This time we dig into Gamzee’s recurring links to the masks of Comedy and Tragedy, historical worship of the Greek god of Theatre, Dionysus, and what all of this tells us about Gamzee’s arc and, potentially, even the Rage aspect.
Today’s question is: Can you think of other trolls with strong ties to figures in Greecoroman/Egyptian/Judeo-Christian mythologies?
I would like to add that many fans of Homestuck argue which Gamzee is real Gamzee: high, happy Gamzee or angry murderer Gamzee.
Fans of first tell that angry Gamzee is possessed and that is the reason he is abusive or commits murders and that “true Gamzee” wouldn’t do that.
People who think that “true Gamzee” is angry one tend to say that only sopor slime and delusions were stopping this boy from murderous rampages and by looking into eyes of Lil Cal Gamzee simply showed his true colours and got motivation that he was lacking all of his life.
I would say something else.
Either Gamzees are “true Gamzee” or neither!
Gamzee’s each self represents mask.
High Gamzee represents mask of comedy. This boy’s only purpose is to be laughed at either by readers and his friends.
Sorber Gamzee brings people only pain, by hurting characters and represents tragedy mask.
After looking into eyes of Lil Hal Gamzee switches often between comedy and tragedy mask. He “wears” tragedy mask when he is with Terezi or in Game Over timeline and “wears” tragedy mask in the Alpha session, where his actions (like selling potions) are for laughs of the audience (readers).
Which Gamzee is “true Gamzee”? This question is meaningless. Either both “masks” are aspects of Gamzee’s personalities, ergo both are true or both are just masks given to Gamzee by someone else and we don’t know true personality of Gamzee.
Which one is true? We do not know.
This is an interesting way to parse it, I dig it a lot
oh yeah i never did post that, did I? I’d publish it right now, but its a lot rougher than the other two–mainly its lacking the pictures and stuff i usually put on since I only meant to use it as a script.
I’m not sure if its valuable to anyone in that state since it barely qualifies as an “article” so much as a draft, but if people want it sure i’ll post it? I’m meaning to update it eventually, too, its just a fair degree of work on my part and my creative energy has been going to more…-EXCITING stuff of late 😉
but feel free to let me know if youd like it published now, or if youd really like to see a fully picture-ified version! i could probably make that happen i just wasnt aware there was much interest
Hey guys! This time we look at some neat ways Gamzee might have used his Rage powers along the course of his arc, and some examples of what “Rage powers” might actually mean.
Today’s question is: Can you think of other ways Gamzee might’ve used his Rage powers?
Here’s the script version of the last two videos on Gamzee, btw, for anyone who prefers reading to watching stuff. Part 3 has its own script that Patrons have access to, I’ll post that later.
Needed to post this now since I’m writing something related I’ll be dropping soon, probably tonight. Stay tuned :o)
1) Whether It’s a purpleblood power or a bard of rage power is beside the point to me. I consider the purple blood caste itself biologically and socially engineered to force in its members a connection to Rage, regardless of their true alignment. The same is true of every other blood caste in my framework: Rusts are linked to Time, Jades to Space, and so on.
Pretty much every troll introduced in Hiveswap and the Friendsim so far includes references not only to their True Sign aspect, but also the aspect of their caste. That’s one of the reasons I misidentified Xefros as a Time player before the Zodiac dropped! I didn’t recognize this mechanic until @wakraya pointed it out.
2) There’s a second half to the classes’ descriptions, remember? There’s also “inviting destruction THROUGH Rage”, as if by the will of the Aspect–which does evoke to me why Gamzee seems almost possessed by his fury when it comes.
3) Another thing to consider is that, at least in my framework, Gamzee’s Horrorstuck shtick coincided with Gamzee embracing the legacy of the Grand Highblood–who was Kurloz, a Prince.
I consider this indicative of Gamzee beginning to roleplay a Prince, and so his verbiage during his more directly violent segments would coincide with the Prince description of simply Destroying Through X, which seems like a better fit to me.
The fact that Gamzee is one of the most Passive classes forcing himself to roleplay one of the most Active is a contributing factor to the extreme stress he seems to be under when doing that Ragey thing, in my opinion.
Oh yes, I’m glad you brought this up. Me and the pals in the patreon discord talked about Orpheus a bit after this Dionysus stuff came out, and I think there are two solid ideas to consider.
