#<- sorta? mormons mentioned so im counting it

[the-troll-book-of-mormon]

agreed 100%. i see most people depict human gamzee as Black, and to me it feels like a superficial read of the character at best. and more than a bit uncomfortable tbh, considering the fact that gamzee's character is... a violent drug-addict with a deadbeat dad. i don't know whether or not hussie was being intentionally racist when they initially wrote gamzee, but either way, i'm not interested in participating in it. i don't think gamzee being Black adds to his character at all, i think it just reduces him to a racist caricature, and in a world where i can choose how i imagine these characters, i can think of more interesting stories to tell with him.

for example, how a lot of bigoted and abusive white boys can fly under the radar because they're a "chill dude" and people dismiss their red flags as endearing ignorance, and their appropriation as appreciation or whatever. until something sets them off, or you let your guard down, and now suddenly you don't know them at all. listen, i grew up in utah surrounded by conservative religious people. idk about other highly religious groups, but mormons work very hard to keep up appearances of being polite and welcoming to everyone, and keeping their bigotry quiet. but once it finally shows its face, it's like they become a completely different person. i've lost countless friends by finding out years into the friendship that i don't actually know them at all, and that they secretly wished me or my friends ill, or thought our existence was inherently wrong. that's what gamzee is to me, that's what makes him scary. maybe the signs were there, but you didn't see them because he was a highblood who was nice to you, so you assumed he was harmless, and he wasn't.

tbh the whitest trolls to me are the zahhaks and the makaras bc of what kind of internet-people equius and gamzee represented at the time. juggalo culture is predominantly white working class folks or white folks on the poverty line, and in the US bc of segregation, that meant a lot more mixing of cultures than you see in middle class and up areas. its the same with canada and the UK. so you see a lotta black influences in there bc of how US class structures have been constructed. its a melting pot made by and for the working class. a lotta irl juggalo stuff is pretty chill from what ive heard? as a movement they want to demolish class heirarchy and build community. ofc theres room for abuse in the lifestyle though, thats not unique to juggalos. gamzee as a rich white boy living a juggalo lifestyle but not getting it right and actually reinforcing what irl juggalos fight against makes perfect sense for his character

equius on the other hand is like belligerently Hegemonic White Cis Dude coded to me. he represents young white cis boys on the precipice of falling into the manosphere pipeline, imo. specifically bc theyre lonely and insecure. his spot on the hemospectrum is perfect for breeding that shit. he's been told his whole life that hes better than most of the ppl he knows. hes higher up caste wise than most of his friends, particularly nepeta, but still feels inferieor to his friends who ARE higher up than he is, which is what sparks that hyperspecfic brand of insecurity in white cis boys. their only real problem is that someone else whos even more priviledged is looking down on them. and gamzee also being white just kind of compounds that bc of the sense of 'competition' between white guys or whatever, to be The Whitest Squarest* Guy who is On Top (haha) Of All Other White Square Guys

everyone else? nah. its so obviously not whats happening. which really just highlights the fact that large swaths of fandom still believe that white is default in terms of character design. and its insane to me how ppl can say w/ their whole chest that the hemospectrum has nothing to do w/ race, its just abt class, when racism and class are intrinsically tied. like theyre horrible twin sisters, man, you cant rlly have one without the other. enforced class models in society dont work unless theres someone up top deeping someone else Deserving of having less bc theyre not the exact same type of person as them

*using the term Square here not to denote any kind of 80s movie nerddom but to try to describe normies who are toxic abt it and think everyone else should be like them