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.

To start us off, yes–Orpheus’ dies at the hands of the Maenads, specifically for denying his former Patron God, Dionysus–who in Homestuck we can loosely understand as Gamzee in the flesh, and the Grand Highbloods and their ideology symbolically.

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.

If we’re reading Rage as the aspect of Theatre, then suddenly the masks and identifiers Gamzee wears become much more important. By identifying himself with Nepeta’s cat hat, Gamzee evokes the Maenads’ practice of dressing with panther skins, as Dionysus greatly valued the animal.

Note that Gamzee’s polka-dotted clown pants now suggest the spots on a cat, like the Panthers’.

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.

One of the figures the term ‘Demiurge’ was born to describe was Zeus, and indeed, Caliborn’s arc in particular echoes Zeus at times–Caliborn banishing the beta kids into the house echoes Zeus’ banishing Typheus under Mt. Etna, which was also said to house Hephaestus’ forges.

And then there’s the most famous myth Orpheus is involved in–his quest to seek his dead wife in the Afterlife.

When Eurydice dies, Orpheus travels to Hades and charms the gods into letting her travel back to the world of the living with him…

“But thoughtless Orpheus forgot, and when he turned round and looked at his wife, she instantly slipped into the depths again.”

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?