The hemospectrum as a biological thing is just part of how trolls are born, but Beforus doesn’t commit genocide and enforce slavery based on it. It has its problems as a society, but Alternia is a whole other ballpark of evil. And that has a lot to do with the hemospectrum as a violent, oppressive ideology, which is not really in Beforus to the same degree. That system is what I attribute to LE.
Also my view at this point is that Lord English is basically the God of all four worlds, with differing amounts of influence in each one of them–the least amount of influence in Beforus, the most amount of influence on Alternia. We don’t have a skull monster, but we do have systems of oppression, misinformation, and exploitative power, and Lord English is a villain that operates primarily through those abstract forces. That’s why I think Homestuck is such an important narrative–it presents the casting off of those toxic ideologies as inherently heroic, and necessary for both happiness and peace.
The hemospectrum as a biological thing is just part of how trolls are born, but Beforus doesn’t commit genocide and enforce slavery based on it. It has its problems as a society, but Alternia is a whole other ballpark of evil.
Yes, I addressed that. There’s a big difference between a mostly peaceful society working with a rigid social structure that can be shitty at enabling free expression, and an interstellar fascist empire that routinely commits genocide on its own species.
I don’t think it makes sense to regard Beforus’ problems as equivalent to Alternia’s, and Alternia being so much worse has Lord English and Doc Scratch’s influence as an established, canonical explanation. I’m just fleshing out the nuances here.
Ok but Beforus still had a system where people were privileged or oppressed based on the color of their blood, and I’m not sure if we can really be certain they never had slavery, either.
If the caste system were paradoxically originated from English’s components then it wouldn’t exist on Beforus, unless Lord English had a major influence there, and we know he didn’t because if he did then it would be just as bad as alternia
Ok, two things:
1) To the extent that Beforus HAD oppression, it was pinned on the purple cast that is strongly associated with LE. So I think it’s likely it had a degree of influence from him, just not a full-scale dominion like on Alternia–something more on par with the Condesce and Lil Cal’s influences on Beta Earth, more likely.
But 2) My point is that Beforus and Alternia, insofar as they exist in the modern states they are currently in, have different relationships to the hemospectrum.
Beforians had to deal with differing responsibilities and maybe some coddling and enforced roles based on their blood. Alternians had to deal with genocide, slavery, all manner of systemic and personal brutality, distrust, judgment, and cruelty. It’s like…a fundamentally different dynamic, and Alternia is demonstrably and explicitly far worse.
Lord English is the canonical cause of that difference. He’s why Alternia is explicitly worse. I don’t see how it’s a stretch to say that he’s responsible for the harsher penalties and views on the Hemospectrum when he’s already canonically responsible for…everything else wrong with Alternia?
At no point have I argued that the actual physical differences in trolls are a result of LE. Whether they are or not is besides the point–the decisions Beforus and Alternia make as societies regarding what to do about those differences is what matters, and one society makes demonstrably better choices than the other.
The hemospectrum as a biological thing is just part of how trolls are born, but Beforus doesn’t commit genocide and enforce slavery based on it. It has its problems as a society, but Alternia is a whole other ballpark of evil. And that has a lot to do with the hemospectrum as a violent, oppressive ideology, which is not really in Beforus to the same degree. That system is what I attribute to LE.
Also my view at this point is that Lord English is basically the God of all four worlds, with differing amounts of influence in each one of them–the least amount of influence in Beforus, the most amount of influence on Alternia. We don’t have a skull monster, but we do have systems of oppression, misinformation, and exploitative power, and Lord English is a villain that operates primarily through those abstract forces. That’s why I think Homestuck is such an important narrative–it presents the casting off of those toxic ideologies as inherently heroic, and necessary for both happiness and peace.
The hemospectrum as a biological thing is just part of how trolls are born, but Beforus doesn’t commit genocide and enforce slavery based on it. It has its problems as a society, but Alternia is a whole other ballpark of evil.
Yes, I addressed that. There’s a big difference between a mostly peaceful society working with a rigid social structure that can be shitty at enabling free expression, and an interstellar fascist empire that routinely commits genocide on its own species.
I don’t think it makes sense to regard Beforus’ problems as equivalent to Alternia’s, and Alternia being so much worse has Lord English and Doc Scratch’s influence as an established, canonical explanation. I’m just fleshing out the nuances here.
