Gamzee Pt. 4 — Rage as Roleplay

This is a script draft that was used for the following video, and is missing picture assets as well as general polish:

This train of thought is a bit more speculatory, so I decided to keep it seperate from focusing on Gamzee’s character. But linking Rage to Homestuck’s Theatrical elements might also tell us about the abilities and powersets Rage players might exhibit, and that seems worth discussing on its own, so…here we are.

Obviously, reading Rage as the Aspect that rules over Homestuck’s reality as a play lends itself to Tex Talk’s theory of Rage as the Aspect that describes Plot Contrivance, and I could argue there’s even a link between the two in the text itself.

The MSPA Command Terminal that Caliborn and Gamzee unlock using the tragicomic mask keys allow Caliborn to talk directly with the author, Andrew Hussie — Specifically, the ghost of Andrew Hussie, who somehow communicates through the machine after being murdered by Lord English.

As the original author, he’s now the God in the machine operating the story of Homestuck, and his awareness of Homestuck’s larger context lets him give Caliborn the scoop, enabling his rise to power as Lord English in the first place.

This could be seen as an echo of Homestuck’s roots in Theatre as well:
The term “Deus Ex Machina”, or God in the Machine, originally refers to the practice whereby actors playing Gods would be entered into the play by an elaborate mechanism built into the theatre stage, usually by crane or a trapdoor.

The God character was often used at the end of a Tragedy, using their divine powers to wrap up remaining plot threads and bring the story to a close.
Now, of course, the term is used as shorthand for whenever a story resolves problems in highly unlikely and often surprising ways — and is often considered a hallmark of bad, contrived writing as a result.

Actually, this might solve a mystery nobody knew needed solving. A lot of fans assume the story’s logic breaks down with the dream bubbles, based on the perceived nonsensical absence of dream ghosts — mainly concerning four characters:

Meenah and Aranea, Vriska, and Gamzee. But Meenah and Aranea actually do have ghosts in the bubbles — both are present in the final army that faces Lord English.

Vriska only has (Vriska), which is kinda weird, but John’s retcon is bizarre enough that I can kinda believe it would collapse all potential versions of Vriska into the weird…schrodinger’s vriska setup the comic gives us.

Which leaves only Gamzee. If he’s aware of the mechanisms that run the theatre of Homestuck, then he may know about an obscure game mechanic. If a player goes to sleep at the end of a doomed timeline, like Rose does in the timeline that Davesprite came from, they don’t actually produce a ghost.

Instead, the player’s dreamself simply merges with the Alpha dreamself, and the player inherits all the memories of the doomed version. This might require that the player in question be the last one standing, which might be why Gamzee kills all the other trolls in at least one doomed timeline.

Whether he kills the others for this reason or not, if Gamzee outlives all the other trolls in every timeline in this manner, then we have canonical basis for Hussie’s statement that Gamzee hasn’t died in any timeline he’s aware of.

This would also mean Gamzee houses the conciousness of all his doomed selves, and that every single version of Gamzee would get to live out the truth that he is his own mirthful messiahs. No clown left behind…I guess?

But there’s something else I want to talk about.

If Gamzee views Homestuck as a play, then another facet of his power may be the ability to understand the various Masks that characters wear during their adventure — and the corresponding Roles they take on, as they perform their identities in relationship with the world.

Only in Homestuck, roles that define how characters Act are a codified game mechanic: Classes.

And I’ve recently found myself arguing that characters perform the behaviors of the Classes they’re assigned, but also often emulate — or try and fail to emulate — other Classes’ behaviors, through a mechanic I’ve taken to calling Roleplay.

Most characters only Roleplay classes they absorb through culture, whether it’s their interests or — more commonly — role model adult figures called Ancestors.

Having power over roleplay would make Gamzee uniquely dangerous, because it would give him the power to warp how other players see themselves and each other — confusing them by alienating them from their own true roles.

By inviting Terezi to adopt the persona of Redglare, he encourages her to take on the role of a Knight. As a result, Terezi gives a Knight’s performance in one of Homestuck’s theatrical Flashes — [S] Seer: Ascend. She’s even cast in another Knight’s shadow— imitating Dave’s own ascension flash.

It would also make him uniquely flexible. Understanding all the roles played in the story, Gamzee would be able to wear any of those masks to complete whatever objective is at hand. This is likely why Gamzee’s Jokerkind Specibus allows him to use every weapon.

He introduces himself to Jane with music boxes originally owned by Aradia Megido — A Maid, a class linked to the Fae archetype.

Maids and Sylphs are often referenced as imaginary beings, and this tends to include players committed enough to roleplaying one of the two — vampires, ghosts, gnomes, fairies, and in Gamzee’s case, he’s referenced as an elf during this stint.

The Fairy classes are associated with healing and creating new things. And Gamzee happens to perform this role— healing his troll friends by reviving them as Sprites, merging their personalities together in the process.

