#hidden gamzee

[shjiyemis]

When ppl find out I'm some sort of Gamzee kin and see a picture of me clowning:

[thewertsearch]

CURRENT carcinoGeneticist [CCG] RIGHT NOW opened memo on board TEAM ADORABLOODTHIRSTY. […] CCG: THE BARD OF RAGE IS ON THE LOOSE.

Bard of Rage, eh?

I don't see how it matches his Land, but it's becoming abundantly clear that it does match him. It probably means that the murderous frenzy he's about to unleash is aspect-enhanced, just like Eridan's Hope Wand.

This, I'm fairly sure, is the first time we've ever heard of Rage. We have no idea how Gamzee weaponizes his Title - nor what boons it might grant him, now that he's fully embraced its Aspect. His powers are a complete unknown, and a Rage attack could take many forms.

CCG: HE'S COMPLETELY SNAPPED, AND FOR THOSE OF YOU FURTHER AHEAD ON THE TIMELINE, I DON'T HAVE TO TELL YOU HOW DANGEROUS HE IS. CCG: REMEMBER WHAT HE DID TO THE BLACK KING.

We didn't know there was something off about Gamzee, but the trolls did.

His power was only hidden from us, as we laughed at the funny dancing clown, completely unaware of what was under the surface. Who would suspect the juggalo parody of being dangerous?

CCG: NOBODY COULD EXPLAIN IT, AND THEN HE JUST WENT BACK TO SPACING OUT FOR THE REST OF THE BATTLE. CCG: I MEAN SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT. CCG: I DON'T EVEN THINK THE KING COULD FUCKING BELIEVE IT, FRANKLY. CCG: DID ANYONE'S ATTACK DO AS MUCH DAMAGE? I DON'T THINK SO.

His power is definitely applicable in combat, then. This is just a guess, but maybe he can store and release his repressed emotional energy?

Perhaps there was a moment where all of Gamzee’s latent Rage was released at once - and for one awful second, it was aimed directly at the King.

CCG: I DON'T EVEN THINK VRISKA'S DID, ALTHOUGH IT'S HARD TO SAY SINCE THAT WAS THE KNOCKOUT BLOW.

Typical. That girl's a born kill-stealer.

CCG: I GUESS WE THOUGHT IT WAS LIKE A SECRET JOKE POWER OR SOMETHING?

Well, there’s no reason it couldn't be. The problem is, joke abilities are often extremely effective when used strategically. Do you really want to face someone who’s using their meme powers competently?

PTC: nOw wHaT ThE MoThEr fUcK WiLl i bE SuPpOsEd tO Do? PTC: i'M nOt FoLlOwInG. CCG: PAST GAMZEE, GOD DAMN IT. CCG: I AM TRYING TO WARN PEOPLE OF YOUR MURDEROUS FUTURE SELF. CCG: THIS PRACTICALLY DOESN'T EVEN HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH YOU. CCG: NOW GO BACK TO GROPING YOUR HORNS AND BEING DISTRACTED BY COLORS YOU USELESS FUCK.

Karkat, god damn it, you have to respect him now! His future self will remember this when he’s sober, and he’ll be coming for you!

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

You might’ve already got this before, and I’m asking this in genuinely good faith.

Your essay was very interesting, and convinced me of Erikar as a ship reading. I also really enjoyed your dissection of Eridan as a very honest person drawn into destructive behavior. It very much lines up with his status as a Prince of Hope! One who destroys conviction/belief through conviction/belief.

What confused me was your insistence on the hidden hand of the author. Death of the Author and all that, what’s implied in the text can be taken on its own separate from commentary but you seem to be doing an autopsy— the text implies [this] so *Hussie* must have intended for [this] and then tried to cover it up. If they genuinely thought it was a better ending, why not do it? Why the secrecy, why the feints? I think it’s a little conspiracy-brained to insist on a secret “better ending” that we don’t have author’s word or drafts on.

I’m also a little drifted on your frustration with the deaths of the trolls? You write that the theme of Homestuck— a standard coming-of-age story, a reckoning with society and the exit from youth— is undercut by the deaths of the trolls, because that means they *had* to die, in *punishment*. I disagree. Their deaths are tragic, not just.

Homestuck has a lot of methods of revival, the choice to (for the most part) perma-kill some characters (the trolls for one, and then AR, WQ, and WK) is a deliberate choice to make death mean something. If dying doesn’t mean anything, what are the narrative stakes? Murderstuck marks Gamzee as a threat, Eridan as a tragedy. The deaths there are meant. To be sad. To demonstrate that sometimes kids don’t get to grow up, that sometimes the society they live in cuts them down.

Homestuck is a sad story at times! It doesn’t need an ending where everyone gets to live to keep its coming-of-age conclusion.

I hope this made sense. I’m not trying to attack you, I’m just skeptical of some of your points. I hope you go on to do more analysis in the future!

If you want to believe that, go ahead 👍 again, arguing my points on that front would require its own entire essay, lol, so I'm not really planning to do that as the answer to an ask. The only thing I really want to say here is that while Homestuck is often sad, as you say, its underlying tone is unwaveringly hopeful right up until Game Over/the Retcon, and even kind of beyond that. If you prefer a sad story, then you can have a sad story, but it's just not a reading consistent (to me) with the entire rest of what Homestuck is.

For example, the whole narrative grapples with the debate of predestination vs. free will. Do things happen in Homestuck because they have to, or because characters are making choices? But with the introduction of John's retcon powers, it lands firmly in the "free will" side of the debate: the retcon powers outright defy the power of stable time loops - a reflection of how Breath is associated with freedom and choice. This is the optimistic option.

Another thing the narrative grapples with is the realness vs. fakeness of magic. I don't think it's hard to argue that between LE's "evil wizard" status and Godtier!Calliope's wand-induced black hole that the arrow falls firmly in the realm of magic being undeniably real. This is the optimistic option (and yet another narrative element that Eridan is extremely relevant to).