Higher castes live longer and tend to be more vicious. While lower castes have shorter lifespans (even without the drones hunting them) and are naturally attuend to become psychics.
Just because you want to force political correctness unto a race of violent space dominators and establish that racism is bad in our world doesn’t mean it’s a lie among the trolls.
1) Charming. Do you get invited to parties often when you open rebuttals to people’s points with “you fuckin dumb”?
2) All this, and yet, Beforus managed to handle the exact same physical differences with a system that didn’t necessitate genocide and slavery! Hm, how about that! It’s almost like the eerie bargain the Alpha trolls made that allowed Scratch onto Alternia had some sort of impact on their society. Interesting. Almost like…the racism and exploitation was a bad thing? Huh.
3) Before you even go there, no, Beforus is not as bad as Alternia in “a different way”. Alternia is explicitly presented as a fall from grace for Trollkind, and it’s brutal, and it’s awful, and it’s Lord English’s fault. Don’t make me dig up the screencaps just please go actually read Homestuck. Systems of exploitation are bad and unnecessary across the board–no physical differences justify exploitation and brutality. Period.
And another thing about the source of STRENGTH thing. I don’t think that’s right either. Equius is plenty strong in his own. The reason why him and every other Zahhak followed it (in relation to how the hemocaste was in each alternate universe) was because they are incredibly dependent on SYSTEMS. Everything has to be in their right place, everyone doing what they’re meant to do. If someone doesn’t fit in the system it confuses and flusters them.
Equius is physically strong because that’s a mutation endemic to his blood color, of which he seems to be a particularly exceptional example. He values the blood that marks him as someone physically strong quite similarly to how Caliborn values physical strength itself.
And he values the system that takes that physical trait of his and tells him he’s special for it, tells him he’s Above Others due to something he was born with, which is objectively. Not. True. There is nothing about Equius that makes him intrinsically better than anyone else–he just treats others that way because the system he so values conditions him into believing there is. Yes, of course he’s reliant on the system on which he predicates his entire self-worth.
“Confuses and flusters” him? Sure. And on Alternia, he would’ve acted on that confusion and fluster by exploiting, hurting, or reporting others to the authorities. He’s a Good Troll by alternian standards. This is how systems of oppression work. None of this does much to counteract my point, or…make Equius’ ideology more palatable? Is that what you’re trying to do here? It sounds unbelievable, but I’m not sure what else you could be going for.
It took him being killed, get his moirail killed, be revived as a sprite, getting combined with a horse AI, and finally reuniting with his moirail but he did change at the very, very end when it would even matter. Either way, the changed Equius is what was finally put into LE.
Yes, at which point the “changed Equius” was promptly devoured by Caliborn’s soul and integrated into LE like so many spare puppet parts. Caliborn predominated–that’s what he does. The other souls incorporated into LE are little more than amalgamations of interests and puppets for him. Equius has no blame or agency in this–it’s simply a way he fulfills his Class role by “becoming” Void. Not reallyyy sure what this is supposed to tell me.
When you say you’re going on hiatus, that means you ramp up your posting massively, right? I was going to leave this by the wayside but I am, lucky for you guys, I’m still too sick to record.
Plus the Xefros and A.Claire posts are doing really well and frankly winning over the fandom is my best shot at long-term stability and things changed for the better for me in a big way recently, so I have the time to get out a couple more of the things I’ve really wanted to say before I start focusing on video–these will all be useful scripts for me soon anyway.
Let’s talk Jude Harley, who has already given us a likely Class and a definite Aspect. And who knows–maybe he’ll lead us to a bit of prophecy on the threats our heroes will face in Hauntswitch? Maybe, maybe not, but either way it’s clear I was doomed to make this post from the start.
So let’s dive right in, and let’s start with the side of Jude’s title I’m surest about: His affinity for the Aspect of Doom.
If Jude’s psyche is concerned with anything, then it’s concerned with death, risks, threats, and the rules you follow to avoid them. While not exactly cynical, Jude is certainly cautious and wary. Even his interest in aliens and cryptids frames them as mysterious threats to watch out for–his shirt isn’t depicting a simple alien, but an alien abduction.
He keeps a flare gun because the chance of a life-threatening emergency is a basically constant presence in his mind, and his interest in POGS is linked to his belief in their eventual post-apocalyptic value. Jude sees the worst in the world, and he prepares for it.
