Seeking truth through conversations on Love and Fandom
Tag: Eridan Ampora
Hey, guys! In this video, we dive into Classpects in a little more depth, focusing on the recurring symbol of the Witch’s Familiar. We also take a look at every case of Witch roleplay we’re currently aware of, and note how characters who roleplay as Witches always seem to end up with Familiars themselves.
I’m more than a little upset I’m going to have to work these into my Force and Flow essays soon, but I figured I’d write these posts on the Unifying Myths for the Steal and Destroy classes because they’ll help me get my thoughts in order for the Classpect video I’m writing the script for.
(PS: That’ll exist soon! Ideally an easy way to introduce all sorts of newbies to the Classpect system. I’m excited!!)
So let’s talk about the unifying myth for Princes and Bards: That of Royalty. Related terms include aristocracy, nobility, and high blood by association.
I…don’t know why it took me so long to notice this? I guess I got tripped up by the royalty focus on the Fuschias, but I mean, class roleplay is an established thing and the Ancestors, as complex and multifaceted people living in the real world, muddy the water with the multiplicity of symbols they portray all the time.
Also, both Meenah and Feferi explicitly reject their royalty status and abdicate the crown. So. I really don’t know what was stopping me here. Anyhow, let’s get into it.
I think this mostly speaks for itself, honestly? Equius attributes Dave’s habit of destroying things to the training Bro–a Prince–gives him. He suggests it makes him nobler than others, and Dave himself likens himself to a King while carrying out the behavior.
This contextualizes Dave’s habit of destruction during Act 5 as him roleplaying as a Prince, in imitation of Bro. Fittingly given his confused state with regards to his abusive parentage, Dave doesn’t realize that’s what he’s doing or why, but his habit of breaking random stuff is one he mostly drops as he grows out of wanting to imitate Bro on any level (with one notable exception).
If the Royalty classes have a coherent theme, it’s a focus on historical legacy, lines of descent, and inherited destiny. Where other classes draw their interests from fiction, abstract concepts, or their own creative interests, the Royals typically find their biggest interests in the past–that of themselves and of their people. So Dirk and AR both view themselves as scions of Dave’s legacy.
The Makaras are beholden to their Subjugglator bloodline, and the allegiance to Lord English it represents. They don’t seem to believe in the cause of the Mirthful Messiahs so much as simply know the inevitable reality of their success well in advance. And why wouldn’t they, with evidence all around them like Doc Scratch, Lil Cal, and Lord English already wandering the Void?
And while we’re talking about Gamzee, I may as well cover Bard’s link to Royalty. I should note that this is part of a recurring trend with the Classes–one will generally relate to the unifying myth very directly, while the second will come with a host of references and plot beats linking it to the myth indirectly.
So a Witch is a magician by name, while an Heir is revealed as one through the myriad references John gets to wizardry. A Sylph is a kind of fairy by name, but it’s Maids who get described as being “Made of” their Aspect, and so their brand of magic. So on.
In this same respect, while Princes are Royalty manifest by their very name, Bards–though Gamzee–are lifted into the noble circle by implication and continuous reference.
Gamzee’s allegiance to LE results in the cultural dominance of Subjugglators, both on Alternia and on the Alpha Earth. The Mirthful Executives give us the clearest link to Gamzee, since their rise to horrible, aristocratic power is prophecized well in advance, George Washington describing them as “Salty Bards”.
The Amporas seem to have two distinct lines of inherited destiny–one related to their Blood, and one related to their Aspect. Their status as scions of the legacy of the Angels sees them as champions of fantasy, belief, and Hope. It also sets them up as natural rivals to the Makaras, and threats to Lord English.
It’s also likely deliberate to some extent, since it’s suggested that someone close to Lord English talked Cronus out of his relationship with Magic, and Alternia was all but designed to bring out the worst in Eridan’s entitlement complex and arrogance.
Since Caliborn had prior experience with the danger of a Hero of Hope, it makes sense he’d want to neutralize the others by prompting them to believe in something darker to believe in.