Moreover, even post-Retcon, there are elements that are kept that soften the tragedy already present in the story - for example, the concept of the Ultimate Self, and the implication that all surviving characters will eventually achieve it, takes the edge off all their doomed and dead counterparts, who won't actually be relegated to double death in the dream bubbles, since in a way, they'll live on through their alpha counterparts. It turns those sacrifices from bitter to bittersweet, and serves as a counterpoint to common takes like John being sad that he doesn't know the version of his friends that exist post-Retcon. The inclusion of it in the post-Retcon story, even with its botched delivery, says to me that Homestuck is still intended to be optimistic at its core, even with the extreme Giving Up that Hussie did.

And let's not forget how Calliope gets to come back to life, no strings attached, and that her stated purpose is only to live. Up to the end, the tone is that of HOPE, and I think there's no mistake that HOPE is supposed to be what defeats LE.

As I said in replies on that post, as an artist, I just can't imagine spending literal years, and literally a million words and thousands of images, writing something that's so thematically and tonally consistent, only to hard swerve right at the end, without extenuating circumstances.

And the thing is, there WERE extenuating circumstances, and they're fairly well-documented.

The kickstarter got funded, and while the story is muddled, we know the production of the game was extremely troubled, and Hussie was having difficulty being a project lead for that while also grappling with everything else. Everything else being, of course, an ever-increasing number of irons in the fire - more third-party artists he had to commission and manage, more merchandise he had to be on top of, bigger updates to sate the demands of the fanbase.

Which, speaking of, was infamously one of the most awful and toxic fanbases to ever exist, and one that Hussie has deliberately attempted to distance himself from since. I can't imagine the kind of daily abuse, harassment, callouts, and worse that Hussie had to endure as Homestuck's creator during the fandom's peak years. I don't blame him at all for turning against them.

Therefore, given the way the tone and themes hard swerve, the way several characters get bent entirely out of shape (you're telling me Karkat had several means before him of bringing his dead friends back and WOULDN'T SAY ANYTHING???), the way several plot threads are simply left dangling in the air, and the way some characters reach really weird and unpleasant conclusions (davepeta, gcatavrosprite), I think it's actually LESS reasonable to assume that the ending we got was the original plan. Hussie saw that to do the ending he wanted to do back in act 4, he'd need to write for a year, maybe two years more, and then looked at his mounting stress and pressure, and looked at the fanbase he'd come to hate, and just went "nope." And I can't even really blame him for it, lol. In his position I'd probably do the same.

Also, please don't mistake "the deaths are undone" for "the deaths will not have mattered" - I think there's a reason that the game over timeline characters still exist post-Retcon. Their arcs don't end with their deaths, and their failures are weights on them that must be narratively resolved - I believe that they go on to be the ones to defeat LE, although I have much less evidence to support this. It just makes narrative sense to me - the post-retcon team focuses down the Felt, various Jack Noirs, and the Condesce - the latter of which is their final boss, as the ultimate representation of the shitty society they're doing away with on their path to creating a new one.

Meanwhile, the dead and "irrelevant" versions of the characters, the ones who grappled with and were harmed the most by what LE represents - immaturity, selfishness, and cruelty - go on to band together after death, and defeat him in the bubbles, a culmination of their vengeance for the havoc he wreaked. And with him being destroyed in the bubbles by the dead and irrelevant, symbolically, he will be rendered nothing more than a bad dream for the waking, relevant, and alive.

Thus Gamzee is still an antagonist, although it becomes (Gamzee) and (Equius) who go on to form LE. Those deaths and those failures still matter, they still happen, they still have narrative weight. Even without the Game Over versions of the characters still existing and still being important, the decision to welcome antagonists like Gamzee and Eridan back into the fold is rendered more complex and more significant BECAUSE we've seen how badly they can go.

The speech originally given by post-Retcon Vriska to (Vriska) is also, to me, a weird artifact of this hypothetical original ending - as it exists within the actual comic, it's said by the wrong person to the wrong person - Vriska with her character development reset to a (Vriska) who's had her characterization destroyed in order to make the first Vriska seem more right. I think originally, it would've come from (Karkat) to Meenah, the latter of which being the one whose idea it was to fuck off with the treasure, and who caused the Beforus team's worst problems, and who has a track record of fucking off whenever she's tasked with taking responsibility. Thus, it would serve as a conclusion to Meenah and Karkat's arc, as well as Game Over Sadkat's arc specifically, would convince Vriska to go with him, and would give Meenah some narrative commeuppance, which would kickstart some sort of Beforan troll feelings jam that would rally them together to actually be useful for once in their lives/afterlives and contribute to the LE fight.

Again, if you PREFER the sad ending, I can't stop you, but the reason I'm going in on there being an "original ending" that isn't sad is because the sad ending doesn't make narrative sense. Why is the ultimate self speech coming from a combination of two characters that barely spoke? Why is it triumphant that Meenah and character-development-reset Vriska get to be the big goods in the fight with LE? Why do multiple prophecies suddenly get dropped right at the end when all other prophecies DO come true? Why does Karkat spend so long being sad his friends are dead, and also why is he deliberately set up as the Friends Troll (blood = bonds), and then suddenly not care that multiple methods exist for bringing back his friends? Why bother softening the blow of all the dead/irrelevant alternate selves if they're intended to be fully tragic? Why introduce a mechanic that would let them save whoever they want consequence-free and then not use it to do that? Why does Roxy love wizards so much and then not get to meet the wizard boy? Why is the entire rest of Homestuck so carefully crafted, so narratively satisfying, so thematically and tonally consistent, and then all of it goes to shit right at the end?

So yeah lol this is the SHORT version lol this isnt even the LONG version of this essay

[davekat-sucks]

(Found this image on Twitter)

I really don't like the Omega kids. I take them as seriously as I take the alphasprites, they don't exist to me. Hearing you guys talk about these little mistakes feels like watching everyone talk about a hypothetical scenario or dream some guy had once... which is the Homestuck experience now.

I dislike them, but it's not just because their stories stem from terrible couples, it's because they're so over designed but there is no meaning to anything.

It's cute Tavros has a bow tie and that Harry has a bandana but those feel like little trinkets that should have been added on later after we get used to seeing them. Show me their personalities first before you overload a character with this much clothing. Yiffy is the worst of these. It's too much. For some reason Eridan feels like a simpler design than this avril lavigne clone. There is something less cohesive and more busy about these designs than the original cast. Maybe it's because it has too many different grays and blacks. She looks more like a vast error character than a Homestuck one.

