Homestuck - Heart and Mind
Inner self and outer self
Content/trigger warnings: Heart: blood, decapitated heads, flashing colors, eye strain
Mind: flashing lights, repetitive looped gif
Very veeeery long thread!
Heart
I’m going to be honest, this is the more head-scratching (ha!) symbol of the 12, in my opinion. While the others immediately (or take a moment to) make sense, this one confuse me. Sure, it’s a cartoonish representation of a pink human heart.
The problem isn’t the main shape, but the right side of it. Beside the fact that it’s more original and eye-catching than a filled heart, why this gap, this wiggling line? But let’s proceed in order and take a more general approach first.
It’s a pink heart on a darker purple/pink background. The left side is filled, while the right side looks like a tail that coming in or out the shape. We’ll get into it a bit down below.
In pop and universal culture, people has always been show this embodiment of the heart. While many theorise about when and where it came from, a stable origin was registered during the Middle Age, as a pear.
Here’s an exempt of the theory:
“Historically speaking, the first known depiction of a heart shape, which can be vaguely considered as a symbol of love, was made in the 1250s. It appeared in a decoration of a capital letter “S” in a manuscript of a French romance called “Roman de la Poire” (Romance of the Pear).
This miniature depicts a kneeling lover who offers his heart to a lady. This heart shape is similar to a pine cone, and it is held upside down (not in the usual position of the heart shape that we know today). Researchers only assume that the pine cone-shaped object is a heart because its part held by the lover is hidden. The name of this novel is “Romance of the Pear,” so the object may also be a pear.”
The earliest depiction of a heart symbol as a symbol of love in a manuscript of the “Roman de la Poire.”
[Mio’s note: Roman actually means novel in french, and isn’t necessarily romantic. Though I guess it is in this context.]
It is interesting, in this paragraph the heart is both referred as pine cone-shaped and pear-shaped. The latter is extremely funny, has it reminds me of a famous fanon HS meme “Well this has gone completely fucking pear-shaped”, attributed to Dirk and the decapitation joke. He, in fact, never really said it in Canon.
If we indulge this banter, the pear-shaped heart would symbolise things that took a disastrous turn, and so negative and stressful elements such as anxiety, adrenaline (negative in this case, positive in others), heart pounding, leaving a weird and unpleasant sandy taste on your tongue.
But I digress.
What we actually need to focus on is that:
A fruit, the pear, has been associated to a love gesture, like a gift to express romantic affection to someone.
The pear is upside-down, as the text point out. Which is curious and worth mentioning.
“the pine cone-shaped object is a heart because its part held by the lover is hidden”. So what is important it’s what is inside it, and so inside your heart. Which perfectly echoes with my subhead: Inner self.
The article continues, with Guido whom also depicted his version of a heart:
“Guido da Vigevano, a 14th-century Italian physicist, made some anatomical drawings of a heart that are very similar to the descriptions made by Aristotle. These depictions, along with the presumption that the human heart is connected with emotion and pleasure, transformed the heart shape into a symbol of medieval love.”
After this, a picture shows Charity incarnated as a woman, giving her heart to Jesus. While I won’t dwell on the religious implications, it is a metaphor of showing care and compassion to someone. Giving them a bit of your time, patience, and heart. In an extreme case, being completely devoted to someone in a strong way.
Heart-bound fellows, despite the fact that they are concerned about themselves, are very people-oriented. They deeply want others to feel well and happy. Hence the expression being ‘kind-hearted/big-hearted’, and ‘work you heart out’. They put a lot of themselves into their hobbies, which they are passionate about.
After this, the article introduce the playing cards, implying that Guido had an influence on the decision to show a heart among the symbols:
The playing cards are even more relevant to this analysis, as their modern symbol are present in Troll romance. Here, the ‘clover’ is an acorn, the ‘spade’ a leaf, perhaps ivy, the heart is even more like the one we know nowadays, and the ‘diamond’ surprisingly is a small metallic bell. This set is dated from ~1540.
[Sources: this site about the origins of the red heart]
That was a (very) quick look at the evolution of the heart symbol.
I could go on and talk about Valentine’s Day, but it would be paraphrasing the site, and we have much more content to focus on. I invite you to take a look at said site and do some research of your own if you are interested about this peculiar bit.