Which brings us to the arrogance and entitlement the Royalty classes often struggle with–the part of their natures that seems to constitute their greatest challenge before achieving fulfillment and balance.
The concept of High Birth seems to manifest in a sense of inherent superiority for Princes and Bards, and it’s this belief that tends to destroy their ability to make relationships. Both Makaras and both Amporas harbor these intense, megalomaniacal worldviews.
This, however, is where the best Prince begins to set himself apart. A successful, happy, healthy version of a prince who reaches balance is one who humbles himself, and gets over their sense of arrogant supremacy.
So we can see Dirk as a loose, loose glimpse into what it might look like for Eridan, for example, to chill out after a couple of years–had he gotten the chance. Of course, Dirk was never half as domineering or controlling as Eridan, so this is an unequal comparison, but I think it’s worth noting how their three age difference is meant to influence or readings of the two.
AR/Lil Hal is the version of Dirk that commits most of the abusive/manipulative behavior people usually pin on Alpha Dirk, and fittingly, he’s the one who actually distinguishes himself as Above his friends for most of his narrative.
In AR’s case, he does so on the basis that he is cybernetic and cyber-omniscient, a state he views as superior to being flesh-and-blood, even likening it to an aristocratic position once he’s mixed with Equius.
To swing things back around to Dave’s roleplay, there actually is one final act of destruction in his arc. After talking things out with Dirk and coming to see a version of his Bro as someone with the potential to do good, Dave and Dirk engage in what I can only describe as a 2x roleplay combo, with Dirk serving Dave through his Self and Dave killing Dirk to finish off the Jacks.
I like the sense of inverted symmetry here, and it puts into context why Dave’s attack is a positive thing for him–this moment is about Dave accepting that there can be some good in Dirk’s nature, and being willing to incorporate some of Dirk’s influence into his person at an appropriate time.
By embracing Dirk’s affinity for destruction and giving Dirk the chance to put his fate in someone else’s hands, Dirk can find absolution and Dave can find a coherent understanding of his identity, and Bro’s influence on it.
Anyway that’s about it. I’m glad to finally have coherent myths for Princes/Bard and Thief/Rogue, but we know how these classes work mechanically, so it’s not like they revolutionize my whole understanding of the canon. Feel free to send me asks with your thoughts, but for now…
Feferi’s like “Ew, you’re just doing this cause you like me.” Eridan goes “Ew bitch, no. I am so far over you, I literally don’t care about you except you’re also technically the Empress now.” Sollux challenges Eridan to their Hate Duel and Eridan goes “Ugh fine”. Sollux gets Rekt, and Feferi gets pissed that her new “pet”(because that’s what Sollux seemed to be to her) didn’t win and tries to kill Eridan. 2/4 Eridan kills her first, destroys the Matriorb to distract Kanaya when she looks like she might go for him next(arguably the only uncalled for action, as I don’t think she’d actually attacked him yet), kills Kanaya, and then leaves poor Karkat alone and goes to find somebody to go with him to join Jack. ¾ So he didn’t just go on a murder spree, he was either winning a duel(Sollux), or defending himself against (percieved) threats(Feferi and Kanaya). If he was really gonna go on a murder spree, he would’ve killed Karkat, too. Also all of this probably wouldn’t have happened if A: Feferi had done her job as his Moiral; or B: Present!Karkat hadn’t called it off with Past!Eridan. (Sorry if this all sounds rude, I just really hate when people don’t actually pay attention to Eridan’s character) 4/4
You have some serious issues with women, anon. From the top:
A) Eridan was cruel, ungrateful, judgmental and unpleasant to everyone who had the misfortune of talking to him from his first appearance. Also, he’s a fucking Nazi. Feferi was forced into a position of trying to cool the temperament of a literal genocidal nazi asshole. Nobody owed Eridan further emotional labor once he was no longer a threat.
B) Your view that Feferi viewed Sollux as a ‘pet’ is as uncharitable as it is based on absolutely nothing. If you’re going to make statements that dramatic at me, be prepared to back them up with the text and have your reading put under scrutiny. I’m not here to indulge the validity of everyone’s pet headcanons. I’m here to talk about Homestuck.