Look at how simple the character designs start out as, and then they purposely make their own outfits that fit their interests and personalities. Dirk may be a bit of an exception here actually, he changes his clothes right after he is introduced. Which introduces him as anal.

There is meaning here. There is a purpose that the story shares throughout it's run. Look at Rose's dress it was made from the velvet pillow introduced when her mom one-upped her and Roxy's outfit here clearly being a reference to her mom's love of knitting. There is a reason Jade wears blue and John wears green even though that isn't their colors. Dave's shades are a gift from John. John is wearing a bootlegged slimer shirt. I'm not saying the Omega kids need every article of clothing to have a backstory, but if they wear this much clothing it doesn't tell me much.

Why does Yiffy wear cleats if she was hidden away from the world? Did she run around in a backyard like a dog or something? I don't even remember if that is her story or not, I forgot so much about her because I was more focused on how she was a child that Rose had behind her wife's back. They're overloaded with drama too.

To add to that. I haven't placed much thought in it but I don't know what the Omega kids color scheme is supposed to be. I assume the Beta kids colors come from basic web colors. If you invert the beta kid's colors you get the Alpha kids color scheme.

The Omega kids just feel scattered and unorganized. It makes them feel even more meaningless because they don't fit in. If that is the point then why not have five kids to really fuck with the system here? The writers should have really ran with the whole "we're flipping the script and subverting expectations" thing.

I also don't give a shit if this is nitpicky, I'm sure you guys can all see there is something off about the omega kids.

I agree about the accessories doesn't really show they are connected with the Beta Kid adults. If the bandana is suppose to be like a replacement to how Roxy wears a scarf, then let the boy wear a scarf and not a stupid gay bandana. You think that Kanaya, who is a fashionista herself, would be critical of what her daughter, Vrissy wears. And if you are saying she would never reprimand her daughter because she looks like her crush, then that brings up a worse implication that she really is grooming her to be like Vriska by enabling her bad habits. What confuses me is Tavvy's overshirt has the matching color of Gamzee, the one who MOLESTED HIM. You think after his death, he would never wear that color and be disgusted by any shade of purple that's within his sight. Unless him still wearing that purple vest now is still symbolizing he is still bound by Gamzee or can't move on after what he did to him.

But yeah, nothing about the Omega Kids designs makes sense. And I still am on the side that laughs at Yiffany looking more like Nostalgia Critic.

[girlbowser]

Give meq tgat fefat <> roxy stuffff please

alright bear with me for a second i gotta paint a word picture

imagine youre roxy lalonde, right.

you just entered the game. youve got a bottle of momslime. your modus was literally built to hold ectobiologized goo. youve been feeling the weight of destiny on your shoulders -- YOU ARE GOING TO MEET HER. she might be dead but you are going to meet her.

and you get to your sprite,

and theres just

a fucking

CLOWN

and two corpses that he throws into the kernel.

(the first homestuck fic i ever read, Conference Call, has a version of the erisolsprite prototyping. they fought gamzee and got their fuckin asses kicked. its great.)

and then youre left with just. Some Alien Bitch. and its like the universe is teasing you, because she's partially the DIRECT DESCENDANT of the fishwitch what killed your mom, and also a cat???? you are so sick to death of cats. you have been up to your fucking ass in cats. its just too much

and then she just. talks to you

and you slowly start to listen

you hear about her lives on alternia. what it was like being a princess, what it was like being the pauper. how they weren't even really friends, before -- they ran in different circles.

but they're one person, now. one person dedicated to *helping you.*

we never find out how roxy quit drinking, or who helped her through it

(it was fefeta)

and fefeta *loves* you. she listens to you talk about boys. you talk about your mom. fefeta never really spoke to her... but her nepeta half *knows what happened to your kitty frigglish* after he died. and frigglish said that your mom was okay.

that everything was going to be okay

and it's just. jane had her shit. jake was up in his shit. dirk had fucked off with his shit. and roxy really only had fefeta!!!!!!!!

and i think they were moirails and i think they loved each other so much. frankly. tbf.

roxy is a trans woman, fefeta is newly plural. they have a lot in common. tbqh. its like. its very beautiful. in my eyes. in my vision.

and then

she dies

and this is like. this is a really big fucking deal honestly?

fefeta's death is like. a huge thing. its one of the only things she tells john about when summarizing the entirety of her session.

and this isnt something she magically gets back in the post-retcon timeline, either

like... when fefeta dies, there isnt a post-retcon fefeta. (we'll GET TO YOU JASPROSE.) it's just roxy who remembers fefeta's existence at all -- her friends dont have any connection to her. *nobody alive in all of reality* remembers her.

fefeta isnt just dead, dude, shes Fucking GONE. shes the goner ever. shes fuckin erased.

but honestly

on a level? good for her.

we've seen what being in homestuck does to people. it warps them, reshapes them. (see the new hsbc upd8 for some cool imagery about it.) fefetasprite was never a real part of the story. she got away with being silent -- her words are hidden from us. she was never in LE's clutches.

and why would LE even want to clutch her

she's the sword that's going to kill him, after all

:3

i call fefetasprite the "cat fish witch" for a very important reason. a) its cute BUT B). if you look at caledfwlch, dave's sword, and just sorta. squint at the word. it looks like cat fish witch. that's fefeta. she Iss the cat fish witch.

so what does her death mean?

well it's not like dave used an UNBROKEN sword to fight LE.

feferi is the part of the sword still left in the stone. the part we forgot and left behind.

which leaves Nepeta, the other half of this broken sword, of the Cat Fish Witch

to kill the shit out of Lord English. B33

the sword was always going to kill him!!!!!!!! fefetasprite was the sword!!!!!!!!!!! NEPETA WAS ALWAYS FATED TO DEFEAT LORD ENGLISH!!!! AM I CLINICALLY INSANE? YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

anyway. all this to say.

i wrote a fic about this.

check out the second work in the series for roxy processing the emotions that none of her post-retcon friends remember her moirail. it's some good stuff i think!!!!!!! also hal is there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

anyway jasprose is just roxy's initial dream of reviving her mom in her kernelsprite brought to life through the most roundabout and indirect and stupid way possible. send POST

[starsnores]

Gamzee lavishing praise and worship on Karkat’s body and specifically emphasizing how much he enjoys seeing the scarlet red when he parts his thighs, the heat and the taste and the way it leaves a fuchsia sheen over his bulge when he pulls out. Gamzee going out of his way to comment on Karkat’s mutant blood, even if it’s for his own enjoyment more than anything. Gamzee getting really into showing off just how *red* his mutant is, from the pretty ruby blush on his face to red-flushed parts often hidden.

that's so good. very hot.