Apparently pretty well, too! I’m not AS sure that Jude is a Seer as I am that he’s a Doom player, but if this is a case of Class Roleplay, then it’s an oddly successful one. The big twist of the first half of Hiveswap is, of course, that Jude was right about basically everything–even if he muddled the execution a bit.
The Seer/Mage key verb–Know–is repeatedly linked to Jude’s biggest contributions, and it’s his foresight that keeps not just Joey but her beloved dog Tesseract safe.
All of this squares quite nicely with the verbiage we can extrapolate for a Seer: One who knows Doom (or through Doom) for the benefit of others.
And we should stress that “for others” part, because where his plans stumble, Jude himself is the one to pay the price. For Joey’s benefit, but also for ours–the audience’s– as his tragedy give us the deepest glimpse into his psyche and character we get during Act 1.
As @curlicuecal ‘s excellent post on Jude tells us, Jude’s pigeons actually each reflect his relationship to one of his family members, and how he experiences the loss of each of them in turn. Of course we start off with Frohike, apparently Jude’s favorite. Jude is devastated by Frohike’s tragic death, but nothing about it necessarily links the bird to A.Claire except context.
Langly makes things far clearer. When Jude finds himself abandoned, his fury is outright vicious. He makes it clear that he regards this as both betrayal and abandonment, an act of cowardice. He also alludes to being unable to communicate his anger properly and needing to suppress the emotion in order to focus on the task at hand.
Given that we’re talking about Jude, who basically ALWAYS has a task at hand, this all reads as a clear analog for his feelings about Pa. Emotional repression is something of a hallmark of the Harley line–John, Jake, Jade and Jane are all known to dabble in it. If he’s this upset when a bird abandons him, how does he feel about his own father doing so?
All this loss had already gotten to him before the attack on the Harley manor–Joey refers to all of this stress on Jude growing bad enough that Roxy took him to a doctor.
And the losses of his birds leave Jude isolated and desperate–he begs Joey to protect Byers and refers to him as “all he has left”. Not long after, he begs Joey not to go near the portal, saying he can’t lose her, too.
Byers, of course, is the bird that represents Joey in Jude’s heart, and he leaves with her when she’s abducted. However things work out between him and Dammek, for the time being, Jude is now alone.
And maybe worst of all is that this always seems to have been the plan, because Jude is the victim of Act 1′s titular Kansas City Shuffle.
In order for a confidence game to be a “Kansas City Shuffle”, the mark must be aware that he is involved in a con, but also be wrong about how the con artist is planning to deceive him. The con artist will attempt to misdirect the mark in a way that leaves him with the impression that he has figured out the game and has the knowledge necessary to outsmart the con artist, but by attempting to retaliate, the mark unwittingly performs an action that helps the con artist to further the scheme.
Given that we know that Scratch was expecting Joey, and that he is involved in the events that have put her here, we know for a fact that the swap between her and Dammek was always the plan.
Jude assumed the cult wanted the Cherub Portal for themselves, and that may well be true, but it’s his very defense of the thing that leads Joey right to it–and so, right into Scratch’s plans.
In this regard, Jude’s fears have come fully to fruition, as his knowledge of Doom helped the aliens who abducted his sister in the first place. Jude’s shirt is not just a mark of interest, but a prophecy of the fate Jude himself was doomed to witness, and Joey to experience.
And here is where it gets interesting (and somewhat speculative), because Jude’s Classpect is only half as relevant to his family as it is to his relationship with the source of all their troubles, the true antagonistic force behind both Hiveswap and Hauntswitch.
Homestuck’s Doom players were always marked by a duality motif, largely centered on Red and Blue. This was fitting for the trolls, as everything that Beforus and Alternia were doomed to was ultimately linked to the Red/Blue bomb that would eventually lead to the creation of the Green Sun.
Notice how once the sun is created, Sollux’s red/blue motif expires, and reaching the sun is basically the end of his relevance to the plot.
But even then he maintains a focus on Black/White duality. As is fitting of a Doom player, because Duality seems to be one of the biggest fundamental principles of Paradox Space. Everything in Homestuck comes in pairs: Aspects, Classes, Class Verbs, Players–all of it.
