Unifying Myths: Thief/Rogue – Pirates & Outlaws

For the time being, I think Thieves and Rogues are better fleshed out than Princes and Bards, and the imagery surrounding them is quite a bit clearer.
So this is going to be a shorter post, but I still think we’ll cover some interesting consistent elements to Thief and Rogue players. And maybe a bit more?

And as with our post on Royalty, we’ll start with a case of Roleplay rather than focusing on the classes themselves. Specifically, I want to look at Aranea’s mad power grab, because it tells us some interesting stuff about how ancestral figures work.

Namely, that it seems to have as much to do with the consumers’ interpretation as anything inherent to the mythic figure. To Vriska–a Thief–, emulating Mindfang seems to mean emulating a Fairy–in other words, being more like Aranea.

But to Aranea–who is already a Sylph– emulating Mindfang means emulating a Pirate, while striving to take control from the session by making herself the most relevant and powerful party in it. In other words, she’s trying to be more like Vriska.

This doesn’t go any better for Aranea than it went for Vriska, of course.
The consistent underlying theme with roleplay seems to be that, while taking inspiration and influence from role models can be a source of strength, taking it too far and trying to be someone you’re not usually won’t end well.

Roxy is also linked to Piracy. Roxy’s relationship with internet piracy and hacking is a modernized take on piracy–casting her as an internet pirate of sorts.

Several of Grandpa’s mummies in both Homestuck and Hiveswap are dressed up as pirates, linking Roxy to the archetype in his memory. Alpha Dirk, the specific Dirk dating Jake, is similarly remembered for his class roleplay–Grandpa remembers him as a knight rather than as a Prince.

But Roxy is also linked to Robin Hood, who was not a Pirate but rather part of a wider band of individuals that certainly includes them: The myth of the Outlaw.

Historically, the title of Outlaw was a legal punishment that declared the individual outside the protection of the law. In general, it means that the individual was pushed out of society and could be killed with no legal consequences.

And it’s this myth that unifies the rest of the Thief/Rogue players, because all of these players share common themes of fleeing their respective societies, and existing beyond the boundaries of the law.

Nepeta and Roxy qualify almost by default. Nepeta lives in a cave and hunts wild animals for food, and is alienated by what blood colors mean in her society’s brutally repressive hemospectrum.

Roxy, of course, doesn’t really HAVE a society anymore. But even so, she’s paranoid and suspicious of the Condesce’s plans, viewing herself as a whistleblower speaking the truth about a massive corrupt scheme.

But both Meenah and Rufioh fit the bill as well. Meenah runs from her society entirely, retreating to seclusion on the moon. And Rufioh escapes to a forest, living in the wilderness away from Beforus’ standard social system.

All this focus on sitting outside the boundaries of society sets up a fascinating parallel for the Steal classes and their dichotomous pair: The Warrior classes, Knight and Page, who operate off the verb Serve.

(Credit for this wrinkle goes to @grippingtraverse and @the-null-hypothesis77, who came up with a model for understanding all twelve classes that we’re still exploring as a whole. The Serve and Steal classes present the clearest and most inarguable part of this argument, enough so that I thought it worth presenting it here.)

Serve can mean to ‘Give’, an easy counterpoint to the Outlaw’s ‘Take’. But Serve can also entail providing service–to one’s friends or to one’s society.

As such, the Servers have a consistent law enforcement motif that often brings them into conflict with other players– particularly with Thieves, who tend to steal for selfish reasons and so often transgress the social contracts of their groups.

Both Dave and Karkat respond to their friends being hurt with a desire to hunt down and punish wrongdoers–at various points, Terezi and Jack Noir are such targets for Dave, and Eridan and Gamzee are for Karkat.

And discovering Vriska’s elaborate gambit to create Bec Noir is what incites Tavros into finally confronting her–reasoning that she is now a Bad Guy by association, and thus deserves to be stopped.

It’s worth noting that this pursuit of wrongdoers is often based on a nebulous and personal understanding of “Justice” that has as much to do with the Server’s feelings and opinions as anything objective.

This is particularly obvious with Jake–a Page–in his conflict with a Thief in Meenah. Here Jake uses justice as a pretense for indulging his personal hero fantasy at the expense of facts or context. This trend doesn’t particularly flesh out Thieves and Rogues more, except that it puts them into a thematic context with their “rival” classes.