[lesboygamzee]

if u humour me for a second and take ' fake ' as something loaded with some form of transphobia ( re : karkat calling gamzee a faker ) it lines up eith the idea ive always kind of accepted that vriska externalises her internalised transphobia a bit ( not directly but in a kind of transmedicalist sense , and even then hidden among everything else ie tavros not Trying Hard Enough ( to be a girl ) whcih upsets vriska ( self hating ) ) and tavros ( closeted trans woman ) kind of ends up being collateral

kanaya ( out trans woman ) giving advice to tavros relating to a ' fake ' and tavros beginning to think it was a joke played on her with little reasoning as to why might be something but probably not ( even more Probably Not as the rest of this post ! )

[minu-moni]

What I think is interesting to analyze when looking into a character portrayal is to notice how the author influences in the character’s actions.

Let’s compare Gamzee to Jevil, from Deltarune.

Both characters are essentially “character who came in contact with someone that gave them more knowledge than they could handle and they went insane because of it” but how Hussie and Toby run with this idea is majorly different.

While Hussie writes Gamzee to be an irredeemable monster, an abuser and overall a shitty person, Toby goes the other way with Jevil.

Throughout Deltarune’s chapter one if you’re going to do the hidden boss, you get some information from Seam about Jevil. He speaks about Jevil mostly with caution, but he never villainizes him. And while Jevil is implied to have hurt people, so much so that he had to be locked up, Seam never treats him as a villain. He treats him as an old friend and even speaks fondly of him after you beat his fight. There is no instance where Toby writes Jevil to be inherently evil, abusive or a shitty person overall, and the fandom mostly sees him on a positive light.

Gamzee however, is the opposite. His encounter with Lil Cal turns him into a villain with no redeeming qualities and strips him of any personality and nuance to the point he doesn’t even speak. He is also retconned to always have been an asshole and then Hussie goes out of his way to villainize him and treat his situation as something that turned him into a villain, instead of a character with flaws who was manipulated and used in some way.

And how does the fandom treat Gamzee? They absolutely despise him. There’s a pretty vocal bunch in the Homestuck fandom that thinks Gamzee is just a shitty person who chose to serve Lord English and kill all his friends, and part of this is because of how he’s portrayed in the comic.

Let’s not also forget about how Gamzee is written as neurodivergent and black-coded, while those characteristics are missing in Jevil’s character (at least in any major way). And while maybe not intentional, I absolutely believe that this influenced Hussie’s way of writing Gamzee. There’s too many influences of this to not be so.

People, specifically people of color and disabled people, have said this for a long time now, but this discussion goes unaddressed and recognized by the part of the fandom that hates Gamzee, which downplays these concerns, and Hussie, who doesn’t address them at all and even makes fun of people for thinking of Gamzee with more nuance on the epilogues.

Comparing those two characters and the way they’re written, we can see that it’s clearly an author problem. Hussie writes Gamzee so poorly that people have actually found instances of possible racism and ableism in him, meanwhile there’s way less of an issue with Jevil, who is written as nuanced and the fandom absolutely loves him for it.

Y’all need to stop talking about characters like they actually chose what they did. They’re not real. Someone wrote them to act the way they do. They’re not independent, they’re not conscientious, they don’t choose anything. It’s the author that chooses what they will do, and their biases absolutely influences the writing of such.

[homestuck-fanauthor-coalition]

The Good, The Bad, and The Alternative (515450 words) by Madam_Melon_Meow, sarcasticcelery