Duality is the rule, the boundary–just as death is a rule we all must follow, just as some fates are unavoidable. And so Jude, like the Captors, is similarly marked by a motif of duality. Only instead of the Red/Blue that the Captors are bound by, Jude is marked by the Red/Green color contrast linked to all Cherubs and, specifically, the cherub responsible for these games’ events:
Lord English.
Jude’s Red/Green motif directly references Lord English at least once, when the red and green marbles are used as the Lion’s eyes. Yaldabaoth–the evil, flawed creator God that Lord English is partly based on–is commonly depicted as a serpent with a lion’s head. And this lion has its gaze planted firmly on a globe of Alternia, reflecting Lord English’s indomitable control over the planet.
It goes further.
Whether or not the Cherub portal is a literal doomsday device, as has been hypothesized, it’s undeniable that every member of the cast is doomed. Both Alternia and Earth are doomed by Sburb in a matter of decades, so Jude, Joey, Xefros and Dammek are all on borrowed time.
Hell, this even extends to Trizza, who must inevitably be ousted or killed as Heiress in order to make way for Feferi’s short-lived reign. And on both sides of the Portal, the fates the characters are being led to are tied to agents of the
Lord of Time himself.
Because while Joey and Xefros seem to be dealing with the nefarious influence of Doc Scratch, Jude still has his Cultists to deal with–and they’re likely more linked to Lord English than it initially seems.
After all, The Condesce spent time on Earth before her dissapearance–perhaps enough to craft the perfect Heiress, but almost definitely enough to continue her habit of empowering clown-themed cults to carry out her agendas for her, just as she did on Alternia through Subjugglators and as she will on Alpha Earth through the juggalo presidents.
And while we never learned about the cult of the Mirthful Messiahs in too much detail in the comic, they are described as being spread across the cosmos. It makes sense to think they may be a smaller operation on the Beta Earth, where the Condesce spent relatively little time. But it is still altogether likely that they are already here.
And if so, Jude and his friends seem to be the only ones watching.
I’m really overwhelmed and grateful by the support so many have shown me, and excited to take posts like the one I did on Joey and this one to Youtube, where more of the fandom can engage with classpects in an accessible way!
You can also feel free to drop by and chat about this and other interesting Hiveswap and Homestuck topics in the r/Hiveswap discord!
Oh! Hm. Well I definitely think Lord English is involved by proxy–Hiveswap seems to be largely centered around Doc Scratch as an antagonistic influence, while Hauntswitch seems focused on the cult of the Mirthful Messiahs. Jude seems like he’s almost definitely a Doom player, probably a Seer, and his corresponding Two-color duality motif is Lord English’s main colors: Red and Green.
As for why Pa has been visiting Alternia or how he came to possess the portal: No idea! All I really have on Pa is a strong suspicion that he’s been setting up the plot of these games at least partly to save Jude and Joey, just as he set up Sburb to save as much of humanity as he could. Pa’s a shitty dad and I hope Joey gets to set him on fire, but I don’t think he’s evil and I do think he cares. He just sucks really hard at it.
As for the portal, well. I am pretty certain it’s not JUST a portal, and it’s not just a doomsday device, either. But you’ll be able to see my thoughts on it towards the end of Joey’s Classpect post (which I just finished!), so I’ll keep my thoughts there to myself for right now, if you don’t mind 🙂
homestuck uses seemingly random things/concepts – the zodiac, a deck of cards, billiards, the magic 8 ball – as thematic elements so fucking cleverly it’s almost infuriating
the game over timeline failed because vriska was killed – much like in billiards, you lose the game if you pocket the 8 ball too soon
not to infodump or nothing but imho its even deeper than that, in that by act 7 the entire web of symbolism has been flipped
this is foreshadowed kind of obliquely by one, having chess and pool be exactly the same game in-universe, with sburb taking the form of a collosally complicated game of chess in multiplayer sessions, but taking the form of pool in a single player session, and two, having caliborn switch his king and queen’s appearance, but having them move as if they were the piece they appear to be
vriska appears to be the 8 ball and killing her appears to end their game prematurely, but shes actually the cue ball, and killing her causes a scratch in which she can be placed wherever is most advantageous for the opponent, and english is the 8 ball, and shoving him into the metaphorical pocket that is the black hole from the collapse of the green sun ends the game
what im getting at here is that i fucking h8 homestuck
holy shit
There’s also all the parallels drawn between Snowman(The Black Queen) and Vriska. And of course, while Snowman APPEARS to be an 8-ball, what is killing her circumstantially simultaneous with? A SCRATCH. From the perspective of Caliborn and his Session, it appears to be a victory, but it actually allows his opponents to reposition themselves to best win The Game(like vriscourse says).
