While the homestuck fandom has generally come to a consensus about the 12 aspects that I agree with, I think most theorists have collectively missed an important, if not the most important facet of Space.



Namely, what alt Calliope says on this page.

Interestingly, these easy-to-miss lines describe Jade’s arc (in acts 1 to 5) perfectly:



She falls back, “hosts the play”, becomes dormant as she spends much of homestuck’s first 5 arcs asleep. During this time she mostly facilitates other people’s stories, such as helping the Exiles, and even her onscreen interaction with Dave ties a lot into how he uses time travel.

Then, she roars to life, shows all who is really the master in Cascade as she fuses with a first guardian and starts juggling planets.

She falls back again “taking all else with” her as she leaves the beta session with the planets and places her undeniable mark on the alpha session.

Strangely enough this interpretation is sort of backed up by AH himself, in this Q&A when talking about what the words active and passive mean in terms of players and classes he says:

“Jade and John had more passive roles through most of that, players who were “acted upon” by other players and circumstances. John was always being led around by trolls this way and that, drifting around wherever the wind took him. Jade was especially passive for a lot of the story, spending a lot of time falling asleep (or being put to sleep) at key moments. It wasn’t until she reached god tier as a Witch (said to be a highly active class) that she became extremely active, making lots of stuff happen, rounding up planets and all that.”

Which connects Jade’s “dormant” stage to being passive, and her “roar to life” stage as being active.

There are other examples of this sort of sequence, but before I go into them let’s talk about where the concept comes from and why I call it “Stellar Cycle”

It’s about the life cycle of massive stars and star systems:

Stars are formed when the gas of a nebula falls into a single point (and then starts to undergo balanced nuclear fusion), leaving the gas and dust around it to fall together and form into planets and other objects.



The star then starts providing the surrounding system of planets with light and the gravity to hold them in orbit. The planets and moons also “host the play” as they become the setting, the background. This is the dormant and passive part of the cycle.

With it’s fuel used up the star expands/undergoes supernovae and fills the system, reminding everyone who’s in charge.



The matter of the star falls back again and forms a black hole, which will eventually take the whole star-system with it. (Note that this part could also be expressive of white dwarf stars, which are also small, dense and are formed at the end of a star’s life cycle).



Now that we’ve sorted that out, let’s look at other times Space shit goes through this cycle:

Alt-Calliope herself:

She remains dormant (dead, alone, and waiting for Jade) for “close to an eternity” and then “shows all who is really the master” in act 7 when she raises her baton, destroys the green sun, then “collapses, taking all else with her” when she literally becomes a black hole and destroys paradox space.

To be fair, the middle part of the cycle, where space “shows all who is truly the master” is arguably missing, as Calliope goes straight from being “dormant” to ripping reality apart, but I have an explanation for this that I’ll go through when talking about Calliope’s quirk.

Kanaya:

For much of act 5 Kanaya could be described as a very passive person, she stays quiet, she never makes her issues anyone else’s problem, and she even lets Karkat tell her what to do. Looking at her arc from the perspective of this theory, she’s silently “hosting the play”, facilitating other people’s drama and healing, until Eridan puts a hole in her stomach.

At this point she literally “roars (back) to life”, goes completely badass and interrupts one of the murderstuck showdowns by soundly defeating three psychopaths (showing all who is truly the master), then walks away with Equius’s glasses and Eridan’s scarf (*argubly* taking all else with her).

You could even argue that she goes through this cycle twice as she’s quite passive and understanding (dormant and hosting the play) during the meteor trip, but then roars to life and kills Gamzee in Game Over.

The Forge:

Any space player in a session that has a chance of succeeding with have a Forge, which is a volcano that is literally “dormant”.

The volcano then becomes “active” and sends the new universe into Skaia.

Calliope and her Quirk:

Part of Calliope’s Quirk is the fact that all of her letters are lowercase, apart from the “U”s, which are always uppercase.

If you were to reduce “Stellar Cycle” theory to the most simplest and minimalist concept you could it would basically be:

Thing is small and silent a long time, but is then big and important suddenly but then falls to small again.

This is basically Calliopes quirk. Her words are small and passive and “dormant” for the most part, but then when using a “U” (which is the letter that in sort of represents her) she goes uppercase.

Alt Calliope on the other hand uses only lowercase letters. There is an argument that because she is a “successful” (well, god-tiered) Muse, she shouldn’t do anything active at all (while Jade acts in a passive and active ways at different times), and that this explains why she didn’t completely fulfill the “show who is the master” part of the cycle.

I can appreciate however, that this is a bit of a stretch and raises a whole host of other questions, such as “Shouldn’t someone who masters space be able to access the entirety of the aspect?”, and “if Calliope and Caliborn actually shared their session would they have been able to unlock the full potential of their classes?” so I’ll stop there.

Please tell me what you think!