It also suggests that the other quartets of classes with contrasting verbs could well have their own recurring motifs. Fairies and Royalty both being linked to Courts and Prophets and Magicians both being linked to the scientific process does seem to point to the idea.

But I don’t think I’ve found canonical links as clear-cut and coherent as those for the Serve and Steal classes, so I just wanted to throw this out there for now!

Now that the Outlaw myth has been established, that completes the set! I hope this helps us all take Classpect thought and analysis to a new level.
For my part, I have been hard at work on the scripts for the next round of videos on both Homestuck and Hiveswap, including a post outlining Classpects to a broader audience.

I hope you all look forward to it. For now,

Keep Rising!

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Unifying Myths: Prince/Bard – Royalty

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 relationship between Bards and royalty could actually go back to Hussie’s old adventure Bard Quest, where the Bard’s acquisition of a cod piece much like Gamzee’s earns him the worship and devotion of some random dudes in an alley. So…yeah. Thanks, Hussie.

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.

But both Amporas fail to live up this legacy, and instead of believing in anything fantastical or magical, both stake their self-worth on an unhealthy fixation with their blood color and the presumption that it makes them “Better” than their friends. This, of course, is false and unimportant information, so it’s fitting that it renders them irrelevant and marginal.

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.

Dirk is actually…pretty close to that already by the point he’s introduced in the comic. Alpha Dirk references this egocentrism as something he definitely struggled with at 13, but 16-year-old Dirk has mostly switched to an intense self-loathing reminiscent of Karkat, with a toxic relationship with a version of himself to boot.

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…

Keep Rising!

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I just wanted to drop by and say that first of all, I love your theories and analyses. They’re so good and I cry daily about them. Secondly I wanted to express my… I guess dissatisfaction with the lack of fan analyses about John and Dave’s friendship, in particular from John’s POV. They are basically the only proclaimed pair of best friends whose relationship didn’t waver during the course of the whole comic, and I just wish people talked more about their influence on each other!

Ok so first of all I have to say that the idea that Dirk and Jake’s relationship seriously wavered on any level but the superficial “are we officially dating” one is, imo, inaccurate. The boys are in love, they love each other and are best friends and this is true across the board for the Alphas.

Thanks a lot for your message though, and I’ve been meaning to say something about John and Dave’s relationship for a while now so sure, I’ve got a bit to say for you.

predictably as hell this got really long, so meet me under the cut.

But to talk about them, I’m going to have to talk about a different pair of friends who grow up together, first. One underexplored element of Homestuck that I’ve always found interesting is how Classpect seems to reflect, to a degree, how characters take influence from their societies.

I’ve written plenty about Jake and Jane in this regard, but I think John is maybe my favorite example for how nuanced it is.

A great example of what I’m talking about is Equius and Vriska’s contrasting relationships with the Hemospectrum. Namely, Equius, the Void player, values it greatly, while Vriska, a Light player, regards it as a bunch of bullshit.

What Vriska DOES put value in is how it affects circumstance–how it makes people see Tavros, how it makes people see her, the very real burdens of responsibility and societal expectation it puts on everyone. THAT’S real.
THAT matters to her.

But the ideology itself is a bunch of baloney, and Vriska picks up on that almost instinctually. Now let’s take stock of what the Hemospectrum is in the story.
It is, simultaneously:

1) A source of STRENGTH, at least for Equius.

2) Inherently irrelevant and unimportant to anything about any of the characters except how it makes society treat them.

3) Explicitly a lie.

4) Most importantly for our purposes: Entirely physical.

True to Homestucks’ Gnostic roots, unlike true ideas that the characters reason out over the course of the story, information that is unimportant, irrelevant, and built upon markers of physical identity is inherently coded with Void, as the aspect of all things false, unfortunate, unimportant and untrue. The world of the physical Yaldabaoth creates in Gnosticism is coded not just as the world of lies and physicality, but also as the world of Darkness. Hence the link.

For Homestuck, this means that that sort of information has a source. It can be traced on a timeline, just like any other objects in the story, because information like the Hemospectrum amounts to what is essentially a bad meme.

For the Hemospectrum, that source is Equius, who first inherits that incredibly unimportant information from his society and then becomes nothing when he succumbs to its influence, allowing Gamzee to kill him.

Now here’s the kicker: Eventually, Equius (along with Gamzee) becomes the source of the Hemospectrum himself, becoming part of Lord English and so explaining how LE got the idea to impose such a complicated system in the first place.