Later, Caliborn learns he’s immortal for arbitrary reasons that make no sense. Of course, it’s because he’s still relevant to later events in the story, and knowing this, Gamzee is aware he cannot die.

Wearing Fairy wings labeled with the masks of comedy and tragedy,
Gamzee evokes Maids as ones who are “Made of” their Aspect — in his case, Made of Rage: In this case, in the form of theatrical contrivance.

In the comic, Maids are repeatedly shown to have some passive self-ressurection or survivability perks, and Gamzee seems able to make use of that benefit by acting out the Maid’s role.

Inviting destruction through Anger/Rage.

But all of Gamzee’s creations are abominations, and his form of “immortality” is brutal and painful for him, especially since his natural inclinations invite destruction — no matter what part he consciously tries to act out.

This is a common result of roleplay. Homestuck seems to lean on a “Know yourself first” approach to identity, as characters often confuse their own personalities with what they wish they were, commonly while trying to emulate an ideal or person they view with admiration.

This commonly leans to failure and confusion for Roleplayers, as their own instinctive tendencies come out even when they’re going for something entirely different.

Gamzee is subject to these negative effects, but to him, it doesn’t seem to matter. He’s just barely good enough at acting like these classes to accomplish the goals he sets out to achieve, and the rest of us just have to deal with it.

Of course, many would argue that Theater has nothing to do with Rage and everything to do with Gamzee belonging to the Purpleblood Caste, since several Purplebloods in Hiveswap share Gamzee’s clown motif and one pair even evokes the Comedy and Tragedy imagery.

Just as Xefros’ Rust-Blood status encourages him to think in terms of Time, I believe it’s possible these cultists are being societally pushed into thinking in terms of Rage, the Aspect of their Caste’s True-Sign — Capricorn.

So I’ll be interested in observing just how they relate to their own Aspects, and in seeing to what extent any of them are linked to Rage — not to mention comparing them to characters that we know are Rage-bound, such as our hero, Xefros Tritoh.

Off the top of my head, Sports and Wrestling share some similarities with theatre — the inherent artifice of the experience and the distinct roles for every participant to follow. One of my biggest inspirations, Supereyepatchwolf, has actually done a great video on the theatrical elements of wrestling you can check out here, if you’re interested.

I’m not necessarily claiming this interpretation of Rage is canon or anything — I just thought it’d be an interesting thing for you guys to talk about, and consider, as we get to know the trolls through the Hiveswap: Friendsim and Hiveswap: Act 2.

GAMZEE MIGHT MAKE SENSE ACTUALLY —

It never stops from keep happening.

[ACT 1==> THE MIRTHFUL MESSIAHS]

Most of the Homestuck fandom will tell you that Gamzee Makara is a broken character, and with good reason. It’s not just that his actions are morally repugnant, but that he seems like a hollowed out caricature of a character, almost deliberately crafted by the author to be as flat and nonsensical as possible.

The author of the story literally tells us that his actions probably don’t make any sense, and a lot of the fandom has decided to take that literally, believing that Andrew Hussie didn’t know what he was doing when writing this character — or, more likely, was just “trolling” us.

The end result is a character that is, for most, deeply unpleasant to think about for all sorts of reasons — he commits all kinds of acts of depraved and distasteful immorality, but we’re also barely told anything about who he is, how he does what he does, or why he even does it.

But I think there’s a coherent strain of thought behind Gamzee’s character, and while I consider Gamzee responsible for everything he did, I think there’s a case to be made that his worldview made him uniquely malleable and exploitable by Lord English.

You probably won’t believe me about this, but then, that’ll be kind of the point. Introductions complete, let’s begin our Descent.

The Rage-bound care about truth more than anything. They aren’t so much religious or spiritual as they are deeply dogmatic and intense about their worldviews — in essence, they’re conspiracy theorists.

Understanding this is vital, because at the core of Gamzee’s narrative is a schism between two major versions of his character, separated by an intense crisis of faith.

Gamzee is a Bard: The Passive Destroyer Class. This means we can understand him as one who allows Rage to be Destroyed, or invites destruction through Rage. Rage rules over concepts like anger, fear, hate, doubt, and confusion, and Gamzee will often be found exerting his influence over the story through both definitions of his title, sometimes at the same time.

Early Gamzee is little more than a 420 joke — he’s depicted as a harmless stoner juggalo who simply wants to make his friends happy.

He worships his personal vision of the Mirthful Messiahs, an obscure religious cult largely made up of Purple-Blooded trolls like Gamzee, the Highest blood color of Alternia’s Hemospectrum that belongs to Land-dwelling trolls.

Highblood privilege allows him a sheltered upbringing and the freedom to indulge his soporific drug habit, and as a result he seems completely out of touch with the true nature of his religious order.

