOOTS: there are so many fucking associations across the comic and I'm remembering so many of them oh my god
And that Gravity is wrapped up in this association as everything is naturally PULLED DOWN. The rest of the conversation is under the Read More cut where we started listing out more than a dozen freakin' examples to each other that show how UTTERLY PERVASIVE a theme this has been throughout the entire goddamn comic, from the start right up to and including the very latest update of Beyond Canon. (Contains HS^2/Beyond Canon spoilers if you're coming here from elsewhere, stop reading here if you're not caught up to the 2025-03-26 update!)
EDIT: (Just a brief note I'm adding to this above the cut, but a Discord friend just gave me ANOTHER association to add to Light and Void: Outward vs Inward, Light's outward projection the pair to Void's inward gravity!!! Shining Stars versus Black Holes! Void's Inwardness finally brings together its metaphysical ties with Heart and how the latter often sits isolated in the Ocean of Void like Dirk's house, the natural inward-looking nature of Heart-- compared to the outward-facing nature of Mind and its façades, tying Light and Mind together like Vriska and Terezi!)
TAZ: It might almost apply as a broad division to the upper and lower halves of the wheel in general, actually?
BOOTS: even in this LAST update they go UP to enter Canon
a black hole is always Down
TAZ: But I like it as Light and Void specifically right now, lets examine that
Yeah yeah
BOOTS: Looking at Light almost always entails looking Up, looking down is usually staring into the Void, with the exception of Derse players staring out into the Ring
mainly abysses and oceans with looking down
TAZ: Dirk's consumption by Ultself is described as him being subsumed into the Ocean/descending into its watery depths, while Rose outright says about hers "I am ascending, and it is terrible"
BOOTS: Rose begins her grimdark path by destroying her first (UPWARD) Gate and rocketing off elsewhere
and of course she's the prime example shown off by the comic of the Descend-before-you-Ascend of role inversion
TAZ: And Heart is on the lower half of the wheel with Blood and across from Void. So maybe there's something there
mmmhmm, mmhmm
BOOTS: it's been said even in like, Andrew's commentary outside the comic, that "Skaia is always Up"
it's never shown setting
TAZ: And of course they shoot the meteor Up towards the Green Sun
BOOTS: and the trolls see the creation-splosion of the green sun Up to direct them in Cascade--
yeah, exactly [what you said]
TAZ: Terezi's looking slightly Upwards as she remem8er's Vriska in [S] Remem8er
(Vriska) and (Terezi) staring Up into the Light of paradox space breaking
it really is all over the place, huh
for that matter, (Vriska) and Meenah looking Up into the fireworks as (Vriska) comes to the true realizations she does about how miserable it is to live the way Vriska and Lord English live
BOOTS: going against your hero role, Descending, is so often denying your true self agency and straying away from philosophical Truth-- after which comes the Ascent where you find and accept yourself
oh and by going into what's been constantly called HELL inside the Plot Point and then emerging out stronger, Vriska "descended" ala Dante's Inferno and then Ascended out of it
TAZ: indeed! indeed
Oh! Dirk and Hal's conversation on the rooftop!
Dirk sits on the side of his home and is literally staring down at both a long plummet/implied s*****e and literally into his Shades/his own Self
BOOTS: hell, if you wanted to make a pun of any love association, instead of gravity you could call it falling in love!
There's just SO MUCH MORE to this, so many examples of Light and importance and enlightenment and Skaia's philosophical truth being UP or involving ascent, where anything that drops or falls DOWN into the water or off cliffs becomes dislocated and its relevance unknown until it might eventually perhaps resurface unpredictably elsewhere. Tavros being driven down off a cliff by the Thief of Light to break his legs and stunt the playful drive he needed to become a fully realized Page of Breath, Aranea's snapped-neck body being dropped into the flames to fade into such irrelevance that she never surfaced post-Retcon, Vriska stealing all the luck/Light from the enemy creature in the first Meteor walkaround and it falling into a collapsing dark pit, so many people always going UP to reach concrete destinations, Roxy and others crashing DOWN through fenestrated windows and falling to reach the Furthest Ring, and of course there's always the Jung psychology stuff that was woven into Sburb (as I've reiterated in the past) and an essential metaphor for Descending into your shadow and Ascending from it to merge your shadow self with your conscious self for true self-acceptance and balance, like Vriska just did in the Plot Point, like the normal Quest Bed method of attaining God-Tier merging the Real and Dream selves and everyone looking Upward to see John RISE UP and achieve ascension: (From an older edit of the Wikipedia page for the Jungian Shadow--)
Nevertheless, Jung remained of the opinion that while “no one should deny the danger of the descent […] every descent is followed by an ascent”, and assimilation of—rather than possession by—the shadow becomes a possibility.
“We begin to travel [up] through the healing spirals…straight up.”
As I've said before, the game IS the psychotheraputic journey from start to finish, complete with the same monumental challenges, pitfalls, rejection and acceptance (of help and of oneself!) that all sorts of different people must confront in order to simultaneously fully appreciate and become themselves, and also become the people they truly want to be. Skaia's Light and the path it guides players on thus represents a journey to one's philosophical enlightenment about oneself, their ASCENT, and the challenges and misleading dejection that causes them to reject this journey and fight against their natures is DESCENT, so often involving the Horrorterrors who embody the essence of Void in nature and motive.
Gosh when you think of all the times "UP" or "DOWN" has been the focus of major or even offhand scenes or panels, there's just SO MUCH that fits them into Light and Void respectively. I couldn't possibly begin to list all the examples, you're probably noticing more in your mind as you read this post.