It goes significantly deeper than this, since the cueball is also likened to an Egg visually and explicitly. Scratch’s cueball head is the egg from which LE is born, and Dave literally calls Grimbark Jade’s cueball an egg:
Which links the cueball to Homestuck’s pervasive traditions of Gnostic/Christian, Grecoroman, and Egyptian myth. In all of these stories (but in Gnosticism in particular as far as I can tell), there’s a consistent focus on Eggs as a symbol of both destruction and birth, best summed up by a quote from Herman Hesse’s Damien:
The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God’s name is Abraxas.
(if that sounds familiar, it’s because it also shows up in Revolutionary Girl Utena, another story steeped in Gnostic symbols.)
And let’s not forget that the cueball/egg is also tied to another symbol: That of Homestuck itself.
So symbolically, The Ultimate Juju/Story of Homestuck is at once three things:
1) It is the world that Lord English has created, that the bird (our kids!) must destroy to be born.
2) It is the cueball. Specifically, it is the IDEA of the cueball. Lord English successfully suppreses all cueballs that can hurt him in physical reality, but is ultimately beaten because he cannot stop the power of the IDEA of the cueball, manifested symbolically.
3) It is also, simultaneously, an egg–a symbol of inevitable change. Change, whether it be for himself or the world he created, is, of course, the only thing that Lord English cannot tolerate, so it makes sense to present eggs as a weakness for him.
I’ve written about most of this in my essay on Gnostic myths and how they influence Homestuck, which you can find here.
But one last note: Just as important as how it affects LE is what this means for the characters. Homestuck is arguing that none of its characters have been “born”, constrained as they’ve been within the “shell” of LE’s alpha timeline.
In Act 7, that egg seems to hatch, the shell of the world that constrains it cracking and splintering under the force of the bird’s will.
So what comes next for Homestuck’s characters, if this is meant to be the moment of their birth?
i don’t know about the tapestries yet BUT we pretty much recently cracked the code on a whole new subset of mythology Lord English is linked to that im excited to share and write meta about. Classpect posts first though, and anyway my mind is still boggling at all the implications of the ways LE is linked to egyptian myth so its gonna take a while to make my thoughts presentable.
Thank you, that means a lot. My contributions are mostly only the sum of all the awesome people that have influenced me and talked to me and expanded my ideas of what homestuck is about, so don’t praise me too much. What I produce is ultimately the byproduct of the community effort of the entire Homestuck fandom, in my view.
Also, I’ve made some fascinating breakthroughs today. The stuff I’m going to write about soon has me extremely excited–fandom readings of Homestuck are going to come into a whole new extreme.
Also, just a mention? I’ve got like over 1000 followers now. If 1000 people decided to throw me a buck on patreon, I could immediately work on content full time at way higher quality than what I currently am capable of. I’m not like begging or whatever but if you like what I do then I want people to know there’s a lot more of it than I have any hope of being able to put out quickly enough to my satisfaction at my current rate, so. Spreading me around so more people know about what I’m up to would really help me out. And not to be smug but I think it’ll lead to a healthier overall fandom, too.
People who liked the Gamzee post I just put out and my post on Dammek are in for an unprecedented ride soon. I hope I’ve built up enough credibility in this audience’s eyes that my being bold enough to say so will have you guys excited and hopeful for it, instead of just making me come off like an arrogant tool. Anyway, I’m really excited, personally.
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.
I mean Caliborn’s interest in SAW, ultimately, impacts the entirety of the story. The Alpha Timeline IS Caliborn’s dungeon, as he puts the whole rest of the cast through horrific deaths for disobeying him in Doomed timelines and through terrible trials in the comic itself. The story of Homestuck IS in many ways Caliborn’s horrible SAW-esque fantasy, an inescapable dungeon of pain and suffering for the characters.
I didn’t know about the “Hello, Zepp” reference. I don’t really like watching SAW, so I hadn’t heard the music. Thanks 😀
Flying through Storytelling 