In reality, Alternia’s Grand High Bloods are an obscure but powerful cult devoted to the worship of Lord English, a physical God who exists on Alternia and tortures trollkind throughout its history through a number of Agents.

The Highbloods are one of these agents: religious enforcers who control the population through a combination of brutal executions and psychic Chucklevoodos that poison lowblood’s minds with nightmares of gore and violence, fear, anger, and paranoia.

Gamzee’s crisis of faith comes about when Dave Strider exposes Gamzee to the real-world inspiration for his religion: The Juggalo subculture formed around the Insane Clown Posse. When Gamzee learns about this, he regards it as heretical, and a desecration of everything he believes in.

He soon comes into contact with two messengers of his God, Lord English.
First is Lil Cal — a doll containing the Lord English’s composite, twisted soul. Gamzee looks into Lil Cal’s eyes, and in the depth of those peepers he discovers a horrifying, unavoidable truth:

Inviting destruction through the HIghblood’s Truth|Rage

Just as Caliborn does later, Gamzee recognizes one of the souls that makes up Lord English as his own — meaning Gamzee’s soul is, in effect, partly responsible for starting his own religion.

Gamzee is initially distraught and confused by this knowledge, but he soon begins to trust Lil Cal and the souls within, and decides to reframe his worldview according to what it tells him.

Lil Cal can be highly influential to those who hold it, as Gamzee and Bro both begin to pick up phrases and habits originally native to Caliborn while in contact with the doll. Because Bro is a highly Active class and Gamzee a highly Passive one, we also have grounds to believe Gamzee more susceptible to suggestion.

But the relationship doesn’t seem to be mind control, since this form of psychic influence is distinct from the full mind control Lil Cal proves capable of later. Rather, Gamzee implies he welcomes Lil Cal like a best friend.

Specifically a replacement for Tavros, who Gamzee had romantic feelings for.
The Purple Sign Caste description tells us Gamzee is a strictly monogamous and devoted lover, and he goes on to prove it.

We can see Tavros’ death as the moment Gamzee’s relationship to the rest of his friends is severed, and he devotes himself fully to the new object of his affections: Caliborn — the Cherub boy who will eventually become
Lord English.

And why?

Because Lil Cal gives him the truth.

[ACT 2 — THE VAST JOKE]

At this moment, Gamzee simultaneously receives three divine revelations:
He discovers that his cult’s God exists in physical form, the cruel and brutal nature of this God, and that he himself is this God.

The important thing is that Gamzee does not choose to believe these things — he’s confronted with unavoidable proof for all of them. He’s confronted with a raw, physical, tangible truth.

Now forced to accept this truth, Gamzee embraces the violent and vicious roots of the cult, becoming a Dark Messiah ruthlessly devoted to bringing about the advent of his God.

He taps into his ancestral memory of the Grand High Blood, a notable head of the cult and Gamzee’s Ancestral Figure. He begins imitating the Highbloods and murdering his lower-blooded friends.

Starting with Equius, one of the other characters whos soul becomes part of LE’s. Equius must become Arquis for Lord English to be born, which Gamzee would also have found out from Lil Cal. He kills Equius and hoards his corpse.

After securing the other component of Lord English in his session, he targets female characters that Caliborn later goes on to single out for death in his retelling of Homestuck. He kills dear, sweet, precious, DEAR Nepeta before our eyes, while Caliborn describes her as useless and irrelevant. The monster.

Vriska is targeted for her ambition and attempts at relevance. Rather than confront her directly, Gamzee drags Terezi Pyrope into the conflict.

He does so by manipulating Terezi to play up her anger and frustration with Vriska. He also encourages her to take on the Neophyte Redglare persona she used to roleplay during FLARP campaigns she and Vriska waged together, partnered as the Scourge Sisters.

Caliborn singles Terezi out for getting between his One True Pairing of Dave and Karkat, and though she doesn’t die, Gamzee makes sure she suffers for this.

After Terezi kills Vriska, Gamzee and Terezi enter a Kissmesitude, and he starts harassing and emotionally abusing her, wearing down her self-respect and ability to focus and help her friends for the rest of the adventure.

He also uses his Caste-given Chucklevoodos to mess with the Beta Kid’s minds, rendering them all somewhat mentally unstable. He pays special attention to John, seeding in his mind the clown doll that acts as the source of John’s self-loathing messages and clown scrawlings.

Which indirectly contributes to Jack Noir’s Rage fueled rise to power, and destruction of the Beta’s session.

However, perhaps because Bard is one of the most Passive classes, pushing himself into behaving so actively is exhausting and stressful for him.
While Gamzee’s behavior during Horrorstuck is impactful, it’s also unsustainable, and he soons settles down with some help from Karkat.