Chapters: 39/? Fandom: Homestuck Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Nepeta Leijon/Equius Zahhak, Sollux Captor/Aradia Megido, Eridan Ampora & Feferi Peixes, Kanaya Maryam & Dave Strider, Rose Lalonde & Rose's Mom | Beta Roxy Lalonde, Dave's Bro | Beta Dirk Strider & Dave Strider, Beta Kids & Beta Trolls, Jade Harley & Rose's Mom | Beta Roxy Lalonde, Dad Egbert & John Egbert, Kanaya Maryam/Vriska Serket, Eridan Ampora/Dave Strider Characters: John Egbert, Rose Lalonde, Dave Strider, Jade Harley, Becquerel (Homestuck), Kanaya Maryam, Vriska Serket, Karkat Vantas, Terezi Pyrope, Aradia Megido, Tavros Nitram, Sollux Captor, Gamzee Makara, Eridan Ampora, Feferi Peixes, Nepeta Leijon, Equius Zahhak, Virgin Mother Grub (Homestuck), Vriska's Lusus, Gl'bgolyb (Homestuck), Dad Egbert, Rose's Mom | Beta Roxy Lalonde, Dave's Bro | Beta Dirk Strider, Aurthour (Homestuck), The Condesce (Homestuck), Serenity (Homestuck) Additional Tags: inspired by Kim Harrison’s The Hollows, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Humanstuck, Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Human Lusii (Homestuck), Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Demigods, Vampires, multi POV: all beta trolls & humans, The Horrorterrors (Homestuck), Non-Abusive Dave's Bro | Beta Dirk Strider, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, Violence, Magic, Aged-Up Character(s), the kids and trolls range between 16 and 20, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Vriska Serket has PTSD, Memory Loss, Scars, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Plot Twists, Unreliable Narrator, Rose Lalonde and Dave Strider Are Not Related, Skaianet Laboratories, beta guardians are not alpha kids and troll parents are not ancestors, monsterstuck, Break Up, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Ship Tags Will Update As They Become Relevant, Good Person Gamzee Makara, Suicide Attempt by Proxy, Dissociation, Victim Blaming, Abusive Parents, sexually active teenagers, Underage Drinking Series: Part 1 of Monsterstuck: Suburban Catastrophe Summary: Three years ago, on John Egbert's birthday, the world ended. Three years ago, Jade Harley and Vriska Serket vanished alongside billions of others. Three years ago, the apocalypse arrived, transforming everything and revealing much that was hidden to those who remained. Three years ago, the meteors (mostly!) missed Houston, and that's where John's headed today. In Houston, Rose Lalonde searches for washed-up traces of magic, warily overseen by Kanaya and her old friend Dave. In Texas, the newly dubbed "alternatives" maintain a newfound alliance with the humans they saved--and a wary truce with the Hunter forces that once kept all these creatures of fable and fairytale a secret from the world of man. And here, in Houston, the world is about to change once again. An urban fantasy monsterstuck AU featuring the beta kids, beta trolls, and their guardians. Updates every other Weekend!

~~~~

Written by the founder and her fiance (aka our other admin), we are once again boosting this fic to you all! If you are a fan of fantasy stories, if you think rosemary deserves a divorce arc, or if you're a big fan of Vriska being handled with nuance, you should check this out! their blog is @thegoodthebadthealternative

[jojotier]

Okey but I need to know what is Karkat character like in the CW version or if Karkat watches any of the shows

oh Karkat fucking hates the fact that these shows exist. He accidentally catches the HBO's Homestuck episode centering around murderstuck and it ends up sending him into a Depressive Spiral he's gotta call his therapist about. at first he tries to avoid any mention of the shows but then his friends start watching them and the little gremlin in his brain telling him to hatewatch shit is immediately activated.

so he finally does hatewatch them. understandably, he hates the CW's Homestuck more because it portrays him as a pathetic loser who only becomes even vaguely competent when someone's love lives are on the line. CW murderstuck is played as a slapstick comedy where CW Tavros accidentally stabs himself with a hidden blade in his Pupa Pan hat and CW Vriska just comically whistles as she walks away and CW Gamzee is dressed up as a human clown, not a jugalo, who rather than being given to religiously zealous rage just decides to play a series of pranks which increasingly go wrong. it's all a joke and Not A Very Good One.

and he hatewatches HBO's Homestuck but he just keeps being taken aback because it's so faithful but like... done in a tasteful way, almost? The murderstuck is exactly the same but this time the showrunner adds this detail where HBO Sollux, blind, wakes up and drags himself over to HBO Feferi's corpse, calling her name, voice cracking, breaking down as he gently cradles her in his arms; the bit where he's stabbed by Jack is exactly the same, but there's an added detail where before the final battle HBO Jack and HBO Karkat have one final goodbye.

HBO Karkat breaks down because he's sleep deprived and scared and 6 sweeps old and doesn't want to die (in real life, Karkat wasn't afforded this luxury) and HBO Jack kinda looks around and awkwardly consoles him, patting his shoulder and talking about the nature of fear and how sometimes it's better to feel it and do it anyway than to never fear at all. It's this beautiful bonding moment and Karkat's just stricken because HBO's Homestuck is 100%, completely sincere.

So he looks up interviews with the showrunner (hemoanonymous Leoxri, speaking gently, reverently, a troll through and through and so damnably open about his faith in the Gods) and the actors (they love each other, they support each other, the actor playing him is a 6 sweep old mutant, Risnel, who's so meek and gentle Karkat knows the kid would've never survived on Alternia), trying to find more to hate, but he can't, and it makes him so angry because in the end they're all still using his trauma and his dead friends for entertainment. no matter the intention. no matter the faith. they're just a story to these people.

CW's Homestuck is easier to hate. at least the showrunner hates Karkat just as much as Karkat hates him.

[abundantchewtoys]

HS^2 re: p534-576

Woof (pun not intended), it's a doozy, this one.

Jade as doting mother was hilariously embarassing. But it seems her reasons to have a child in the first place stem from her intense loneliness, exacerbated by her celebrity status.

Meanwhile, Rose's motivation to carry the child... There's two ways to interpret it. The least complimentary is that she's just as manipulative as Dirk, using her powers to 'okay' a disgraceful decision because she'll be forgiven in the end anyway. I hope she actually wanted to see if she could do something her powers couldn't predict the outcome of. It would mean she's aware of the Candy timeline's nature of decreasing truthfulness, relevance and necessity and is trying to do something about it. The fact that she's so dismissive about Earth C's people, as is Jade, could point in that direction.

In fact, it would seem that, for all that the Candy timeline appeared to be a 'saccharine end state' for most of the kids, they do seem to be aware that even beyond the totalitarian government, there's something else fundamentally wrong with the timeline?

Meanwhlie, Yiffany not talking is so funny when you think about it. Even while we're being her, she's just too cool to lower herself to such base characterizational devices.

