A completely serious analysis of “sup” that is meant to be taken completely seriously

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 references to advanced supersymmetry theory 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.

(image source here)

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:

(source)

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.

Now, the DNS reaction isn’t the only way to test for the presence of reducing sugars in liquid. One can also use Fehling’s solution to accomplish the same thing. Fehling’s solution was named for Hermann von Fehling, who was a preparateur for Justus von Liebig, who worked in the laboratory of Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, who was the teacher of Henri Victor Regnault, who was the mentor of William Thompson, 1st Baron Kelvin, who laid a submarine communications cable to Brazil with the assistance of James Alfred Ewing, who went on a mountaineering vacation in Switzerland with Edward Hopkinson, who studied engineering under Carl Wilhelm Siemens, who was the brother of Ernst Werner von Siemens, whose company produced the materials used to study x-rays by Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, who won the first Nobel Prize for Physics in 1901. Does that ring a bell? Remember anyone else who won the Nobel Prize for Physics?

That’s right, Kai Manne Börje Siegbahn, whose father Karl Manne Georg Siegbahn won the Rumford Medal in 1940. The Rumford Medal was also awarded in 1900 to… Henri Becquerel. Booyah.

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.

DNS is the station code for the Dinas Powys railway station, which is located in southern Wales. It’s also an acronym for the Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway, which ran through England from 1882 to 1923.

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!