He’s then contacted by Doc Scratch, Lord English’s second emissary.
Scratch is LE’s best bureaucrat, smooth salesperson, and master manipulator. He’s also a part of Lord English himself, a puppet that LE uses to carry out tasks he doesn’t want to perform himself.

It’s Doc Scratch who manipulates Trolls into being as violent and cruel as they are, across their entire planet’s history. And since Scratch’s soul includes Dirk’s cyber-omniscient AI Auto-Responder, Equius, and Gamzee himself, Scratch is also aware of all the events to come in the second half of Homestuck.

In [S] Cascade, Gamzee talks to Scratch, and by reporting the completion of Horrostuck’s events, implies he was doing everything he did on the orders of Scratch, Lil Cal, or both. Then he asks what’s next.

So Scratch is in a position to offer Gamzee something unique: A script.
Through Scratch, Gamzee could have learned everything he needed to do over the course of the Alpha Kid’s session in order to bring about the birth of LE.

This is why Gamzee complains about Vriska in the Post-Retcon timeline.
There’s a plan in place that the Cult of the Mirthful Messiahs is following, and Vriska cheating her way into being alive throws that plan off the rails.

But in learning his role, Gamzee would also learn something else.
A deep truth of Homestuck’s universe, that would reshape the way he sees the world, and the way we see Rage. He would learn that Homestuck…isn’t real.

Homestuck is a story. A story told online, by an author: Andrew Hussie, who wrote Gamzee’s life into existence as a silly parody of the Insane Clown Posse.
An author who created Gamzee’s life to be a joke.

But Homestuck is also the story of how Lord English murdered its author, and took over the story for his own, ensuring that his dominance is forever absolute. LE cannot be defeated. LE cannot be stopped.

And Gamzee cannot die, because he has to become part of LE for the story of Homestuck to exist. Knowing this means Gamzee sees the story for what it is — as a jokey webcomic structured like a theatre play, with himself as the comic relief.

Where the rest of the characters see The World, Gamzee sees a Stage.

[ACT 3— THEATRE OF DIONYSUS]

Perhaps Gamzee’s biggest recurring symbol is the masks of comedy and tragedy-the archetypal symbol for Theatre and Tragicomedy. The harlequin mask keys he and Caliborn use to power on the MSPA terminal grant Caliborn the ability to view and influence every event in the entire story — letting him take ownership of the play of Homestuck itself.

We can more about theatre through the Troll Call purpleblood Chahut’s
last name: Maenad.

In Greek Myth, the Maenads were the female companions to Dionysus — the Greek God associated with wine, epiphanies, religious ecstasy, and ritual madness. Also associated with Dionysus are half-goat men called Satyrs, who are described as “ archetypal musicians and dancers”, associated with the breaking down of traditional values.

Like Gamzee, Dionysus is also intimately connected to his Godly All-Father, the Demiurge: Zeus for Dionysus, Lord English for Gamzee. Zeus saved his son by sewing him up in his thigh and keeping him there until he reached maturity, so that he was twice born. Similarly, Gamzee is Born Again when he discovers his ultimate fate is to become part of Lord English.

Worship of Dionysus is also credited with the eventual founding of Theatre, particularly the Tragedy genre. An early predecessor of Theater is the Satyr Play, a largely comedic and slapstick performance reminiscent of the Trickster Mode sequence.

Early theatre often employed the use of masks, allowing actors to easily switch between portraying different characters. This colors almost every action Gamzee takes as performative in nature — recognizing Homestuck for the story it is, he plays whatever character is convenient to achieve his objectives.

Gamzee also uses theatre’s history of audience participation to punish the viewer directly. We can view pretty much every nonsensical impact on the plot he has this way — like how his immortality is literally derived from “Plot Armor”, practically begging the audience to call the story on its bull.

But in particular, every sprite he creates in the Alpha session seems deliberately designed to cause as much frustration and anger as possible, not just for the characters, but for Us — the fans.

Seriously. Hear me out.

Eridan and Sollux’s mutual hatred made them two of the most popular characters over the course of act 5, with plenty of detractors and supporters on both sides passionately clashing to defend their favorite characters — and just as many shipping the two in hate-fueled Kismessitude relationships.

Gamzee revives the character conflict between these two — but without any of the fandom-fuel romantic tension. Just misery and self-loathing with no catharsis, a disappointing outcome for any fan invested in seeing their conflict reach any kind of resolution.

Gamzee making Fefeta, Erisol and Arquis leads to Fefeta’s explosion when the other two start fighting over her — Inviting destruction through Confusion/Rage.

Nepeta and Feferi — — two characters the fandom often criticizes the comic for abandoning — are brought back, but their union leaves them a running gag where the fandom gets to hear all about the cool and helpful stuff they’re up to, but without ever actually seeing either girl talk again. Fueling the fandom’s bitterness over their irrelevance.