In essence, once he becomes part of LE, the hemospectrum itself is Equius’ most lasting legacy on the plot, a time loop to rival Gamzee’s RIDICULOUS proliferation of clown-themed horror across the cosmos. Equius has truly become Void in this regard, a potent undercurrent for Heirs.

Now let’s talk about Dave finally.

So like while it’s true that John and Dave’s friendship is mostly wholesome as fuck and really sturdy, I’m going to complicate that narrative a bit on both extremes.

One of the things I’ve always found appealing about Dave is how intensely devoted he is to his friends growing up–which makes sense when you consider how unhappy he says he was in his home life.

If Dave has a penchant for rapping ad nauseum and talking to his friends even after they leave to humorous extremes early on, well–that has at least something to do with the fact that he’s using them as an escape from his nightmarish childhood.

This devotion is more than just him being very giving and caring–he’s invested in all of the other betas emotionally, and it matters to them how they feel about him. Maybe none moreso than John, even years and lots of chilling out later.

And it plays into Davesprite’s lost sense of self in a big way. When John rejects him in favor of “Real Dave”, Davesprite is genuinely hurt and angry, and John continues to aggravate those feelings of displacement during the 3 year journey on the ship. John’s perception of him MATTERS to Dave.

And a lot of what made Dave’s childhood awful was his internalization of heroism as linked to not just Bro’s weird hypermasculine bullshit, but also explicitly to heterosexuality.

Dave compares himself unfavorably to John as a hero, and knowing what we know about him now, it’s pretty reasonable to put Dave’s struggles with his attractions to men at the root of it.

And given how similar Jade and John are and his obvious romantic interest in Jade, I’ve always read him as being just as interested in John–just closeted and repressed about it.

Which means that all of those gay jokes he and John partook in had an effect on Dave far beyond what they had on John, which I think is really interesting.
Also interesting, though, is how John reveals he parsed all of those things growing up:

As jokes. See, John also inherits a lot of his culture’s toxic ideology, like Equius does. But unlike Equius, John doesn’t inherit it as information to value and define himself by.

Breath is the aspect of detachment and levity, and fittingly, John inherits these toxic masculinity-enforcing cultural memes as a series of jokes! Stuff he says, but doesn’t think about. Stuff not particularly worth “taking seriously”.

So his relationship to masculinity is a lot less fraught and intense–partly because he fits the mold more neatly than Dave, but also partly because he simply didn’t actually believe the stuff he was saying.

Here, John is a depiction of the straight dude who makes shitty jokes and claims to be “just kidding”, except that John actually IS just kidding, and so he doesn’t really force the issue or focus on it.

That doesn’t mean that toxic masculinity hasn’t had an effect on him–he still struggles with cultural shifts to a degree. But I like that Homestuck allows for different levels of impact of these cultural memes across individuals. This stuff doesn’t affect everyone equally, and it doesn’t affect everyone quite the same way.

On top of that, it’s a good example of the fact that even a genuinely good person who doesn’t believe this stuff can have a negative effect on people they care about by transmitting these cultural cues. Because it’s the memes themselves that are toxic.

HERALD OF THE POST-APOCALYPTIC POG ECONOMY- Jude Harley, the SEER of DOOM

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!

Hope to see you soon, and until then–

Keep Rising!

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A. Claire’s Identity….REVEALED???

No. Well, probably not. But I think I have a pretty decent guess?

My Jude post is going to take a little while longer, and once I put these pieces together it didn’t take much to make things fall into place, and turned out to be pretty quick to put together.

I don’t usually do outright speculation, I tend to dislike doing so. But this feels solid enough that I’m willing to at least mention it, and more than that its simply interesting to think about, so while we wait for Hiveswap: Act 2, I figure we may as well mull over this possibility.

So, humor me.

A. Claire is a pretty mysterious figure. She seems to come out of nowhere to shake up Homestuck’s core cast, and she seems to know more about the game than we ever confirmed for any other Guardian, barring Pa himself.
Why does she seem so connected to the Cherub Key? How on earth did she paint a mural of the green sun??? What’s her deal!

There’s no precedent for a character quite like the mysterious actress, and seemingly no background profile that would explain how she knows what she knows. Except, of course, for the obvious one. The one we’ve overlooked.

