OH WOW how did i miss like the most obvious thing about cherub color symbolism

it was even repeated in the comic like not very long ago at all, when we already knew about uUs and their colors to boot

GREEN MEANS GROW RED MEANS SHRINK

space players create universes, time players create doomed timelines

the red sun is destroyed at caliborn’s (re)birth (he doesn’t have the eyes or the coat yet but i think gaining control of their body counts as a sort of birth), the green sun is created by the kids who will defeat him

not to mention the green sun is eternal and actually important to paradox space while the red sun is red because it was DYING

calliope’s interests are productive (fanworks, helping friends), caliborn is obsessed with death

plus lord english is literally the alternian personification of death??? and he eats universes

also even though the sburb alpha has a red color scheme, the color of act 6’s dot on the homestuck card is green

this was probably obvious to anyone with a brain but yeah none of that had clicked with me until now. like i hadn’t realized that there was any reason for calliope and caliborn having those specific colors, other than like… we’d already seen lord english had red blood and lime green was its complement, but i mean we saw lord english’s blood BETWEEN ACTS 5 AND 6, it’s not like hussie hadn’t thought of the cherubs by then, caliborn’s blood color wasn’t a response to [S] Begin intermission 2, that flash was a response to the knowledge that calliope and caliborn would both exist and represent the conflict between creation and destruction, universe frog vs. black hole, developing into maturity vs. petulant selfishness.

GROW VS. SHRINK.

because that’s kind of the big conflict the homestuck cast as a whole has faced over and over! kids getting too wrapped up in their own adolescent bullshit and failing to help and seek help from their friends, until either they realize and course-correct or it’s too late. john flying to the seventh gate only to reconsider because of dave’s sappy birthday letter. rose ignoring her friends to prove that she was sharp enough to solve their problems by herself, going grimdark and disregarding jade’s warnings against fighting jack herself. and it’s pretty obvious how vriska, eridan and gamzee all get so wrapped up in their own shit and fuck other people over, though vriska does realize her error, though too little too late. dave and karkat are more than fine about connecting with other people, they actually need a little more healthy self-interest to balance themselves, which is interesting because they’re the red characters: unlike pretty much everyone else, their flaw is too much energy directed outward (grow), not enough directed inward (shrink)! i guess the same is also true of the other red character, aradia, in a roundabout way, going from a ghost who doesn’t want anything for herself to a living person with interests again. and jade hasn’t really faced this problem, but she only started taking a particularly active role in the plot much further in than everyone else, so her turn could very well come in act 6 or 7. unless i’m missing something, which i definitely am, jesus dick who can keep track of this big ridiculous piece of shit.

i guess my point is that the moral of homestuck is green means grow red means shrink? or some shit. it’s 3 am. when did i stop capitalizing big posts on tumblr, who can even read this. fuck it i’m posting it anyway. tumut