And Tavrisprite’s creation eventually causes Vriska and Tavros to get into a relationship together, extending the fandom’s furious debate about their unhealthy, abusive dynamic long past the deaths of both characters, when we thought we’d seen the end of both arcs.

And the creation of Arquisprite, of course, is a necessary part of the script that eventually leads to Caliborn, Arquis, and half of Gamzee’s corpse being destroyed and merged inside the Lil Cal doll, bringing about the birth of Lord English.

Don’t believe me? Does this sound too thought out for Hussie, just a bit too far-fetched? That’s fine, I feel you. I understand. Just keep in mind that Doubt itself is also linked to the Rage Aspect. Our skepticism is already written into the story.

To me, it now seems that Gamzee’s story is not that he was lying or pretending during his kind phase, or that he’s a helpless victim of mind control, but rather that he’s coerced through his own intense convictions into accepting a deep sense of tragicomic fatalism.

This distances him from his friends, as he can no longer see them as anything more than falsehoods to be obliterated and punished by the self-evident power of his One True God. We don’t know exactly how Gamzee feels about this, beyond the fact that he’s accepted it.

But it brings up an interesting question that puts a new light on the half of a Gamzee corpse that remains after the end of the Masterpiece, and the creation of Lord English.

It’s true that LE is the overbearing truth of Homestuck, the comic. But there are deeper truths than those that are immediately apparent from observing physical reality — such as the inevitability that all tyrants eventually fall, just as Lord English has at the end of Act 7.

And the paradise planet that Gamzee so passionately believed in early in life, the one he wanted to share with his friends and at least one boy he had romantic feelings for — it actually exists. Earth C is just that sort of paradise planet.

Only half of Gamzee went into Lord English, so he still technically has a corpse available. Jane could, hypothetically, use her life-restoring powers to bring Gamzee back from death’s doorstep — only he would now be custody of our Heroes, with his God either dead or sealed in a black hole for eternity.

If that were to happen, and if there’s any truth to this reading of Gamzee, then what would the Bard of Rage make of this truth beyond truth, this promised land he would find himself in on the other side of an endlessly dark reality?

It’s enough to make me curious, personally. Although my personal suspicion is that if he gets the opportunity, whatever he does, it’s going to manage to piss us off. It’s inevitable, because seriously…Fuck that guy.

hello! first of all i want to tell u i really enjoy reading ur metas and analysis, i think its amazing how u contextualize some things and the entire story suddenly makes So Much sense. second, ive been wondering about hope and rage – im not sure i can word myself correctly, but hope is like an aspect that has ppl firmly believing in an ideal or belief. rage is its opposite, but both canon rage players (im not counting xefros bc were not sure about him yet – but im pretty sold on the (1/2)

stormsbourne:

revolutionaryduelist:

page of rage idea!) seem like avid followers of their own faith/religion/cult. in the true zodiac test, the questions that seemed to relate to hope and rage seemed to put them in a clear dichotomy as well – so ive just been meaning to ask u what do u think about this?? is the dichotomy about something other than faith/doubt?? (2/2)

The main thing is that the Rage players’ religion doesn’t actually require faith, at all, because it’s simply true. The Mirthful Messiahs worship Lord English/Caliborn, and, well…he exists. He’s right in view of all the ghosts and stuff, blowing them to smithereens.

I think the dichotomy involves a lot more than faith/doubt (coherence vs. contrivance, for one thing). But as far as the Rage players’ religions go, I don’t see much of a conflict, currently.

from what the canon classpect test indicates, it’s not so much “faith vs. doubt” as it is “loving truths vs hating lies.” hope players have an intrinsic need to believe in something, and their power comes from that intent belief, whether it’s jake’s beliefs that he can save his friends (masterpiece) or that dirk can help him (game over timeline), or eridan’s belief in “white science” ultimately giving him his abilities.

rage players, meanwhile, are hellbent on disproving lies and making sure everyone knows how full of shit they are. the most obvious canon for this is when gamzee loses his absolute shit about icp, because their version of juggalo-ing runs super counter to the truth he knows. it’s a gigantic lie and he fucking hates it. this is why caliborn/LE, through lil cal, is able to speak to him and influence him so readily: LE offers the absolute truth. he is already here. gamzee is already part of him. gamzee embraces that truth, but it’s not what gives him his power. what gives him his power is the hatred he has for what he sees as lies.

rage players, according to that test, bring doubt and confusion, but how that happens is because they are tearing down what the rest of the world may perceive as true because to them, it is flawed and not worth saving. both hope and rage involve commitment to an idea, but rage is about commitment to destroy what is false, and if doubt is sown along the way, the ends justify the means.