C) You’re forgetting the part where Eridan tried to get Feferi SPECIFICALLY to join Jack with him. The offer was not open to Sollux and was not made to anybody else. Eridan considered her worthy because she’s ruling class, because oh have I mentioned, Eridan is a fucking nazi.
D) I literally do not care to what extent Eridan was personally out to go on a murder spree. He’s still a gutless coward who abandoned all his friends and took dim views of even the ones who went out of their way to show him kindness, like Karkat, on account of his ***LITERAL SPACE NAZI IDEOLOGY***
E) Andrew Hussie himself talked about him in the dimmest of terms, calling him the worst kind of bastard Homestuck has to offer in the context of Act 5–harsher words than I’d use, considering LE and Gamzee exist. But like. You’re gonna have a hard time finding evidence for your pet reading, bud.
F) Maybe when you’re expressing virulent misogyny at a female character don’t LITERALLY call her slurs? It’s kind of on the nose. You might have noticed part of my aesthetic is valuing the effort it takes to read between the lines, so like give me a little room for doubt here as to where you’re coming from ok thanks.
G) I didn’t even call Eridan completely irredeemable in the grand scheme of things, for fuck’s sake. My point was that actually just the opposite: That no matter how bad Eridan was, you still have to read him while weighing the agency of a child trapped in an exploitative system with the literal quasi-Adult GOD that set up that system in the first place.
Eridan is shit, but there’s potential for him to be not shit somewhere in his character. The two statements are not contradictory.
As it happens, Gamzee has a line I never gave much weight to before noticing Bro’s SAW interest that I’m more inclined to take seriously now, that suggests Gamzee and Bro’s relationship to Cal WAS intrinsically different:
But even if Bro is kind of a noble captor figure holding Cal back, I still wouldn’t think it excuses any of what he put Dave through. He’s still an awful dude.
As for Gamzee, here’s the main problem with reading him as “just” brainwashed.
Gamzee doesn’t require Lil Cal’s presence to go evil. In fact, Gamzee doesn’t seem to require ANYTHING to turn evil. But even if like, Doc Scratch ALWAYS teleports Lil Cal into Gamzee’s presence to trigger his personality shift, I don’t think it would matter. The weight of the sheer SCALE of Gamzee’s devotion cements his place as an ultimately willing accomplice/acolyte to Caliborn’s Dark Carnival.
And it kind of makes Gamzee fucking terrifying and a fantastic villain.
I’ll explain my reasoning here.
We know for a fact that Gamzee snaps and kills all his friends in at least one Doomed timeline. This is the source for half the code used in the creation of Doc Scratch. There’s no implication that Lil Cal is involved here at all.
But again, let’s assume Lil Cal was here again. It doesn’t matter.
Because there is canonically, explicitly, no timeline in the history of Gamzee where Gamzee ever, ever, EVER chooses to rebel. Gamzee Makara simply does not ever choose his friends over Lord English. In any timeline. Ever. How do I know?
Lets talk about Ghosts for a minute. The fandom has historically kind of taken these guys for granted, and loose fandom consensus is that they aren’t coherent/who has what ghosts is arbitrary. This is incorrect!
Pretty much everybody in the Bubbles that should have alt!ghosts does, including Meenah and Aranea, the two characters who’s alt!ghosts are typically presumed “Missing”.
This is important. The Ghosts kind of give us very low-key character development, and contextualize the characters for us. For example, Eridan is an absolute irredeemable bastard in the Alpha timeline. But in a God Tier iteration of themselves, Eridan and Feferi seemingly come to friendlier terms. In another, there’s suggestions Eridan makes up with Feferi and Sollux. In yet another, he seems to be Trans or exploring femininity at least.
The point is, there’s a certain fluidity to Eridan’s potential. Still terrible in the comic, but it’s important to remember that Eridan didn’t CHOOSE to be trapped in the meteor with Jack, or to be born to Alternia’s power system, or to be trapped in the Alpha Timeline.