The first is we should probably keep an eye out for an Orpheus themed troll in Hiveswap, since the story you mentioned is one of the more notable stories Maenads are involved in, so uh…we might be able to expect such a character might have trouble with Chahut. RIP @ that hypothetical guy, probably.
But it’s also possible Orpheus’ analogue is Already Here, in this guy:
We won’t get to this in video for a while, so lets just get into it here.
Gamzee kills Equius right when Equius turns his back on the Highblood’s ideology, and tries to stop Gamzee from murdering the lowbloods. So there are some legit parallels. An obvious issue here is that Orpheus is killed by the Maenads on Dionysus’ behalf, but there’s a couple things to consider.
Gamzee also enters the scene of Equius’ murder wearing Terezi’s shades. Dionysian imagery plays into Gamzee’s treatment of Terezi already–Satyrs were known for “breaking down traditional values”, a good example of which is…Law.
So uh. That puts a new spin on all of Gamzee’s mockery of courts of law whilst pitting Terezi against Vriska. And his literal breaking down of Terezi–emotionally across the meteor, and physically before Game Over.
+ given how Gamzee basically dragged Terezi into his juggalo cult, I think we can–to an extent–read her as an unwilling Maenad, and so Gamzee identifying himself with her symbol here seems relevant.
Back to Orpheus, though. You’re right to point out the similarities between Orphic and Dionysian traditions–both were apparently mystery cults, fitting both the secretive nature of the Mirthful Messiahs and the unknowable nature of Void.
Orpheus in general comes off pretty Voidy–his mythology seems to feature a lot of water imagery, fitting Equius’ sweat motif, for example. But apparently, some held that Orpheus was a mortal version of Dionysus himself:
“Here his death is analogous with that of Pentheus,
who was also torn to pieces by Maenads; and it has been speculated that
the Orphic mystery cult regarded Orpheus as a parallel figure to or
even an incarnation of Dionysus.”
Which is certainly interesting because part of Dionysus’ myth is being ingrained in Zeus’ thigh until he grows to reach maturity. This “becoming part of the Patriarch God” narrative evokes, to me, Gamzee and Equius both becoming one with AR/Caliborn, who are both stand ins for Yaldabaoth, the sun-branded Demiurge described in Gnostic mythology.
Void is the counterpart to Light, the aspect of the imaginary, the Humanities–the realms of thought. So ‘Thoughtless’ feels particularly Voidy here, especially since it causes a return to depths. Memory and Forgetting pretty clearly tie into Light/Void respectively, too.
I might be reading too much into the wording here, but the basic parallel stands–Equius doesn’t die to find Aradia, but his stint in the underworld coincides with dating a bunch of Aradiabots, and when he returns to the world of the living it’s without her, as…
A version of Yaldabaoth/Zeus, with a side of Orpheus/Dionysus attached. I’m not totally sure I buy this reading–if we were talking about any Aspect besides Void, which is literally linked to vague and unknowableness, I’d want to feel a lot more certain. Its possible there are other deities that might reflect the Zahhaks better.
But this seems pretty fitting to me, so I thought I’d raise the curiosity.
What do you all think?
This time we dig into Gamzee’s recurring links to the masks of Comedy and Tragedy, historical worship of the Greek god of Theatre, Dionysus, and what all of this tells us about Gamzee’s arc and, potentially, even the Rage aspect.
Today’s question is: Can you think of other trolls with strong ties to figures in Greecoroman/Egyptian/Judeo-Christian mythologies?
I’m already doing a 3 part video on this like, right now. Gamzee’s interesting and worth talking about. Please pay attention to me paying attention to him :3
I didn’t plan for this, you gotta believe me. The Homestuck thoughts converged on me late in the night, beat me up and MADE me make you start watching what’s now at least a trilogy of videos on Gamzee Makara–often described as the worst character in Homestuck. I’m sorry.
…But is he? A combination of new insights from the fandom and lore details revealed through Hiveswap have left me wondering if, perhaps, this lousy purple clown may have hidden depths after all. I found the questions so exciting, I literally couldn’t resist the impulse to drop everything else I’m working on to share them with you. You’re welcome.
I wanna do something a little different, so I’m going to include a question of the day for each video from now on. Answer it, and you might have higher odds of eventually being featured in a comments response, whenever and however I bring those out for you guys.
This week’s question is simple: What do you think the relationship between Lil Cal and Gamzee is like?
If you’d like some other perspectives on Gamzee to work off, here’s some of the works that inspired this one:
Flying through Storytelling 