Yeah, I agree with this pretty much completely. Pretty useful nuance, too–I’d never verbalized the relationship between them quite this way. Thanks!

hello! first of all i want to tell u i really enjoy reading ur metas and analysis, i think its amazing how u contextualize some things and the entire story suddenly makes So Much sense. second, ive been wondering about hope and rage – im not sure i can word myself correctly, but hope is like an aspect that has ppl firmly believing in an ideal or belief. rage is its opposite, but both canon rage players (im not counting xefros bc were not sure about him yet – but im pretty sold on the (1/2)

page of rage idea!) seem like avid followers of their own faith/religion/cult. in the true zodiac test, the questions that seemed to relate to hope and rage seemed to put them in a clear dichotomy as well – so ive just been meaning to ask u what do u think about this?? is the dichotomy about something other than faith/doubt?? (2/2)

The main thing is that the Rage players’ religion doesn’t actually require faith, at all, because it’s simply true. The Mirthful Messiahs worship Lord English/Caliborn, and, well…he exists. He’s right in view of all the ghosts and stuff, blowing them to smithereens.

I think the dichotomy involves a lot more than faith/doubt (coherence vs. contrivance, for one thing). But as far as the Rage players’ religions go, I don’t see much of a conflict, currently.

banavalope replied to your post “dahniwitchoflight replied to your post “luciotheheirofspace reblogged…”

Rage as an aspect at face value is hard to swallow but aspects are also given to players as challenges. Xefros is like the exact opposite of someone “rageful” but he’s in line with the description of someone that’s basically against authority and wants revolution. Otherwise he wouldn’t be in on it with Dammek, but if he really IS a rage player I think the implication would be his challenge is to meet this potential as someone more strongwilled and less fooled than he is

That’s quite possible. I tend not to think about the classpects as challenges to the players too much, mostly because it seems to me like at least in Homestuck, players were ALWAYS executing their classpects in some way or another–Jake was always serving himself Hope/through Hope, Gamzee was always destroying Rage (the beat where he calmed down Eridan, for example), so on.

So if Xefros IS a Rage player, I would’ve expected that to show up from the beginning. All of his Act 1 coding seems to heavily concern Time, but it’s quite possible I missed stuff (someone already reframed his excitedly crushing the soda can as a Rage thing, which I’m considering), and you’re right that there’s some ways he fits the profile.

My guess is the test is accurate, and Xefros is a Rage player. I’m just not sure what that means for the audience’s ability to deduce a characters’ classpect through canon clues. Hopefully revisiting Act 1 and later acts will make the logic that WP employs in writing Classpects a lot clearer to us, with so many characters in play.

Some old classpect thoughts

arrghus:

Presented with perhaps lacking context.

So I’ve been thinking about Hope as the strongest Aspect and how some people insist that surely it can’t bear that title alone because it and its counterpart Rage must be equal, among other things.

And I think I’ve hit on something interesting there. Because while Gamzee’s application of Rage is incredibly flexible (he can be almost anywhere at any time, have all the weird little odds and ends he wants, etc) it’s never very powerful. Like, one of his greatest feats in the story is owning a costume.

And yes, there’s the fight with the black king. But the key thing there, the thing I realized just now, is that the revelation that Gamzee was critical to that fight happened long after the fight was concluded. When Aradia talked about the fight, she mentions their weapons, her time-clones, and Vriska’s dice. Gamzee’s not there. This is the meta nature of Rage. Gamzee inserts himself into the fight only after it’s done, and tears up the narrative coherence of it in the process by kinda sorta contradicting Aradia’s account of it. Then he upsets his impending beatdown at Equius’ hands by playing to his weaknesses and kills Nepeta offscreen, before being unceremoniously papped down without actually changing his ways at all. This is the Rage of which Tex spoke, the ability to make stories “go wrong”, the power of “bullshit”.

In contrast, almost everything Jake does is heavily foreshadowed and shrouded in layer upon layer of myth and reference. His biggest actions are momentuous fullfilments of seeming hundreds of little seeds sown thousands of pages in advance. Here is where I contradict taz a little, because when Jake is powered up by Aranea? I don’t think he could have done anything in that position. I don’t think that at all. Hope is among other things the power of creativity, of “good storytelling”, and in accordance with the rules of “good storytelling” at such a momentuous occasion it can accomplish only what has been built up in advance. Jake is strong here because his strength has been built up, and he can make Brain Ghost Dirk (and only Brain Ghost Dirk) real specifically on account of Brain Ghost Dirk having been established in advance as a facet of Jake’s own nature and ability. And he can do so in part because, yes, that’s a Princess Bride reference, and mythological parallels are again “good storytelling”.

This is why, on a meta level, Hope is strong but somewhat inflexible, while Rage is weak but versatile.

This is how Eridan operates as well. His genocide complex, his fascination with magic, all of these things are set up well in advance. His emotional theatrics and dumb antics with the angels undercut this, “destroying” the foreshadowing as it were, but everything he does is set up in advance and returned to repeatedly before it happens. By contrast, Gamzee’s foreshadowing consists of what, stating that typing in all lowercase feels unnatural and mentioning that he wants to make Equius happy?