Yep, I’m arguing A. Claire is Jane. Or, well, A JANE, anyway. I always thought the two Nannas thing was a little odd, but really, one than one lifetime spent on the same mortal plane makes perfect sense as part of the potential power of a Life player–particularly a creator of Life who tends to benefit themselves.

But hear me out on the context. If we regard A. Claire as another Jane, then suddenly this story Nanna tells us–relayed to her as a fairy tale by the Condesce–is completely true. And the Condesce is a Thief of Life, with an established interest in genetic manipulation.

It’s at least possible she would already have access to cloning technology with which she could have cloned Nanna. Stolen her life, so to speak. And she would have had an interest in doing so, because how better to shape her ideal Heiress?

A Jane who grows up under the Batterwitch’s brutal tutelage could readily be expected to know secrets about Cherubs, who the Witch researched. Suddenly, A. Claire’s painting of the green mural, her knowledge of Cherubs and connection to Cherub technology–perhaps even her and Pa’s posession of the Cherub machine would make sense, either through the Condesce’s secrets or possibly Jane’s memories, as with Pa.

In fact, that may well be the most likely way they got the Cherub Machine, and the Key that served as Joey’s heirloom. This Jane would, after all, be the Batterwitch’s ideal Heiress. The Cherub Machine could well be part of the inheritance she and Pa received.

But this isn’t Jane, right? This character is named A. Claire. And with this context, we suddenly have true grounds for the name Anna.

Anna–the name that Dirk said sounded almost right for Jane in another universe, in another life (and in the same page where he correctly intuited the way the Beta version of Jake got his last name)–means “beautiful” or “graceful”. Both of those names are good fits for A.Claire, but most interesting to us is “Favor”, possibly as in favored child.

Just as Anna Claire would be the favored version of Jane, from the Condesce’s perspective. Meaning the fairy tale she related to Nanna was simply literal fact; a retelling of the setup she already orchestrated. And the kids she was destined to have with Jake, those who would save the world, are not John and Jade (sburb didn’t do that anyway), but Joey and Jude.

Anna and Jake, then, are bound together through their shared experiences in another life, their mutual connection to the Game’s secrets. And, of course, their relationships with Roxy–who they take in as a babysitter. As well as…

Dirk, who it seems they had plans to take in as well–Rocking horse and everything. Makes you wonder what happened to Bro, and what he’s doing. How did he avoid being found? Or was he found, but too influenced by Cal to indulge something like horses? Idk, this is clearly overthinking.

But I’m intrigued to see if we ever find out.

As for Anna Claire, I’m feeling pretty confident about this and think it’d be cool. But I’m obviously not married to the idea just yet–I’d like to learn more about A. Claire first. I just wanted to get people talking about the possibility for now.
Anyone compelled by this reading?

Xefros Tritoh is a Page of Time. also, class roleplay is real.

I’m still too sick to record for the Joey video, so while I don’t have the time to make a full-scale analysis post on everything about Xefros right now (theres a lot) I figured I’d make two crucial things about reading his character clear:

A) Xefros’ unhealthy relationship with Dammek is the latest example yet of unhealthy Class Roleplay dynamics. If anyone remembers, I speculated weeks ago, before the game dropped, that Xefros’ relationship to the role of Butlering might well turn out to be both unhealthy for him and reflective of Classpect behavior.

As it turns out, I seem to have been correct. Specifically, Xefros is roleplaying a Knight through his unwilling assignment of the role of the Butler.

B) Xefros is a Page of Time.

Let’s explore them in order, considerably more briskly than with the Joey post. There’s more to say about Xefros, obviously, but unfortunately, I just don’t have the….

Time.

Something I have in common with Xefros, fittingly enough.

Xefros’ general lack of time to keep up with the various demands on his time–mostly Dammek’s demands on his time–is a strong focus point of his character.

And just in case we’re not super sold on it yet, Xefros does us the Time-saving courtesy of establishing his relationship to the aspect by reinforcing Time’s longstanding relationship to music and rhythm! How nice of you, Xefros.

Now where were we?

Right. Xefros has a lot on his plate: Band practice, revolutionary lectures, butler practice, and only the occasional reverie about getting to spend time on something Xefros himself finds interesting.

And most of that time is lost in various forms of service to Dammek. Serve is,
at this point, basically inarguably the key verb for the Knight/Page class pair–combining connotations of providing service/help, dealing defeats/ownage/sick burns, and literally serving/giving items to others, as the verb counterparts to Thieves/Rogues’ ‘Steal/Take’.