It’s important to remember these things because in Homestuck, someone with power–Lord English–deliberately and willfully chose those things FOR him. Eridan’s lives are lived in response to that imposed power structure. These factors don’t redeem him completely necessarily
But anyway, the fact that the rest of the cast have coherent quantum expressions means there are only three real exceptions–three characters who either don’t have any ghosts at all, or should have more ghosts than they do.
The first is Caliborn, who’s timeline has exactly one deviation from the Alpha–apparently caused by John’s retcon. This riddle’s solved easily enough: Predomination doesn’t leave a ghost to appear in the bubbles at all. When Calliope says she ate his soul, she means that literally. Caliborn’s cheating in the Alpha Timeline is indeed the only reason Calliope exists in the bubbles at all.
(This, by the way, explains a lot about the relationship between Caliborn’s soul and Gamzee/Arquis’ in the Lord English. He predominated over them, too.)
The second is Vriska, who only has a single ghost in (Vriska). This is really weird, because we literally know for a fact she dies in more than one doomed timeline! As with the two Calliopes, I think this is down to John’s retcon doing some weird entanglement nonsense to Vriska’s quantum existence. The point is: Where others have a palette of possibility, Vriska has two extremely polarized halves. Schrodinger’s Vriska.
Important to mention that just like Eridan, the structure of the Alpha Timeline that limits potential Vriskas is IMPOSED ONTO HER. Vriska didn’t want anything about the way she was raised or where she was born. She didn’t ask John and Terezi to retcon her into this bizarre state. Both Vriskas, like the rest of the cast, are rolling with the punches LE has seen fit to give.
Except for Gamzee.
Hussie literally tells us Gamzee never dies. His single non-Alpha Timeline death in [S] Game Over is retconned by John, and Hussie suggests it straight up doesn’t count. But that presents a problem.
There are thousands upon thousands of Doomed troll timelines. How is it that Gamzee specifically never ever EVER dies? Well, there’s only one real way that a Non-Time player can survive a Doomed timeline, that we know of:
Dream self merger. By going to sleep as the last player present in Sburb, the Doomed Rose from Davesprite’s timeline triggers a game mechanic that ends her timeline completely and merges her consciousness with that of Alpha Rose through their dreamselves.
If Gamzee survives his doomed timelines, this is the only possible way how. And collapsing all of his potential instances into a single Alpha identity certainly sounds like the reduction of possibility commonly attributed to the Rage aspect. But what that means is that to move on to the Alpha, every Doomed Gamzee must inevitably either snap and kill all the other trolls, or somehow outlast them.
And it means that if any Gamzee had EVER, in the entire spectrum of plausibility the Alpha timeline affords, EVER been inclined to rebel against LE–then we would know. Because somewhere out there, that at least Hussie could see, there would be a Ghost to show for it.
But there isn’t. Similar in this respect only to Caliborn, Gamzee simply has no alternate deviations because he doesn’t want them. He chooses the path that leads to Lord English freely and willingly, over and over and over again.
And like Caliborn…
Gamzee does this because he wants to.
Gamzee doesn’t BELIEVE he’s going to become his own God–he knows it for a fact. He sees it in Lil Cal’s mangled soul. And he embraces that truth wholeheartedly, throwing himself into the acolyte role from then onwards and presumably following instructions Doc Scratch gives him throughout Act 6.
Which we can talk about some other time. The point is: Gamzee chooses all this. Whether or not Lil Cal causes him to is beside the point, because there is not and never will be any timeline where Gamzee chooses to resist.
Gamzee is the ultimate in shitty cosmic nazi religious zealots, and devoted to the very power structure that causes every other character to suffer so. There are no mitigating factors for him as there are for everyone else but Caliborn. At the end of the day, he’s evil. Bad clown. Worst enemy.
Yeah, I do think that’s the implication. I like it honestly because it renders Gamzee in a WAY darker light as a villain, and really contextualizes WHY he’s so irredeemable to an extent beyond that of Vriska, or even Eridan. There -can be- different versions of those two, ones who aren’t so committed to their personas and willful destruction.
Not so for Gamzee. Like Caliborn, he’s committed to the Alpha Timeline through and through.
Flying through Storytelling 