@catchaloststar submitted:

That Gamzee explanation is pretty convincing, but it relies on the assumption that Gamzee has no ghosts + dream merger mechanics -> Gamzee never successfully saved his friends -> Gamzee is a murderous asshole who never chooses his friends over his murderous tendencies and LE loyalty. Note, of course, that I inserted the word “successfully.” Perhaps Gamzee’s immortality is a separate mechanic due to being a “rascally clown” as Hussie says, rather than simply out-surviving (or killing) the others? Aradia notes that the beta trolls fucked up their session multiple times, making victory unobtainable, without actually implying that Gamzee was responsible for each fuck-up. It seems plausible that the other beta trolls are perfectly capable of ruining their own session without Gamzee’s interference or even with his cooperation, considering how many Aradiabots had to step in and help Karkat here and there just due to his own stupid actions. Or something just didn’t loop correctly despite perfectly good yet still incorrect behavior, triggering a doomed offshoot that resulted in the surviving trolls all eventually dying of old age and leaving Gamzee. Several possible explanations, you know?

Anyway, what I’m suggesting is a scenario kind of like that old tumblr post with a picture of a Seer of Time standing alone on the Battlefield surrounded by their dead friends’ corpses, followed by a lot of speculation about immortal god tiered players in doomed timelines. Or a different post that suggests all doomed Gamzees become purple-blooded Horrorterrors rather than ghosts. Both fan-created theories, of course, but not theories that are contradicted by the source material (yet). (I can probably dig those posts up if you need them, just let me know.)

My theory in turn relies on Gamzee’s immortality being solely and independenrly due to his clownishness, rather than as a result of various other actions. Hussie “confirmed” on his formspring that Gamzee doesn’t die because he’s a “rascally clown,” but who knows how serious his formspring responses are. Maybe his being a juggalo actually refers to being a disciple of the juggalo religion, which brings us back to LE loyalty. In-comic Hussie tells Caliborn that “you can’t keep down the clown,” which Gamzee seems to support by taking an entire automatic rifle’s magazine and still being alive – but I guess you could argue that he was expressing his loyalty to LE in that scene, hence unable to die while in pursuit of that task? It’s theories all the way down. Anyway what do you think.

My main issue isn’t so much that such scenarios are impossible as it is that I think they’re begging the question a little. Occam’s razor, you know? While stuff like players turning into horrorterrors and stuff is fun, yeah, and they’re potential explanations…they’re also explanations the canon never brings up.

I tend to part from the starting premise that Homestuck is in most things a coherent and well-structured story, that tells the audience what it thinks is important for the audience to know. So coming up with fanon explanations for something we HAVE a canonical explanation for, just one that leads us to some conclusions that are pretty unpleasant, just doesn’t really mesh with my particular methodology too well.

I do think Gamzee’s immortality is due to his clownishness, but I view the link between those two things as Gamzee’s Rage aspect. Immortality=Clowns works because, well, it’s contrived and infuriating, and infuriating plot contrivances are part of the language Rage exists to describe.

All of this said, @hussianphilosopher raised some good critical counterpoints to that Gamzee post that I’m looking to incorporate into an expanded piece on Gamzee when I port that little post to Medium. I don’t really think that post is the most accurate take on Gamzee anymore.

I’m just not sure when I’ll get the chance to present this slightly different context
😦 As soon as I can, I guess.

hi! me and my friend have long considered Gamzee more as a plot device/deus ex machina than a character with an actual personality that makes logical sense. we were looking up Whistles (see MSPA wiki) and think that Gamzee is… apparently just a giant callback? A private joke? A character moved to the wrong universe, warped to fit the narrative? we’re going to get our hands on the actual book ASAP, but I figured if any blog could start meta discussion over it w/ owners, it was yours.

I will say that my friend @hussianphilosopher made some points about Gamzee I thought were compelling, and on my agenda is moving that little Tumblr post over to Medium with a few expanded sections on Gamzee and Damara.

I’ve known about Whistles, and yeah I agree that Gamzee is definitely a giant callback to that in many ways. But honestly I really don’t like the idea that any character in homestuck is just a plot device/makes no sense–Equius is an extended humanimals reference in a bunch of ways, but he’s still also a character who has depth and intrigue and a coherent personality, as Tex Talks breaks down excellently here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjZtB2i8vR0&t=50s&ab_channel=TexTalks

HOWEVER, If I were to accept that any character in Homestuck is contrived and nonsensical and exists only to be a joke, it would be Gamzee. It’s just that I believe that perception is intentional, and in itself part of his character arc. Tex Talks may help get across why I think so here, as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H7m23gkAe4&ab_channel=TexTalks

well with that logic, everything could be defined by a lack of void, but I don’t really think thats what we’re supposed to get from it. Thee’s more to it than that, of course. And the reason the aspects tangle more than that is because every aspect is intrinsically related to every aspect in some way. For example, time and doom both deal with death, light and mind both deal with knowledge. that overlap creates situations where multiple aspects work together to create all the nuances of a concept

catchaloststar:

Counterpoint for the Hope/Rage part, though: lack of Hope is hopelessness, not anger. And lack of Rage is apathy, not hope. There’s a pretty clear destruction of Rage early in Act 5 when Eridan is talking to Gamzee. Several things are happening in that conversation, but the most obvious is Eridan’s sudden turnaround on Faygo. He goes from

CA: i dont havve a fuckin faygo you stupid fuck wwhy wwould i keep that disgusting shit on hand

To

What.

It’s just soda. Not great, but not that bad either. What’s the big deal?

We all need to settle down here.

To

FCA: i mean

FCA: its not evven that bad

FCA: its just soda but wwhatevver this isnt the point

If the destruction of Rage was equivalent to the creation of Hope, then that scene could have been presented in a way to make that connection more obvious – convincing Eridan that Faygo might actually taste good, for example. But (aside from Gamzee’s prattering on about miracles) that conversation has nothing to do with Hope. Eridan isn’t given any hope that he might be able to talk to Karkat later (Gamzee clearly isn’t willing to interrupt Jack Noir), nor that Feferi might get back together with him (he resigns himself to the fact that Feferi cares more about Sollux than himself at the moment and that she’s right in doing so). And Eridan walks away from that conversation with neither positive nor negative opinions of Faygo.

Overall, Eridan does not sound like he gained any Hope from the destruction of his Rage.

TC: ArE YoU SuRe i cAn’t hElP A bRoThEr Up iNtO HiS MoThErFuCkIn cHiLl?

CA: i dont knoww

CA: it probably doesnt matter

CA: my feelins seem petty and meaninless noww

CA: she had better things to wworry about than my ovverwwrought bullshit

CA: like the dead guy wwho savved her

CA: so forget it thanks anywway

You could definitely argue that Hope and Rage, as positive and negative emotions respectively, are mutually exclusive. That’s reasonable. I just disagree that the absence of any one aspect defines the presence of any other aspect (except Void).

(I guess you could also argue that hopelessness is a negative emotion that falls under Rage’s domain? Or that Gamzee was really trying to create Hope by encouraging Eridan to believe in miracles, and it’s not classpect theory’s fault that Gamzee is a shitty Maid (or whatever) of Hope? I don’t agree with those, but I think they’d be interesting arguments to make.)

Oh yeah, that’s a pretty good point. Gotta say I’m inclined to say you’ve swayed me on this one–what would you say the destruction of an Aspect brings about, then? Equilibrium or total balance or Void in this case, as well? This is gonna keep me up tonight and i have a flight tomorrow rip me

#i guess i also interpret rage more literally #as anger and fervor and such #not so broadly as to include shame sadness etc #jake crying in a dersite prison isn’t rage

In the interest of clarifying my thoughts on Rage though, I think this lil bit dovetails nicely with this:

revolutionaryduelist:

i think that escaped my inital point somewhat but it’s far more interesting territory to discuss just how exactly every aspect relates to all the others, more than just its opposite

I agree completely, yeah. I figured Time and Space were standouts re: Void just because they describe physical dimensions, if that makes sense? Like. Destroying Space doesn’t really create Time, and in the Furthest Ring the absence of one means the other is also non-existent.

But if someone’s Hope is destroyed, it doesn’t typically result in “nothingness”–it results in negative emotions. Either fear, despair, sorrow, or Rage, or so on. All of that stuff is under Rage’s purview, and so it makes sense for me to say the absence of Hope is Rage to a degree, and vice versa.

Do you see what I mean by Time and Space not necessarily having that relationship? It seems different in a subtle way.

I guess you could also argue that hopelessness is a negative emotion that falls under Rage’s domain?

In that I would. When I consider the Aspects I always err towards the broadest interpretation possible. No other approach makes sense to me, because the Aspects by definition describe everything that reality could possibly be.

If we don’t ascribe negative emotions to Rage, then what Aspect claims them?

I don’t think Jake crying in a cell is Jake like, inverting into a Rage player or w.e, but I do think it’s telling that the things Jake strives hardest to avoid are all Rage things–the possibility of letting down his friends, or hurting someone’s feelings, or having people be mad at him, etc.

If you want a unifying thread for all those negative emotions, I would say that negative emotions tend to center us in the raw, definite mundanity of our own suffering, and have us stop considering alternate possibilities or ideas.

In other words, Rage is fundamentally linked to the mundane and the physical, and with the emotions that bring your emotional center into the physical plane as opposed to Hope, which centers itself primarily in the realm of ideas.