So Xefros’ unhealthy position of servitude to Dammek is explicitly linked to his unwanted, forced assignment of the role of Butler–which in Homestuck terms loosely correlates to the role of Knight. Dave’s biggest contribution to his session is to serve all his friends time or provide them with resources through the use of his time, for example.

But where doing so comes naturally to Dave, for Xefros it is an effort to play the role. Xefros does not find butlering fulfilling, and he’s not particularly good at it, either–it’s not where his natural talents shine.

This is a common thread with most kinds of class roleplay–it usually doesn’t work out well for a player character to pretend to be something they’re not.

Perhaps particularly so when the role the character is playing encourages them to adopt the opposite class alignment, as when an ACTIVE player is conditioned into acting PASSIVELY. This line comes from Xefros’ FLARP book, by the way, which has a bunch of Classpect references. Fitting, since FLARP is what introduces us to the concept of Class Roleplay in Homestuck proper.

Because this line kind of has to be taken in context. The truth is, Xefros would rather be playing a game. And it’s in the context of that game, along with Xefros’ childhood and natural effect on others, that we’ll find references to his true classpect, buried under the burden of the imposed Butler role.

Pages, like Knights, are linked to the image of the Butler–but not as players who fill the role themselves. Rather, Pages seem to have a talent for inspiring other players to act as Butlers for them. Or to close the ouroboros loop of classpecting: To get others to act as their Knights.

Xefros’ affinity for Arena Stickball immediately strikes this echo, as one of the things Xefros immediately remembers is having his Brawler defending him–
a relationship echoed by Tavros’ affinity for using animals as his warriors, and Jake’s summoning of a splinter of Dirk to protect him from Aranea.

Xefros’ demeanor quickly turns around an overwhelmed and exhausted Joey, making her quickly grow concerned and then adamant about helping him in return for his own kindness.

This ability of Pages to inspire others around them to want to help them is part of the reason why I think it’s likely Dammek’s concern for him is at least somewhat genuine–though that’s by no means the same as healthy. Vriska’s concern for Tavros was genuine, too, lest we forget.

And Xefros is prone to both Giving things to others and trying to make others happy in ways that ultimately turn out to benefit him. This comes through clearest with Sloth Dad, whom Xefros would give gifts or receive food from whilst always benefiting from the arrangement in some way.

Xefros’ first cuebat, his physical strength, and open passage from his house are all things achieved by giving. But past the key verbs, Xefros’ clearest indication for both his class of Page and his aspect of Time come through in his relationship to his ancestral figure: Xultan Matzos.

Xefros’ text logs on Xultan are drowning in both references to Time and a profound personal admiration. He likens Xefros to a figure from history, imagines convoluted alt-timeline crossovers featuring various versions of Xultan, fantasizes about having the kind of psychic power Xultan had, and more.

He also admits to fantasizing about just imagining Xultan standing around, believing in him. This fits Xultan squarely into the archetype of the Pages’ imaginary friend, a slot filled by Rufioh for Tavros, and Brain Ghost Dirk for Jake.

Perhaps most telling, however, is his imitation of Xultan–a copycat approach to self-improvement that Xefros credits with at least occasional success! This has common ground with Homestuck’s Pages too, as Tavros ultimately finds narrative success as he fully embodies his imitation of the role of Peter Pan.

Jake English also famously copies female action movie tropes in both fashion choices and his eventual fall into the damsel in distress trope, whereby it’s his imagination and faith that Dirk can save him that saves the day.

And finally, Xefros’ copying habit and Page role are referenced in a two-for-one reference combo, through Joey’s persistent early habit of calling him Xerox.

In the 90′s, Xerox (Logo pictured above) was the colloquial term for both a product and the company that produced it. Particularly, Xerox was a popular brand of photocopier, meaning a machine designed to copy text and images onto a blank Page.

I haven’t come close to covering half of what I want to say about Xefros, but I hope this will at least give the rest of the fandom an idea of how he’s set up.
Just for the record, I don’t think the X on Pa’s globe was pointing at Dammek.

Particularly given Pa’s own status as a Page, Joey’s budding friednship with one puts us in a very interesting position. How will Xefros and Joey’s personalities mesh in the long run, and is Xefros involved in whatever plans Pa seems to have devised?

Interesting questions to consider as we wait for Act 2.