Would be funny if she's treated as the teen version of hypothetical older Maggie Simpson of Beyond Canon. Implied to be witty & talkative but never shown. :p

What else? So, uh, Tavros & Yiffany are acquainted, and Yiffy probably got locked up/kept hidden in Tavros' house when she was away from boarding school. Like a perverse Rapunzel. Making Tavros not just her biological uncle but also foster brother, oh jeez. So, uh, it might also mean her enmity with Gamzee's corpse stemmed from actual, in-person interactions with the clown.

Meenah's probably calling to let Rose & Kanaya know that Jane's coming to the meteor too.

So, the Point. I'm assuming it's to do with the device behind the curtain, beneath the meteor.

Spitballing & exchanging theories with Blaperile, I'm assuming it's a way for the Candy people to travel into the Meat timeline.

I wouldn't like it to be one way, for one thing because some people might not want to leave. For another, what would The Influencers even be able to do?

It could be a Sburb copy for the new kids to boot a session with & interact with the Deltritus gang?

Would be funny to have a sort of Hivebent situation going on with 2 separate teams turning out to be entering the same session.

If it's a giant version of the Hiveswap device, maybe the Candy & Meat timeline meteors get swapped (a literal swapping of hives).

Then maybe Candy Earth C with the Meat meteor turns out to be Alternate Calliope's home timeline, and the reverse for Caliborn/Lord English?

It would seem Jade was carrying around a stuffed corpse in her sylladex! Of course Adult Dave (now Davebot) is the most likely person. It could lead to Davebot exploding if his corpse is ever prototyped! But then we'd have a new version of Davesprite...

If it were Candy Dirk, we'd get Dirksprite: aka Arquiusprite minus Equius minus autoresponder.

With how Rose's mom got touched on in the argument, what if Jade had stuffed Mom and Dad? As Blaperile pointed out to me, while John & Jade had a funeral for them pre-retcon, we don't know that they did post-retcon, do we?

No chance for a Johnsprite beyond Terezi prototyping Meat John, though! Would've been funny to have Johnsprite^2 or *2. But unless Jade took John's original body (from his quest bed) from LOWAS before it exploded, we won't have that. As she never found the bodies for John & Davesprite in her timeline.

(Yeah I'm just grasping at straws to get a POV & further fleshing out for Dad, can't help it.)

As for the newspost, turns out I missed the one from Feb 1st. Wow, Vast Error has gotten the Hussie stamp of approval and now falls under the HICU protection and can monetize on their work!

I haven't read it yet, but I know from experience how engaging fanventures can be, so good for them!

And oh geez, so much unvaulted commentary to read on Patreon. :B

[jadeyharls]

Holy Crap, That is a Lot of Words: A "Brief" History of Jade E. Harley and the Alterra Timeline

April 13, Year 0 ATG (After the Game): Sburb is officially beaten and the new universe is created. This is where this timeline splits from the Alpha Timeline. Before opening the door, Karkat ends up speaking to Calliope and stops John from opening it. If she had been brought back from the dead, was it possible to bring back the other trolls? After some deliberation, the living players decided that it might be wise to do some preparation before entering the new universe. They didn’t know what to expect, and this was a second chance they were not ready to screw up.

Over the course of the next few months the players alongside representatives of the carapacians and consorts start laying out plans for the new universe. This includes how they would go about kickstarting the new civilization, starting with the foundation of a single settlement and a governing body. The Mayor is eventually elected the head of this governing body, with several of the “gods” playing active roles in society by serving or consulting on a variety of committees. All of the former players serve on a council put in place to safeguard the timeline, however, it is decided early on that no players would be permitted to hold elected roles that would influence governing policies. (Read as: Gods are not allowed to become president.)

After experimenting with several combinations of powers, the players finally figure out how to bring a ghost back without the use of a life ring… sort of. (This process became a bit more refined after Feferi was revived.) The hunt begins for the unaccounted for ghosts that are not currently a part of a sprite. During this time the players are guilt tripped convinced to bring the Beforian trolls with them as well. However, bringing back old friends does come with some cost. Davepeta for example had already vanished before the game ended. Nepeta’s ghost was eventually recovered (with her actually being the last to be revived), but there was no sign of what might be left of Davesprite. Hal is lost when bringing Equius out of the sprite, and Nanasprite and Jasprose both go missing during this time period.

Jade secretly stashes away a GREEN SUN spark somewhere during this time. To this day, no one knows but her. It’s hidden in a locket she keeps well buried in the back of her closet. She has methods in place to keep it from being detected. This is also why she still has a small degree of her first guardian powers. No one questions it (Rose and a few others probably do tbh) because “really, who completely understands how first guardians work anyway?” 

September, Year 0 ATG: The door to the new universe is opened. The players and those who joined them start looking for a place to settle, as well where the meteor lab might have crashed. However, it for some reason can not be found.

Sometime before the end of Year 0 AGT: Aranea, Gamzee, and Jack are put in trial for their various actions during the game. (Vriska and Eridan would later be addressed as well, but those were the big 3.) Since there really wasn’t much of a justice system in place yet, there wasn’t a whole lot that could be done. (They are still working on it. It’s not a super big priority though since most of the timeline’s residents are really chill.) The two trolls are basically given a second chance under extremely close supervision. Jack however is placed under “house arrest”, with Ms. Paint acting as his supervisor of sorts.

July 15th, Year 1 AGT: Cantown is officially founded and named. Located near a river about 100 miles off the east coast of what used to be the United States. I never officially decided where, but I think my original idea was that it might have been somewhere in where South Carolina used to be. Note though, that Earth’s geography has changed significantly.

Sometime during Year 1 AGT: Jade’s first post game death due to a construction accident. Not just or heroic.

Year 2 AGT: Jade and Jake (now 18) move out from their shared residence with John and Jane into the tower they built much closer to the coast. 

Sometime in Year 4 AGT: Dirk and Jade have a falling out after he and Jake get back together for the 3rd god dang time. Up until this point they actually had been decently good friends and often worked together since they both serve on the Science and Tech committee. 

Jade discovers a natural pool in what used to be Central America, and starts conducting research on wildlife that lives there, including the rapid evolution of sburb generated fauna (Hummingbirds and frogs).

Mid-December Year 5 AGT: Jade (now 21) accidentally discovers access to what she calls the multi-net through a website called Hivetale. She tells Jake about this fairly early on since he lives with her. Lots of weird stuff happens.

