#<- feels a bit sillay to tag as usual idk if im actually saying anything not surface lvl here lol

[nonbinarygamzee]

hii i want some meenah (and or kankri) analysis >:3 love the way you explain things

HEARTTTTTTT thank you mio <3333 you will have to forgive me because the beforus trolls really really are not my wheelhouse outside of, like, talking about the ways that they represent (generally) interpretations of the beta trolls that hussie found shitty and obviously the whole obsession he had with owning the teenage SJWs for being messy about their critique of him as if he did not create the confines and energy of that space in the first place.

that said meenah is one of my favies of the bunch and i think i already have said a little bit to you about why i find her compelling on twitter before but UHMMM cracks knuckles

okay so i am a big fan of the characters whos isolation plays into the ways that make them harder for the rest of the cast to sympathize with. isolation is obviously an element of homestuck that is generally relevent to every characters story but for some of them that makes the friendgroups they have cultivated a source of empowerment and for some of them it functions to magnify why they hold whatever particular place in the narrative they do. why the narrative, as something alive and malicious to the characters living within it, grants some of them agency and denies others. and in some ways meenah gets agency, i mean she is the catalyst for every major decision that ensures the outcomes of her session! she has massive influence and control of her own future and is very strongheaded in her refusal to give that up, i love it for her.

that said she also is another victim of fitting into a character slot influenced by hussies biases. i think it is a little bit too simplistic when people try to paint the hemospectrum as just racism flipped on its head (plus that doesnt really account for the lowbloods who are written to be brown), but the makaras and the peixes get the worst of the messiness that IS there, where both on individual levels their characterizations end up saying some extremely fucked up things and revealing a lot about what hussie thinks black culture, like, is. and in a more general sense they invoke the uncomfortable undercurrent of antiblackness and anxiety surrounding black culture becoming a dominating cultural force that troll society is built upon. ive seen this spoken about better, and by actually black fans, so i wont try to hard to restate it all, but the ways that alternia (and beforus by extension) invoke black culture especially in the trolls we are meant to understand as holding societal privilege is like, so so so fucking weird!, and the choice to insert meenah the way that he did, long after discussions about this had started to really permeate the sphere of critique to me cant really feel like anything but a conscious decision, and retroactively erased any chance at him claiming ignorance with what he was doing with gamzee. the decision to double down on the concept that any of these behaviors are instinctual is also the bane of my existence. all of these characters who are loaded with blatant racism and then forced into roles of antagonizers are the ones i feel the most need to align myself with forever no questions asked.

to roll back around to meenah's isolation though, i think a lot of people kind of forget that for as much as she idolizes her post-scratch self, she felt so trapped by the prospect of ruling on beforus that she literally chose to run away and go into hiding and live! all by herself! this is so sad to me and especially drawing back on that metanarrative string of being a marginalized girl we are supposed to read as privileges (eugh!), i think it speaks so blatantly to her want for a nice life where she can be with her friends, even if i think her own conditioning makes her not entirely aware of that because shes spent her entire life being told she is meant to want power and her attitude of embracing that in the least-beforan way possible is so clearly the escapist fantasy of a teenager whos been told all her life how to be who hasnt quite unlearned the idea that power and riches and status are what makes you important.

even despite our entire view of her through her active role in the story being basically hussie telling us over and over and over again what a violent and selfish person she is, everything we hear about her actions in their session point more to meenah just being an abrasive girl who doesnt really know how to express her feelings, especially the ones that make her feel vulnerable or forced onto equal footing with people when shes always been told that isnt what shes meant to do. she bakes them a cakeeee for their anniversaryyyy come onnnn :o(((( i love her. even the stuff she does to damara is all only ever done with the intent of making sure her team can survive the game she has brought them all into (their dynamic is my favorite part about the beforus trolls one day i will speak on it). and ofc her entire plan to kill all of them to make sure they dont all end up wiped from existence!

ok um i am admittedly losing steam with my thoughts here so i will end this there but tldr she is everything to me