Black hole

A black hole with distinct four-dimensional accretion disk of solar matter.

Black holes are recurring setpieces in MS Paint Adventures. A black hole is a celestial body of incredible density, such that its gravitational pull is near-inescapable. Even information is said to be unable to escape a black hole; as such, there is some overlap between black holes and the dark pockets which Doc Scratch cannot see directly into.

Known black holes

In Problem Sleuth

After his arrival in the Game of Life much to “the rapture” of the waiting followers of his “Mobster/Gravitation-based cult,” Dark Matter Mobster Kingpin tightened the strings on his Gravity Brassier even further to slip under his SCHWARZSCHILD RADIUS and collapse to become Black Hole Mobster Kingpin. The entirety of the Game of Life and subsequently all the surrounding characters atop Demonhead Mobster Kingpin's hat from both Life and Death were all pulled within BHMK's event horizon. Nervous Broad and Hysterical Dame were also spaghettified as they were pulled within, though NB was able to loosen her Aspect Corset to compensate;PS #1450 as time dilated significantly, she also placed the Stiller shades on her face, and all of the universe's events played upon its lenses, an effect which seemed to last until a later owner of the sunglasses. The rest of the imaginary universe's heavenly bodies also slowly began a path toward the black hole.PS #1479

The characters and objects sucked into BHMK's event horizon appeared within on Kingpin's hat, which formed only part of a vast Kingpin fractal.

In Homestuck generally

The iconic representation of the Space aspect - and as such also the symbol for the aspect of Void - resembles the spiral arms of a galaxy, which are theorised to form their distinctive shape thanks to the gravitational pull of a supermassive central black hole. Similarly, the Earth's home galaxy, the Milky Way, and the unnamed home galaxy of Alternia both have spiral shapes with the telltale accretion discs of black holes in the center.

Calliope's vision, clearly forming one half of a cherub's face.

Caliborn's kernelsprite consumes a red sun...

...and an alternate Calliope consumes a green one.

Cherubs

Into Act 6 of Homestuck, black holes increasingly appear as symbols surrounding the cherubs Calliope and Caliborn. The image of a black hole swallowing a large neighbouring star in particular is “a symbol which has haunted [Calliope's] visions for as long as [she] can remember” - the star and adjacent spiral also heavily resemble one half of a cherub's face. Black holes are the typical settings for cherub mating rituals, and such was the case for Calliope and Caliborn's parents. Though this particular black hole is said to “conspicuously” occupy the location of the cherubs' father's home planet, it is as of yet not known what the significance of this black hole might be.

Caliborn's session

The black hole in the center of Caliborn's Incipisphere.

Two major black holes played parts in Caliborn's Sburb session.

In a dead session, the kernelsprite “collapses into a black hole, sucking the planet into it, and eventually the sun and entire solar system.” When the Earth was sucked through this black hole, it took its place in Caliborn's Incipisphere: the last we saw of the cherubs' sun, however, it was still being slowly consumed, and what exactly will happen when this process is complete is unknown.

A second black hole appeared in the very center of the Incipisphere following the violent destruction of Caliborn's instances of Skaia and the Battlefield. Caliborn's quest involved shifting the course of the twelve resulting planets using powerful explosives, knocking them out of orbit and into this black hole's event horizon.

The vortex left behind by the death of "Jack English".

Collide

A powerful explosion created by the head of the B2 session's Lord English-empowered Jack Noir consumed much of the Land of Tombs and Krypton, leaving behind a large swirling black body heavily resembling though not explicitly referred to as a black hole.

Calliope

The young Calliope's unmistakeably black hole-like dark pocket.

The alternate Calliope opens up a black hole with the symbol of her Space aspect at its center.

One of Calliope's abilities appears to involve the creation of black holes. After her assassination at Caliborn's behest, her ghost hid in the center of a “vortex” or “dark pocket” from which “no information can escape”: this seemingly refers to a commonly held - though disputed - theory about real-life black holes, that their density is so great that even information cannot escape their pull. Calliope's dark pocket later contains a stage, foreshadowing the falling of all of Homestuck itself into a black hole.