--
I'm going to integrate this Ascent/Descent meaning into the Aspect Duality post's sections on Light and Void, and link this post there, but before we finish I wanna delve into the potential Gravitation meaning of Void that optimisticDuelist brought up and reasons I might agree or be skeptical of the ties drawn in their post... especially stemming from this Rose quote they included:
That seems to tie Void pretty inarguably to Gravitation, or perhaps the vacuum pull of nothingness, but because I didn't have a clear counter-meaning in Light I wanted to look up the full context of this quote when I made this post... (readmspa.org is a very useful tool while Homestuck.com is down and mimics the old manual search function)--
ROSE: Or what about, the tale of Isaac Newdon under the tree?? He was BONKED on the head by an apple.
ROSE: Not reallyan apple though… an atomic idea. An emlemental unit of inspripation itself, id clocked him right on then noggin.
ROSE: And this indivisible notion colliding with hish awareness, much like.. . a high speed partical fired to create a nuculear chain reacation, jarred from the void a more profund unnerstand, HIC, ing of the intrinsic nature of nothiness. Thatis,. Gravivitation.
ROSE: Of course thess stories are acutually bullshit. They didn't happen in realaity. But thef act that they'rare bullshit makes them more inshresting.
ROSE: Men have crefted many stories that are bullshit out of symbols risen from the abyss of coinsciousness withou necesharily knowing whath e fuck they were doing or saying, as they flounered around for some truth.
ROSE: Bust in spite of themseleves they would for howefer briefly cross through a ray of light regarless. Becuss of the sbymbols. Dave.. The symbols hol dall the power.
Taz also mentioned that a commenter in their server pointed out that this Gravitation quote and the reference to a high-speed particle collider could also be an intentional reference by Andrew to the Graviton, the theoretical elementary particle responsible for mass and its gravitational force that has so far not been detected/discovered yet, remaining obscured (Void) compared to the particles tied to the other elemental forces.
Black Holes ALWAYS had strong ties to Void, the ultimate sinks for the destruction of information, ultimate darkness, (ultimate Down/descent), the compression of all meaning and separation into a melange forever irrelevant to the rest of Reality beyond one's Event Horizon (thanks @sagaciouscejai for the reminder). And in the Epilogues forward, "Non-Canon" belongs to the great Black Hole and everything that falls nigh-inescapably into it-- as opposed to Canon's comparative association with Light and story importance. But, hm... if Void is "down" and "descent" and the "abyss of [Jung's collective] consciousness", to what extent is it important as "Gravity" specifically, as well? Or is that just tied to the fundamental concept of "down" in the comic's metaphysical framework? Taz mentioned Dirk linked to gravitation to tidal forces too, hence the Ocean which is Void-linked. Does Gravity have a balancing opposite in Light that I can put into keywords besides "Up/Down" or "Ascent/Descent"? And if it DOESN'T have a balancing concept in Light... could Gravitation be part of Void's tie to Space that explains them as neighbors, a shared domain that Space and Void might possess?
In the end I think I'm positive toward Rose's speech and the fact of Black Holes (as well as "DOWN/DESCENT") establishing a definite tie between Gravity and Void, but where I'd disagree with Taz is how over the rest of their original post they pointed to "succumbing" to toxic influences and generational trauma as a sort of Gravity, which I'd disagree with and say has more to do with Void's existing and known "submission and divestment of agency" associations, as well as Centrality coming from it (which I'd have to reconcile with Light's "Location" meaning) not quite adding up for me, and Love as stemming from Gravity which I really don't think has enough in-comic evidence tying the two together. If we eventually deduce that Love has some Void associations-- and the Void characters we've met have certainly been more than a little Love-obsessed at times-- I expect that any association would have to stem from Void's other established meanings such as the submission of agency required by a relationship as opposed to making all the decisions yourself (Light's agency) and hogging the spotlight, like the contrast between Vriska and (Vriska) toward the end of Homestuck proper. There's more to lime-bloods's post that I haven't given enough thinking time to, like Voids always being the central seeding-place for new creation like a Womb, which would ALSO explain its proximity to Space on the official wheel... but, yeah. Those are all my in-progress thoughts on that for the moment, anyway. ((EDIT: "Outward vs Inward" like I mentioned above the cut finally completes the Gravity association!))
I'm still blown away by how clearly Light and Void can mean "UP and "DOWN", can mean "ASCENT" and "DESCENT", that's... just such a blindingly stunning revelation for us to have come to so late, IMO. I bet there's half a dozen theorists out there who put it together AGES sooner and I just never saw their posts. Wow. :D
Im pretty unfamiliar with FiM but i can imagine the existence of Equestria Girls probably is a reason why people might think the mane 6 are all still teens and mot adults
oh yeah its weird but i totally get the confusion. that being said it makes it really funny that sunset shimmer is like a 27 year old in high school
any pronouns with a sliiiight preference for he/him cause its what theyre used to. i think in my personal minds eye if hes presenting androgynous or femininely he prefers to stick with he/him but if hes dressed more masc then she likes she/her :) gnc king
sagaciouscejai replied to your post: mad again about the EOH roster
whats up
no foo fighters, no hot pants, no wekapipo, no ringo, no abbachio, but we still get random minor villians from the egypt arc like n’doul, mariah, and pet shop
Kosuzu gets wrapped up in trying to Summon a Blue-Eyes White Dragon with Rinnosuke after he goes to her to get translation help on the text at the bottom of the card.
god, don’t get me started. don’t get me started on the events that unfold afterwards. reimu that thinks the artifact is cursed and wants to destroy it. marisa sees the thing and thinks she can get a profit from it. aya discovers the whole entire jumbo wumbo behind the yugioh cards at rinnosuke’s wondercash shop and writes an article on it. mamizou smuggles the spellcards KNOWING they don’t work.