Let’s go into more direct Homestuck content.
During the adventure, we are introduced to three Heart-players. Nepeta Leijon, Dirk Strider, and Meulin Leijon, in appearance order.
They all have interests related to feelings and love.
Nepeta has a shipping grid of her own friends on her cave’s walls and seems to be proficient in moirallegiance, a quadrant that require to be invested and devoted to their partner feelings. She had a crush on Karkat that she never confessed. Karkat knew but never worked the nerve to do something about it.
Dirk is engrossed by romance and smut, unashamedly draw his friends getting frisky (in a borderline-obscene way), is passionate about the projects he works on (work his heart out, sometimes literally). He was (and still is) madly in love with Jake. But by being overbearing and socially inept their relationship crumbled (while not being the only reason it didn’t work out).
[I love talking about Dirk, but I’ll do my best in this analysis to properly and equally split the content between Nepeta, Meulin and him]
Meulin not only love shipping, she also gives directly advises to her friends, and acted as a matchmaker. She shipped several of the alpha trolls but according to Aranea, she focused on how cute a couple would be, instead on how and if their dynamic would work out. Her matespritship with Kurloz was cut short when he yelled in his sleep, deafening Meulin in the process.
Meulin talking about shipping the human teens, transcript from the Openbound game, part 2
The most obvious element they share is that they are zealous and unlucky in love. One would say it depends on the class, personality or aspect. They seem all correct assumptions to me.
Nepeta was the first to be presented as a Heart-bound character, the Rogue of Heart. So, logically, the design of the Heart symbol could be inspired by her.
How, you ask. Let’s take a look to Nepeta’s sign.
The ‘Leo’ sign, in human culture represents the constellation of the lion, with the circle as their head, and the loop as the body and tail.
Now looking back and forth to Leo and Heart: Heeeey! It’s quite similar. Can you see it?
Alright, that’s a good start. So the right side is like a tail. Let’s dig and look around Heart/heart. Heart is synonym of soul. Its symbol is a pink blood pusher. For humans it represent romantic love, our only ‘official’ quadrant. A red lover for trolls is called a matesprit. Sprit comes from esprit, which is the french word for spirit. So matesprit is a soul mate. But this term is used for another concept in Homestuck. A spiritual guide during the player journey: a sprite.
The link between the Leo and Heart sign is getting stronger. The circle as the head, the wiggling line as the body and tail. The sprite is a living spirit, a floating soul present in the physical plane. So the right side, the tail, is bound to the left side, the head. Meaning the soul is bound to the body. Oh. But what if it was detached from it? Yeeep, you know, I know, they know. This is why and how decapitation come into the picture.
Beheaded Dirk and Roxy hit in the stomach, from the [S] Dirk: synchronize
Jasperosesprite^2 prototyping Nepeta’s decapitated head in Jake’s kernelsprite
A kiss on the lips, which is seen often as a romantic gesture, is one of the resurrecting mechanism within SBURB/SGRUB. It transfers the soul from the ‘original’ body to the dream self, turning the latter into the main body. Separating the head from the rest of the body amounts to take away the soul, while throwing the head back (or any part of the corpse) into a kernelsprite recreate the link between the two.
A kernel is:
“ a computer program at the core of a computer's operation system with complete control over everything in the system. It is an integral part of any operating system. It is the "portion of the operating system code that is always resident in memory". It facilitates interactions between hardware and software components.””
Source: Wikipedia
It’s a brain that bound the soul to the body, and is the core of the system, controlling it. So basically, the digital mind made in SBURB. One display among the several ones of the Heart/Mind duality.
So wait, if the head in this case is the soul, and looking back at medieval picture at the beginning (dude kneeling in front of a lady offering a heart) then Dirk sendificating his head in [S] Dirk Synchronize/Unite is really a romantic overture toward Jake (sacrificing a part of his self then Hal prompting him to kiss Dirk’s lips). Same for Jasperose resurrecting Nepeta by using her head. Damn. You two are smooth operators in the most disturbing way.
Another personal theory in my mind, is that pink ‘tail’ could represent how a person use and interact with their aspect.
Nepeta, as a Rogue, remove or give personality, passion and feelings to someone.