January Year 6 AGT: Jade meets her first moirail (Eridan). He is the first visitor from outside her timeline. These visits are mostly one sided though, as she has no way to leave her timeline at this point.

Aradia finds out about this and puts in place the secrecy rule. As long as the multiverse shenanigans stay under wraps, she is fine. If the secret gets out or the timeline is in anyway threatened, they will be going into total lockdown permanently.

Jade becomes close with another timeline’s Alpha Dave (David) and Hal around this point.

Spring Year 6 AGT: Hal gets severely injured. She convinces Aradia to help her break out of the timeline to go and help him. They end up needing another time player to make this work, and Damara is recruited after Aradia strikes a deal with her. Jade… wasn’t entirely sure what that deal was and was kind of afraid to ask. 

Turns out Hal’s version Dirk is the only one that knows how to fix him so enter this jerk. Seriously, she could not stand him at first because of how he treated Hal. Over time the two Striders ended up making up, and Jade befriended Dirk as well. (Aka, Grumpybutt.)

The ex moirail ends up moving in with her for a short time after his home gets destroyed by magical girls. Yes that is actually what happened, and no she did not tell Aradia about this.

Her timeline’s Rose and Kanaya get married.

Her timeline’s Dave and Karkat start dating.

John moves out from Jane’s house, and gets a place with Roxy and Calliope.

Summer Year 6 AGT: Hivetale says goodbye, Tumblr says hello. 

Jade meets Jack within like the first month. He keeps trying to fight her and she is NOT having it. Frankly, she doesn’t trust him. It’s freaking JACK NOIR, and still in full Bec mode at that. If being in contact with anyone is going to be a danger to her timeline, it’s going to be him right? 

“Wait who is this small dog child, and why/how the heck is she showing up at my house asking me to date her dad?” Jade meets Lily Noir, and the rest of the original 6 pups slowly make their way into her life. (Alpha, Bones, Timber, Demise, Lily, and Kami. The other 7 kids have not been born yet.) Jade reluctantly at first becomes friends with Jack. It… took awhile to get Lily to quit trying to get her to date Jack. 

Jake eventually ends up finding out about the Noir kids and proceeds to be like wtf. To be fair, Kami was painting occult rituals on their wall. 

Jade finds out Jake is planning to move in with Dirk. This ends up putting her in a really bad place mentally because she is terrified of the idea of living alone again after doing so for most her life. They come to a compromise, and this is when Dirk moves in with them much to her chagrin. 

Jade gets pale married?? Yeah, so… funny thing. She had no idea that is what happened, or that was even a thing. She was basically given a ring thought she was just getting a 6 month anniversary present. She didn’t know it was a marriage thing until months later. Luckily, she was okay with it, just really surprised. 

December, Year 6 AGT: Jade gets Poppy (her eevee) as a birthday present. Hiding her from Dirk is a massive pain, but she manages. Again, Jade didn’t tell Aradia. She found out of course eventually, but this was months later so by then Jade was able to convince her that she could keep the little terror hidden.

Year 7 AGT: Okay, so my memory gets a little foggy for the next few years, but I’m going to do my best. First off though, Jade finally gets a inter-dimensional portal device. 

Jade also gets Olena (her then Vulpix, now Ninetails) around late November. Dinah, her dog, was given to her by Jack that December.

Jade’s second death by plant spore induced strangulation. The purple stranglers are discovered and appropriately named. 

That one time she was magic anon-ed and given butterfly wings and antenna instead of her dog ears for like a week. That sucked. 

Also briefly turned into a griffin of all things by an anon. She hated that.

The dislocated knee incident.

Year 8-9 AGT: Okay, I might be off here, but I am about 80% sure this is when Flarping 2.0 happened. 

Olena evolves.

Hal and Grumpybutt Dirk vanished around Summer Year 8 a few months before she joined Flarping.

If I’m right then this is when she met Equius, Kris, EE, Vinny, and a few others. She was still on Tumblr some, but mostly on Flarping.

I want to say she met Nova as well? Which also means she got Gilligan (Her robotic humming bird assistant), though I do think that was post Flarping. 

Mer-May anon stikes. She basically gets stuck in a bathtub for a week.

I believe this is when Paradox Space was a thing for a little as well.

Built the cabin near the pool mentioned earlier, mostly to give her a place to let her pets wander freely and host visitors from outside the timeline where Dirk wouldn’t be an issue. But it also serves as a place to do her research. The ex moirail lived here for a few months at one point.

Year 10 AGT: Back to Tumblr.

Jade has to put Herbert the frog in solitary confinement away from other frogs. 

Roxy and John get engaged. No, they still aren’t married.

The ex moirail goes MIA. 

Jade and Equius start getting together. Not like “together” together though. Nooooo never.

3rd Death by late onset of the family peanut allergy. 

The tiny metal baby (Orion Pax the Aron) is hatched by an egg left at Jade’s cabin by Ivory Noir. 

Year 11 AGT: Not a whole lot happens unless I am forgetting something. Jade slowly starts to resent the now ex-moirail as he kind of just vanished without telling her, and she starts to realize some other things about the relationship as well. She finally decides to move on.

Equius gives her Oleander (Turtwig).

Gilligan starts acting… odd. 

Year 12 AGT: PRESENT DAY Jade turns 29 this year.

Gilligan starts acting more odd.

Not a whole lot of anything too crazy. 

Kris and Jade become moirails.

Year 13 AGT and forward: Gilligan is [Spoilers]. You’ll see it eventually. It’s about time I got that plot point moving. Anyway, from here on out, there is some discrepancy when it comes to the future of the timeline. Basically, Jade and the other immortals continue on their lives as civilization grows around them. Eventually though, there is a timeline split that leads to one of two potential far-off futures. Like hundreds of years off. One is the “good end”. Jade ends up raising a family of family of 4 adopted kids, and maaaaybe gets together with someone. (Big maybe) It’s just a happy, well-adjusted life where nothing bad will happen. No haha, not at all. The other is the “bad end”, which… basically involves Jade starting to take the goddess thing a bit too seriously after she gets ditched by most of the people in her life, and becomes the ruler of a new planet dubbed New Prospit. She does have an adopted son in this timeline who is killed during an attempted assassination, and whoops this starts a war. 

[thewertsearch]

And now we have to deal with this motherfucker.

It’s probable that Scratch knew things would play out like this, which means this message was always intended for Karkat.

...it's probable that that's the case, but there's always a slight possibility that we're in one of his dark pockets. If so, then Karkat wasn't supposed to see this message, and might be about to learn something Scratch doesn't want him to know.

Mr. Vantas.

Dang it.

I'm delivering this message through the console of one of my numerous unwitting proteges to give you a word of advice, and then you will not hear from me again.