If you’d like to enable me to expand on this subject, and so bring more questions like these to light in the future, please consider throwing a couple bucks my way on Patreon. This is basically definitely my last written post for a good while, as I am going on hiatus to get my financial life in order as detailed in this post.

You can also feel free to drop by and chat about this and other interesting Hiveswap and Homestuck topics in the r/Hiveswap discord!

Hope to see you soon, and until then–Keep Rising!

[Patreon] [Hiveswap Discord]

BORN TO BE A STAR — JOEY CLAIRE, MAID OF LIGHT – optimisticDuelist – Medium

Here’s a post on Joey’s Hero Title–The MAID of LIGHT!–and how understanding it strengthens our reading of Joey’s struggles with neglect and loneliness, her STRIFES, her skills and abilities, and more! We even look at some interesting foreshadowing for where her arc may be going in the next Acts!

(Credit to @thricequeen and @dahniwitchoflight for providing key details that feed into my own speculation, btw! Thanks a ton, peeps)

Classpecting has so far been a hugely underappreciated part of Hiveswap’s narrative, and I’d like to change that. This post is also a focused introduction on Classpects in general, and should ideally be perfectly easy to follow if you’re a new Hiveswap fan with no exposure to the system from Homestuck!

I do have to warn, however, that there will be Homestuck Spoilers in this essay. So heads up about that! Now, on to some bad news. I have similar Classpect essays brainstormed for Xefros Tritoh and Jude Harley.
But alas, it may be a while before I can write those.

As excited as I am to post this, it comes with an announcement I wish I wasn’t making. If you enjoy this essay and want to know more about future content from me, please read on.

So. Shit kind of hit the fan for me recently, and I may be going on hiatus from this analysis/Youtube venture soon.
To give you an idea of what my life is like at the moment:

I’ve been massively struggling with unmedicated anxiety and ADHD (at least) since Trumps’ election. I’ve been bouncing from job to job, doing well enough but never QUITE well enough to be actually stable.

I’m currently employed as a contractor for a really promising position…!
That I keep waiting to get assignments on. It’s been weeks, and it hasn’t happened yet. And I can’t afford to wait like this.

I live in a one bedroom apartment with three other people. My wonderful, amazing, caring and supportive best friend–who’s essentially been funding my wild venture at doing this patreon thing from the beginning–has been withering under the toxic enviroment in his workplace. He’s developed chronic back pain that’s quickly becoming a serious concern to us.

Also, I’m several thousand dollars in credit card debt due to heavy expenses while I helped said best friend escape his abusive home life. So is he.

On top of that, my family may now be looking at like two months without electricity due to Puerto Rico being pounded by hurricanes. And for the last year or so, I’ve been unable to help with…anything. Worse, I can barely help myself and have occasionally turned into a drain on the resources of the people I care about.

The only reason I’ve thought of this Patreon venture as worthwhile up until now is because of the moments I WAS able to make a difference here, in this community–whenever I make someone feel better about Homestuck, or help people make new connections they find exciting.

Starting this Patreon venture has been the best decision I’ve ever made because of that feeling. It’s been worth everything. I’ve made wonderful friends, and It gives my life meaning. I love it. It has also, financially, been the worst decision I’ve ever made–at least for the time being.

Thinking out and writing these posts has involved intense mental effort that pretty much takes over my life until I’m done doing it, and that combined with my mental issues and financial instability has made it impossible to build any coherent structure to either my work or my life.

Yet still, I want so badly to keep doing it.

The hell of it is, I know I’m right about Homestuck. Both in that I make as close to accurate statements about it as we’ve seen as a community thus far (I’m sure I don’t have everything right, but I’m working on it) and in that I am fundamentally correct to believe in it.

Homestuck, and the broader universe it is building are the kinds of stories that can make the world a better place. I want to help make that possible, and that will never change.

But for the time being, I have to focus on taking care of me and mine and getting my life in order. So I am posting this as my final gambit.

I’m not asking for handouts. But feel free to read this essay–or watch the video version I’ll be putting out before I temporarily close up shop. You can also check out my Patreon, which I’ve now updated with nearly all of my written work as well as with links to my videos.

I am confident in pretty much everything posted there, and I think odds are good any particular link will lead you to make connections about Homestuck you hadn’t before. Real cool ones, too! If you find that useful to you, and you like reading and engaging with this content, then please consider throwing me a buck on Patreon.