For example she could appease a friend by removing their frustration. In contrary she could also give passionate feelings to someone who needs them. Such as in Ni no Kuni! In which the protagonist Oliver takes a piece of somebody’s soul (what is called emotion or virtue) to give it to someone who needs it. Those people are referred to “brokenhearted”.
So the wiggling tail would be something introduced or take away from the soul.
Dirk, as a Prince, has shown having the power to completely remove someone’s soul from their body.
And for that, he doesn’t like his abilities, exhibiting him as a ‘cartoonish villain’ like Voldemort (splintering his soul into horcruxes) or Xehanort (putting part of himself in the Organization members). Though he could remove and grab one of his friend’s soul to save them from a close death. See the fan comic Double Death of the Author by The Lifetime Channel on MSPFA, and the fan fiction Defragmentation by Katreal on Ao3.
In this case, the tail would represent the soul being slowly removed.
Meulin, as a Mage, have an understanding of people’s strong feelings, especially romantic ones.
Her ability is to read, feel and use her knowledge to help her friends figure out who is better suited for them. Meulin’s powers are similar to a diviner, allowing to form or break a couple. Perhaps with practice and reaching the God Tiers, she could even perceive red threads of fate which bound two lovers regardless of the location and time. The manga Bound Beauty (sorry, no english Wikipedia page) features a young lady with the ability to see those strings, usually invisible to the eye. She uses it at her advantage to coach her classmates, in exchange of money.
In this case, the tail would represent the red/pink thread of fate, coming not from the pinkie, but directly from the soul.
Heart-bound recommended Lyricstuck: What do you want from me by Pink Floyd
Mind
Watch as I make as much Mind puns as possible :p
This one is easier to read, which is also why it will be difficult for me to write a substantial section about it. Let’s start with the obvious.
It’s a vivid teal on a bit darker green background. Same as the Heart aspect, it’s more likely that the palette has been inspired by the first revealed character related to Mind: Terezi Pyrope, from the Teal caste. The shape is composed of an orb surrounded by three hook-like tails connected to the center. What effortlessly come to mind (ha!) is an organic cell, from the brain.
Picture source: https://www.pinterest.fr/pin/784048616363923971/
Neurons allow and facilitate informations to navigate in the brain.
It’s:
an electrically excitable cell that communicates with other cells via specialized connections called synapses.
Source: Wikipedia
Information goes from a neuron, through a synapse to another neuron. An idea leads to another, connecting bits that turns into the big picture. The Mind aspect seems to share the concept of data with the Light aspect. The differences are that Light focuses on the most fructuous parts, ones that lead them to victory, while the Mind-bound works with choices and a mindset, in a more wide range, then narrowing the paths.
Terezi using her vision to s33 what action leads to which outcome, searching for the most fitting one.
Rose insisting that Kanaya come along the 3 years ride, while explaining and guiding Kanaya to make her narrowing her vision of “victory”.
So both Seer treat information, just not in the same way.
The outcome still remains ”I want to advance toward a certain reality and I help others to reach it as long as they follow my instructions”. The inconvenient blind spot (sorry for the involuntary pun) is that they hardly can use those abilities for themselves. Either we don’t witness it on-screen, or they barely do it in the first place (a good example is the retroactive continuity during the GO timeline).
But let’s end the Seer detour here. Back to the Mind aspect itself.
We have a whole system going on in our own head. When I try to look for something, if I don’t find it directly, then I turn to something related to said information. Like an indirect research on the internet. If we don’t pay attention and don’t try to understanding our mind, as well as others’, we just end up being frustrated and lost.
The thing is you make your own world, with every action, decision, it creates a new path full of possibilities. The words you say or keep to yourself, acting or staying put, it all matter. Grasping and managing to own it, and you’ll have a better grip on your reality. It’s not my Aspect, I do have trouble making decisions and take responsibilities, however everybody needs to go through it.
The within interacts with the without, the mind to the outside word. We are always worried about how others perceive us, what kind of depiction of the self we convey. So we desperately put filters to the point of exhibiting falsehood of a personality. While introspection is observing ourselves, extraspection is perceiving things that are outside our mind. Hence the outer self, complementary to the inner self.
Terezi perfectly get how people work, and can manipulate them with ease, in contrary to Vriska whom doesn’t want to and go for mind-controlling them. Joke’s on her, her ‘mind’-control is proof that she fails in this peculiar category, since Terezi doesn’t need any psychic powers to convince someone to do and give the info she desires.