Another Calliope again shows this ability in a much more explicit fashion in Act 7 when she replicates the destruction of her red sun by using her magic wand to create or turn into a black hole, absorbing the . This black hole also begins to eat up the fabric of the Furthest Ring, already damaged by Lord English's attacks, as well as the Ring's ghost inhabitants.

Dark pockets

In conjunction with being Calliope's main method of hiding from her enemies, “so called dark pockets” in Doc Scratch's awareness are apparently the only weaknesses to his otherwise omniscience. Doc Scratch himself describes them as “[n]ecessary pockets of void meant to effectuate outcomes [he has] foreseen and which will require [his] influence,” elaborating that “[e]ach dark pocket, in time, will be filled” - insinuating that these dark pockets are similar in some way to the "pockets" found on a pool table, just as the black hole in the center of Caliborn's session acted as a pocket for planets to be sunk into.

Not all dark pockets can necessarily be connected to black holes; at least some of the pockets in Scratch's vision are the blackout zones zones surrounding Heroes of Void, with Mindfang using such a blackout zone around Darkleer to hide her magic cue ball from its master. It may be noted that the symbol of the Void aspect visually complements the black hole icon of the Space aspect, however, and that a Hero of Void apparently “make[s] an ideal gUest” to a black hole hideout.

Speculation

As the black hole created by Caliborn's kernelsprite transported the Earth from Universe C into the Incipisphere, it is not out of the question that other black holes also act as portals between locales. Many of the objects supposedly consumed in the explosion of Jack Noir on the Land of Tombs and Krypton later resurface on the Land of Colours and Mayhem: namely Gamzee Makara, trapped in a fridge at the time; the crowbar wielded by Jack and later given to Caliborn; and Yaldabaoth, once Dirk Strider's denizen in the center of LOTAK but who appeared in Caliborn's session after the completion of a sufficient number of quests.^{[citation needed]} If this explosion did indeed create a black hole, this would set a precedent for at least two black holes leading directly to Caliborn's session: Doc Scratch's comment that his dark pockets benefit him in some way and would eventually all be filled could in fact be a reference to various black holes helping to assemble the necessary components for the creation of Lord English.

One known method of transport to and from the Furthest Ring.

The function of black holes as portals is further explored in the dubiously canonical Homestuck Epilogues, wherein the ghosts sucked into the alternate Calliope's black hole are transported to Volume: Candy's Earth C, indicating yet another connection between black holes and the post-apocalyptic Earth. Meenah Peixes also makes a similar journey from the Ring to Earth by traveling through an unknown server; it could be that this server has something to do with Lord English's server, which acts as a portal to the magic timepiece also found within the center of Caliborn's Earth.

In The Homestuck Epilogues (Dubiously Canon)

Alternate Calliope's black hole always leads into Volume: Candy's version of Earth C: in addition to the ghosts which begin to appear on Earth, the car in which Terezi Pyrope and the Meat volume's John Egbert have their sexual encounter also crosses over to the Candy Earth through this same black hole, followed by both Vriska Serket and Lord English after their final confrontation in the Furthest Ring.

In Homestuck: Beyond Canon (Dubiously Canon)

Volume: Candy

According to the alpha Calliope, the splitting of the Meat and Candy volumes was a “critical moment” which caused the Candy Earth to fall into the “Ubermassive black hole”. This black hole was a form of “containment” which the alternate Calliope had “painstakingly set up” for its inhabitants.

The singularity at the very center of this black hole, which rested within the the trolls' meteor which had landed on the planet thousands of years beforehand, was dubbed The Plot Point by Calliope and Roxy Lalonde, who planned to use its energy to escape the black hole's pull.

Calliope's six-armed dark pocket.

Volume: Meat

One of Calliope's dark pockets was home to the Home, a physical representation of Homestuck and its offshoots. A spiral vortex in the shape of Calliope, Jade Harley and Kanaya Maryam's Space symbol allowed the trio to convene with Roxy Lalonde and observe the Home's condition, where the alternate Calliope had always been “alongside/behind/before” them.