At the time of writing, I have about 1,100 followers on Tumblr. If I was up to about 1,000 on Patreon, I’d at least be able to take care of myself without burdening the people I love further and focus on this work in a healthy way.
More than that and my life could start getting better, meaning my work would become better as well.

So for you guys, that means about half of my follower base choosing to give me a dollar a month would be plenty. Or a quarter choosing to give me two. I don’t really think it’s insurmountable, which is why I’m posting this.

For right now, I’d love to write Classpects posts similar to Joey’s on Jude and Xefros. I’m also just entering the next phase of Homestuck: Explained, which means–among other things–making a concise and accessible video on the Classpect system for non-fans. I think this joey post makes clear I’d do a pretty good job at it!

Alas, barring the outrageous success of this post, I’m gonna be putting them off for a little while so I can focus on my next steps. If you’d like to see more of that stuff sooner, helping me out would be a great way to get it.

And I will clarify that even if you’re willing, I would rather you don’t support this venture unless you’re A) An Adult and B) Financially stable and sure you’re comfortable with doing so! That should go without saying, but I would really hate for someone to put themselves or their families out by trying to support me.
Worst case scenario, I’ll get back to this eventually.

Thanks for everything up until now. And whether I’m presently around or not in the coming weeks…

Keep rising.

[Patreon]

BORN TO BE A STAR — JOEY CLAIRE, MAID OF LIGHT – optimisticDuelist – Medium

man I don’t think you can really say bro is brainwashed but gamzee’s just evil when you can argue that gamzee’s also possessed by cal. they even have really similar relationships to how he’s formed, ie part of their souls exist inside lil cal already. which is probably a good explanation for how lil cal is able to brainwash them when he doesn’t brainwash, like, dave, who is around him his whole childhood. idk, I just think gamzee’s more complicated than “evil ass hole”

mage-of-homestuck:

revolutionaryduelist:

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 like this a lot, particularly the implication that Gamzee himself is a fucked up amalgamation of souls himself, much like his god, even if the other souls are all him. So more like a squaredsprite really? But anyway, while I can’t imagine another motivation for killing everyone I really don’t think Rose had to be the last player alive to trigger a dream self merger. I think she just had to sleep through the doomed timeline ending. On that note, I also just assumed for a while that being alive at the end of a doomed timeline just left you ghostless and erased. Meenah certainly had to account for that for a scratch, which is pretty similar.

On another note, Aranea DIDN’T have ghosts after she created a doomed timeline and the Condesce ripped the ring of life off her and snapped her neck. It.. raises a lot of questions actually. Unless all her ghosts are hiding in shame..

1) Aranea DID have ghosts around after that. That’s included in this post. The shot of Karkat and meenah has ghost meenahs and araneas in the background of the army, I circled them.

2) My logic for the way doomed timelines end is pretty simple. Homestuck is a video game, and the characters have been likened to Mario.

In Mario, what ends a timeline ? Mario’s death. The lack of an agent that observes the world and interacts with it–ie: the death of the players’ Avatar –is what ends that particular instance of the game, prompting the player to start over.

Carry this over to jrpg mechanics to account for Sburbs multiple avatars/player characters. When does a timeline end for them? When every player is dead or KO’d, ie: unconscious. In other words, asleep.

It also ties into homestucks underlying quantum mechanics but that’s way too involved and the game analogue is simpler. What determines whether a reality “exists” in Sburb is the same as any video game. So existence is centered not on some arbitrary concept of “the real world” that exists outside the players and determines their fates but on the players themselves.

I’m gonna have to dissagree with you on the whole “Eridan is irredeemable” thing. Simply because he did have his reasons for doing things(they were just bad/misinformed reasons), and wasn’t as much of a Nice Guy(TM) as everyone says. Here’s what happened, according to what I remember: Eridan tries to convince everyone(or at least Feferi) that there’s no hope if they don’t join with Jack(not realizing that there’s no hope with Jack either). 1/4

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.

man I don’t think you can really say bro is brainwashed but gamzee’s just evil when you can argue that gamzee’s also possessed by cal. they even have really similar relationships to how he’s formed, ie part of their souls exist inside lil cal already. which is probably a good explanation for how lil cal is able to brainwash them when he doesn’t brainwash, like, dave, who is around him his whole childhood. idk, I just think gamzee’s more complicated than “evil ass hole”

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.