The big contrast contrast between Vriska and her, is that Terezi looks and determine what matters or not, while Vriska force the odds to be in her favor, shamelessly stealing fortune from others. She doesn’t even want to understand or try, she is a cheater and proud of it.
That was the link and differences between Mind and Light.
Let’s take a look at the Heart/Mind duality again. Both seem to share a connection with electricity.
Terezi gazing at the sky of her planet, the Land of Thought and Flow
It’s no secret that the connection between neurons are often compared to electronic chips. Cables canalize and facilitate electricity’s flow, to power devices, to link ideas and data. Or just used as raw energy.
Brain-not-so-ghost-anymore Dirk trying to rip Aranea’s soul
Lightning seen from a building roof on Dirk’s land
While the electricity for the Mind symbol refer to synapses, for the Heart/heart, also called blood pusher, would allude to cardiac nerves.
Bec Noir preparing the Red Miles to be thrown at the Genesis Frog
Instead of thoughts, it’s blood that navigates in the ‘roads’.
For the Heart-bound, the lightning represents the chaos that are emotions and sensitive intuition. While for the Mind-bound the lightning is order, reasoning and cold logic that strikes to bring justice, whether said justice is deem fair or not.
Let’s talk about a famous movies series in which among the core themes resolve around the Mind/Heart duality: The Matrix
Each building, tree, person are made with an inimaginable amount of lines of code
The Matrix spoilers ahead!!
If you’re not familiar with this trilogy (or haven’t watch it in a while), here’s the plot:
//Thomas A. Anderson is a programmer for a big software company, and in parallel is Neo, a hacker that illegally provides contraband programming. Agents in black suits caught up with his activities, but in truth approached Neo because a renowned hacker, Morpheus, enemy number one according to Agent Smith, contacted the programmer. After offering to clean his criminal record in exchange of helping catching Morpheus, which Neo refuses, the agents violently implant a snitch in our protagonist.
Neo wake up in his bed, believing it was all but an awful nightmare. Appearances are deceiving, as ‘dream sequences’ are layers on layers on reality. The resistance group calls him again, setting a rendez-vous under a bridge to help him and answer his questions, if he is willing to cooperate.
After a lot of hesitation, snitch removal, and the insistence of one of the member, Trinity, he finally accept and follow the group to go meet Morpheus.
There, Neo is given a choice, The Choice if we’re going with Homestuck comparisons:
"This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes."
Morpheus, Matrix (1st movie)
By choosing the take the red pill, Neo accepts to unplug himself (literally) from his ‘reality’ and see the truth: the world he lives in is all but an illusion, a huge program that is the Matrix, blinding humans to a make-believe 1999 year, used as living batteries, harvested and enslaved by the machines. Humanity is in ruins, and a war between people and machines has gone for a whole century.
Morpheus tells him that they believe he’s ‘The One’ and he has the power to stop the war. From the real world, Neo will train to reinforce his mind, going back into the Matrix and fight different enemy programs. While constantly being undergo introspection, looking for what to believe, who he is, questioning his values and acts.\\
From there I’ll go back and worth to Homestuck and the movies to point out the similarities and support my choice.
I’ll begin with the Mind aspect first:
Millions of human beings are plugged, treated as programs that have a function, along with providing a great amount of energy to the machines. Stuck and having their body atrophied, their brain is connected to the Matrix. The program control everything of their life and vision, from their status in society, to their physical sensations.
"What is real? How do you define real?" asks Morpheus to Neo. “If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain." As I quote farther above, reality is something that isn’t there, but rather something you make. With Morpheus’ quote, my interpretation of the Mind symbol being neutrons and synapses is consolidated.
After being blinded by Vriska, Terezi way of ‘seeing’ shifted. Slowly, her perception of things changed and she grasped on a new light her reality.
She didn’t need eyes, but expanding her mind and freeing herself from the vision that clouded her. Navigating inward and outward, understanding what she felt, her inner self and outer self, back and forth. But it wasn’t perfect, no, she had and still is working on it, as she can be blinded by either cold logic or passionate feelings. Neo and her have the same weakness, they both are in love and it obstructs their mission. The dilemma is exhibited in [S]: Flip, where she has to choose between letting Vriska go, exposing the whole team to Jack, or killing her to protect her friends.
