Demon horns being broken halos from when they were angels.
Demons willingly grow their own halos, but never complete the circle to symbolize their rebellion against heaven’s strict order.
In addition to the second one, angels are GIVEN their halos rather than earning them. Demons like Lucifer rebelled for freedom and individuality, thus demon horns all look different compared to an angel’s boring halo.
Horns are useful tools, but if you join them into a circle they become useless badges of authority.
And the thing about wearing a badge is that you become a symbol of someone else. You’re not you, you’re an extension of the entity whose authority you’re borrowing. You can’t be yourself until you ditch it
Here’s a visual representation of angels and demons.
I figure that as angels, their “horns” would glow when connected to become traditional halos. However, this blinds the angel with heavenly light, making the angel rely on God’s guidance.
Angels who break their halos become demons, and willingly grow their horns in obscure shapes so it won’t connect back into a halo. Because the halo no longer blinds them, demons can finally see but can no longer communicate with God for guidance – the light they once gave to heaven now belongs to them, hence demons being proficient with fire allowing them to see in the dark.
Extra notes on horns & halos:
Circular horns (Halos) are smooth and easy for God to “grab” like a chain.
Jagged horns are sharp to the touch and can pierce God.
Crucial notes I forgot to add:
The only way angels can break their own halos is through strong, direct, hard force; rebellious angels willingly fell from heaven, breaking their halos upon hitting our world’s surface. That’s why demons are called “fallen angels”.
The only thing that can hurt God and other angels is another angel, so the shattered remains of a demon’s old halo would be reformed into tridents and pitchforks commonly associated with the devil.
Regretful demons wishing to commune with God again would either try to grow their horns back into a halo, or clasp their hands in prayer to form a circle with their own body mimicking a halo. It would faintly work.
These demons would become the first priests, and spread the practice to humans.
homestuck uses seemingly random things/concepts – the zodiac, a deck of cards, billiards, the magic 8 ball – as thematic elements so fucking cleverly it’s almost infuriating
the game over timeline failed because vriska was killed – much like in billiards, you lose the game if you pocket the 8 ball too soon
not to infodump or nothing but imho its even deeper than that, in that by act 7 the entire web of symbolism has been flipped
this is foreshadowed kind of obliquely by one, having chess and pool be exactly the same game in-universe, with sburb taking the form of a collosally complicated game of chess in multiplayer sessions, but taking the form of pool in a single player session, and two, having caliborn switch his king and queen’s appearance, but having them move as if they were the piece they appear to be
vriska appears to be the 8 ball and killing her appears to end their game prematurely, but shes actually the cue ball, and killing her causes a scratch in which she can be placed wherever is most advantageous for the opponent, and english is the 8 ball, and shoving him into the metaphorical pocket that is the black hole from the collapse of the green sun ends the game
what im getting at here is that i fucking h8 homestuck
holy shit
There’s also all the parallels drawn between Snowman(The Black Queen) and Vriska. And of course, while Snowman APPEARS to be an 8-ball, what is killing her circumstantially simultaneous with? A SCRATCH. From the perspective of Caliborn and his Session, it appears to be a victory, but it actually allows his opponents to reposition themselves to best win The Game(like vriscourse says).
It goes significantly deeper than this, since the cueball is also likened to an Egg visually and explicitly. Scratch’s cueball head is the egg from which LE is born, and Dave literally calls Grimbark Jade’s cueball an egg:
Which links the cueball to Homestuck’s pervasive traditions of Gnostic/Christian, Grecoroman, and Egyptian myth. In all of these stories (but in Gnosticism in particular as far as I can tell), there’s a consistent focus on Eggs as a symbol of both destruction and birth, best summed up by a quote from Herman Hesse’s Damien:
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.
(if that sounds familiar, it’s because it also shows up in Revolutionary Girl Utena, another story steeped in Gnostic symbols.)
And let’s not forget that the cueball/egg is also tied to another symbol: That of Homestuck itself.
So symbolically, The Ultimate Juju/Story of Homestuck is at once three things:
1) It is the world that Lord English has created, that the bird (our kids!) must destroy to be born.
2) It is the cueball. Specifically, it is the IDEA of the cueball. Lord English successfully suppreses all cueballs that can hurt him in physical reality, but is ultimately beaten because he cannot stop the power of the IDEA of the cueball, manifested symbolically.
3) It is also, simultaneously, an egg–a symbol of inevitable change. Change, whether it be for himself or the world he created, is, of course, the only thing that Lord English cannot tolerate, so it makes sense to present eggs as a weakness for him.
I’ve written about most of this in my essay on Gnostic myths and how they influence Homestuck, which you can find here.
But one last note: Just as important as how it affects LE is what this means for the characters. Homestuck is arguing that none of its characters have been “born”, constrained as they’ve been within the “shell” of LE’s alpha timeline.
In Act 7, that egg seems to hatch, the shell of the world that constrains it cracking and splintering under the force of the bird’s will.
So what comes next for Homestuck’s characters, if this is meant to be the moment of their birth?
I’m looking forward to the epilogue.
*deep sigh* no one can ever hope to explain homestuck to people who havent read it. heck i read it three times over and im still learning theres more layers, paralels and callbacks/throwbacks to this day.
