Now to address the substance of the animation.

It is not only long, it is dense. As dense as most other animations, while subjecting you to many more raw minutes of this rapid fire data. The events are portrayed nonlinearly. They shift focus between different sessions, planets, and universes, zooming into and out of them, showing them shrink, teleport, or explode spectacularly. We jump to points in a character’s chronology in the future, in the past, and examine frames of reference where chronology has no meaning. This animation is cerebrally challenging to follow. But your understanding of it will be in direct proportion to how well you understood the whole story up to this point. If you followed everything, and remember the key facts, there’s a very good chance you understood everything in the animation easily.

So, let’s take a closer look at what there is to understand.

Might as well start with the biggest development.

The tumor was a bomb that physically contained both our universe (red side) and the troll universe (blue side). It was counting down to the “simultaneous” destruction of both universes. On detonation, it did not destroy the green sun as intended. It created it.

I believe some people thought they were witnessing the destruction of the sun when the bomb went off. Though if you examine the scene objectively, there’s no reason to think this, other than that it was the stated mission for so long. There was no sun in sight. They were drifting through empty space. Then, boom. The sun was growing from ground zero. The fact that this misapprehension was somewhat common probably speaks to how cemented the mission to destroy the sun had become as a critical plot point. And maybe also, to how well Scratch deceived everyone on the subject.

All of act 5, and to some extent all of Homestuck, has been the result of a very, very long con by Doc Scratch. His power source, and the source that fueled all this calamity in many other ways, was always going to be created in this way, by combined efforts of the kids and the trolls to save reality. Part of his job was to make sure that happened. That was the secret part of his job. The other part, openly stated, was to pave the way for the entrance of his master, which is triggered on the destruction of the troll universe, as illustrated by this virus. It turns out that doing these two things is one and the same. No green sun without the death of a universe. No Lord English either.

You may retrace his conversations in light of this new fact. He says he never lies, and while he’s certainly deceptive, I think you are hard pressed to find him saying something that is absolutely untrue. He misdirects, and lies by omission (which is something he makes clear he doesn’t believe in). But just about everything he says can be validated in some way. There are clues to this outcome everywhere, hiding in plain sight.

Consider his conversation here. He speaks primarily in hypotheticals, about what would happen if they destroyed the sun. He says things often arranged like this: “And it is certainly true that The Tumor you will deliver to its location has enough power to destroy it completely.” He says they will deliver the bomb to the sun’s location. He just doesn’t mention the sun won’t be there yet. He also says its powerful enough to destroy it, hypothetically. Also true. He just doesn’t mention it won’t be around to destroy, until the bomb goes off!

There’s also this tidbit. “TT: It is nearly twice the mass of our universe.” Because it is literally comprised of the detonated mass of two dead universes. And so on.

Next up. Even though this isn’t a “revelation”, it should probably be bolded and discussed.

Time and space do not work comprehensibly in the furthest ring.

How can the sun just have been created, when it was there all along, fueling Bec and Doc Scratch for ages, and more recently, Bec Noir, Jadesprite, etc? See above.

TT: The greater the distance you travel through it, the less reliably time flows.
TT: And the more time you spend in it, the less reliably space behaves.
TT: Time and space aren’t as different as you might think.

So in other words, what really happened is Rose and Dave’s journey took them quite a distance through the furthest ring. The longer they traveled, the less reliably you could place them on the timeline. They may have traveled a few miles, while simultaneously wandering millions of years into the future. And after another few miles, may have gone eons into the past, way before the green sun existed. This is in fact what happened. The dark gods helped chart their course through this spacetime maze to deliver them to this location, at this time. Take that for what you will.

This is also at the heart of why the sun became visible to the trolls the moment it did, rather than always being visible. It is not because it “just happened”, since the respective timeframes are incompatible, and that notion doesn’t actually make sense. The moment of Bilious Slick’s detonation (our universe), that was the moment the light from the green sun’s ancient explosion finally managed to reach their session, after its long circuitous travel through knotted spacetime. In fact, we don’t even need a complex spacetime model to understand this. Right now, there is celestial phenomena happening in our universe that we cannot see, because the light hasn’t reached us yet! It won’t for millions of years.

The light from the sun is important to the trolls not only as a beacon, but as a momentary illumination of a “straight line” through the furthest ring. If light can make it from here to there through the broken space, then so can a meteor, as long as it travels fast and doesn’t miss the opportunity. This is a decent reason for the urgent getaway, as well as, presumably, the need to escape Jack’s ire while he is distracted. So Sollux went all out, putting a little extra mustard on it so to speak, and reprised his ill fated ancestor’s role as helmsman.

Aradia’s chronology is also worth noting. She is not actually witnessing the birth of the sun, as this (remember, nonlinear) animation seems to illustrate. When she flew inside Jack to escape, the sun was already there waiting for her. Every time we have seen Aradia hanging out in front of the sun, or hanging out with Sollux’s (half-)ghost, that was well after the sun was created.

AA: i am waiting for friends to arrive
AA: they will need my help
TA: what friends?
TA: m0re ghosts?
AA: no theyre alive
AA: first
AA: there will be two humans
AA: they should be joining us any minute

She’s of course referring to Rose and Dave. And of course, at the time, we’re meant to believe they will arrive in the moon they are piloting, ready to crash kamikaze style into the sun and blow it up. There’s little reason to question this. But it turns out all along, she was waiting for them to COME OUT of the sun! As freshly minted god tiers. The nonlinear flow of the story was at every turn directing you away from the suspicion that their mission would create the sun, rather than destroy it.

TA: then what?
AA: then rest of our party
AA: the survivors
TA: 0h
TA: so then, we made it 0ut here alright.
AA: yes
AA: well
AA: they made it
AA: your body will arrive with them

Then the trolls, who are now in transit, will theoretically rendezvous with all of them at the sun. And then what?? We’ll see.

I think that’s enough to digest for now. I’ll make another part later, talking about some other aspects of the Flash, like Jack’s convoluted inter-session journey, the scratch, the expanding 4th wall and all that stuff.