Terezi, on the path she let Vriska go
Vriska in her ancestor outfit, fitting Jack in one reality
A painful sacrifice is needed to be able to go forward, a reality in which most of them survive and has a chance of winning the game. A necessarily path that she regretted.
Neo with the Architect in the secret room, the screens displaying the different paths his reactions could take (Matrix: Reloaded, second movie)
In Matrix, Neo has to reach the source of all the program to reinstall the previous version of the code. The first time, he has a small range of opportunity, only a few minutes gap to access a secret room that would allow him to reach the source, among the city of machines. There, he encounters the Architect, a program whom function and personality is based on the creator of the Matrix, and have a chat with him.
Six others chosen ones preceded him, and all failed to accomplished this mission.
Why? “Choice. The problem is choice” answers Neo. Because unlike the Architect, Neo is a flawed human being. He can’t just brush off his feelings, he’s in love with Trinity. The latter despite asked not to join him plugged herself back into the Matrix allowing him to get safely into the secret room. With that, she exposed herself to an inevitable death. And so Neo took the door that lead to his lover, enabling within him a miracle that resurrected Trinity.
Here was a couple of paragraphs about the dance between duty and love, cold logic and passion.
I’ll continue with the Heart aspect:
I talked about love and romance until now, but let’s take a look at another side of the Heart. The identity.
After taking the red pill- Neo turns his head and gaze at a mirror.
It’s shattered. The symbolism here shows that he’s lacking a part of himself, something that scratch him without being able to put his finger on it. Soon, right before his eyes, the mirror mends itself. Because he chosen the truth, the path that would lead him to understand and find himself.
The mirror is of course, a reference and call back to Alice, mentioned shortly before by Morpheus. No no, please forget about any cartoon, especially Disney’s version of the story. And focus about the sequel book: “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There”. It’s a curious, deep and tricky book. I would know, I read it twice and I’m still confused.
But I’m sure of one thing, the adventures of Alice has always been about introspection. First in chapter 1, Alice imagines for fun that the mirror in the living room lead to a parallel world. Like Neo, she touches the mirror and engages into a journey. In chapter 3, in order to cross a giant life-sized chess board (UH HMMMM UNCANNY!) she takes a train.
“There she forgets all nouns, including her own name. With the help of a fawn who has also forgotten his identity, she makes it to the other side, where they both remember everything. Realizing that he is a fawn, she is a human, and that fawns are afraid of humans, it runs off (to Alice's frustration).”
Source: Through the Looking-glass (wikipedia)
[going through the book itself would have been too long]
The train might symbolize the course of life, or a part of it, in which an identity crisis occurs for Alice and question what is and what does it means. I’ll even say that this temporary memory loss put aside all differences and precedences, perhaps reflecting a class hierarchy, between Alice the human and the fawn, or the rich lady and the poor.
Back to Matrix.
Later in the movie, our programmer encounters a woman called the Oracle. She can see some events according to her grasp on human psychology, but never beyond a choice that she cannot understand, not even hers. The Oracle isn’t here to predict the future (even if she can), but to assist and guide those who picked the red pill. She does sound like a Seer of Mind :]
Upon meeting her, she asks him “do you think you are the one?” to what he respond “honestly I don’t know”. She then point behind him, toward a mantra hanged above the threshold: Temet nosce, which means “know thyself”.
The introspection will continue through all three movies, a wild tango between certitude and doubts, self that leads to a choice, from a choice which leads to who he is, the two are intertwined and indivisible.
In Matrix: Revolution (third movie), the final battle between our protagonist and his alter ego take place. Rain is pouring, thousand and thousand of copies looking down at him, the sky is dark, and Agent Smith step away from the crowd, so the fight begins.
Remember the paragraph about the lightning? The sky in this scene is quite reminiscent to Terezi Land’s electric atmosphere, and even more Dirk’s, has his planet is covered be countless empty green buildings in ruins.
The scene portraits perfectly the confrontation between order and chaos, good and evil, selfless and selfish. I could go on and on but I think y’all got the concept, and I nicely fill an even bigger word quota, with the two aspects balanced.
Source for the screenshots: Fancaps.net, here and here
Mind-bound recommended Lyricstuck: Dog days are over by Florence and the Machine