Characteristically unhelpful - and in fact, it might not refer to either of Eridan's victims. We still have Tavros's corpse to deal with, and I'm sure there'll be more bodies hitting the floor before the day is out.

All of the bodies in the room remain as they were. There is clearly nothing to be concerned about whatsoever.

Feferi has an eldritch connection through the Horrorterrrors, and they could probably pull some dark magical shenanigans to get her body moving again. I think that's unlikely, though, since Feferi's ghost is active in the Dream Bubbles, and I don't think she'd actually want to be revived. After all, she's go a job to do.

I'm still convinced that Kanaya's coming back, but it's hardly going to happen while our back is turned. We're out of Kernelsprites, so she can't be prototyped - and we can't use her Dream Moon Slab, if it even exists, because Prospit's been destroyed by Jack.

Frankly, I can't think of a single realistic way to revive her short of time travel, and that's not a road we want to go down. I'm really trying not to think about what that might mean.

I guess that leaves Tavros.

There's definitely something going on with him that we don't understand. He was about to smooch Vriska before she stopped him, and the Breath symbolism surrounding the act makes me think it was more than just a typical Dream Self revival kiss. He has a hidden power, and that power seems to kick in when someone's dying.

Could Tavros be a little less dead than we've been led to believe? It's possible - his arc doesn't scan as complete to me. He'd only obtained the merest shred of confidence before Vriska brought him fatally down to earth, and I think there are still many interesting places you could take his character.

CG: THERE YOU ARE, YOU HAD ME WORRIED DUDE […] CG: QUIT THE BULLSHIT PARTYCLOWN ANTICS AND GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE. […] TC: shut up. CG: WHAT… TC: I SAID SHUT THE MOTHERFUCK UP, MOTHERFUCKER. TC: honk honk honk :o)

Gamzee’s rocking a new quirk. He’s still swapping cases, but they’re alternating every message rather than every character, as though his mind is less scrambled than it used to be.

Could this be how he talks when he's off the slime? He already seems more aware than before, and his grumpiness evokes a hangover - but he's honking more than he used to, which is the opposite of what I'd expect if he was sober.

CG: SERIOUSLY, GET BACK HERE NOW, AND HAVE A SLIME PIE TO RELAX OR SOMETHING. TC: SLIME? TC: there is no more slime, brother. TC: AND ANYWAY. TC: shit was motherfuckin poison, didn't you know?

Yup. It looks like Gamzee’s gone cold featherbeast.

It's not a great time for this to happen, but it's not like we can stop it now. I highly doubt Gamzee was forward-thinking enough to reproduce his pies through alchemy, and things are a little too tense right now to try getting clever with an Appearifier. For better or worse, his supply has dried up for the foreseeable future.

So now, for the first time, we're interacting with a Gamzee who isn't out of his mind on soporifics. His shift in personality is already pretty drastic, and I'm interested in seeing what the real Gamzee is like.

[barfville]

every time u draw shadowheart the upside down mickey mouse.. the hidden mickey...

im sorry i have u tell u my secret its gamzee and mickey mouse

[kujiua-kun]

[Homestuck] - H U M A N B O Y S…

Alternate title "I made Gamzee a fuckboy and I DO NOT apologize"

I had a whole humanstuck AU where the human trolls would play sburb at school, and hijinks ensues.

But I didn't feel too confident about it, so I never worked on it.Maybe I will later on down the line, but who knows.

Plus I put a bunch of hidden goodies in the alt text~

[davestriderascend]

the homestuck reread, pt 4

a while ago, i asked if anybody wanted me to recap alterniabound separate from a5a2, and people said yes. its been too long now and i cant remember what the fuck happened in it, so im not going to do that. but i WILL recap meenahbound instead, as a sort of tradeoff. this works out bc i have too much to say about meenahbound and the a6a3 post was already too long.

if youre new here, im rereading homestuck through the unofficial collection and every now and again, ill make a little recap to get my thoughts in order, remember whats happened, and write down my opinions on it. you can read these recaps from the beginning here.

meenahbound is a series of minigames that take place over the course of a6i3, interspersed with other shenanigans. ive already talked about these other shenanigans, along with the rest of the beginning of a6, in this post. i will be proceeding with the assumption that youre already familiar with that posts contents. with all of that said, lets get into it.

The Plot

a lot of a6i3 centers around the dreambubbles and the quest to stop lord english. at the time of meenahbound pt 1 (hereafter referred to as mb1), le has just killed a whole shitload of bubble ghosts. thus, the excitement and missions.

there are three different plans in place to stop le. the first, and the one we primarily follow, is meenahs plan to assemble a massive army of ghosts and fight him headon. this is the primary driving goal behind meenahbound. the second plan is headed by aranea, who wants to find le's rumored sister, who supposedly has the power to face him. the third is headed by vriska, who seeks to find a rumored treasure holding a secret weapon, said to be his weakness. she searches for this treasure using maps of the void, but the maps are black and featureless until le shatters reality, which adds cracks she can navigate by. because of this, she also decides she needs to assemble an army to serve as a decoy, pretending to search for le's sister and riling him up so that hell destroy reality in the spots she needs to complete the map. i think you can see how all these plans are connecting.

at the end of the intermission, meenah and vriska strife to decide whos plan will win the army, stating that if they tie, theyll compromise. when we see them again later, its clear that thats exactly what happened, and now the three plan leaders are all collaborating.

w all of that said, meenahbound follows meenah as she catches up with her old sessionmates and tries to recruit people for her army, and also just follows karkat around everywhere, due to a crush she seems to be harboring on him. araneas talkbooth marks the end of each minigame, where you receive an update on araneas progress with her quest (zilch, every time. shes been too distracted with her stupid booth), and araneas description of each of the dancestors youve interacted with so far.

in mb1, meenah leaves her castle and begins wandering. she bumps into aradia, dave, rose, and kanaya, and chats with each very briefly before reaching the area with kankri, karkat, porrim, and latula. the player completes a variety of puzzles, interacting with and "being" all characters but karkat, in order to free up karkat to unlock a door and escape the level.

in mb2, meenah discovers karkat has disappeared behind another locked door. a series of chests hidden throughout the level hold keys to the door. the first room has mituna and cronus, and the second has meulin and kurloz. interacting with the latter two correctly unlocks a cutscene wherein kurloz has a creepy meeting with gamzee. when you unlock karkats door, meenah has a convo w karkat about his opinions on alternia, hic, and his dreams of becoming a threshecutioner, where he eventually agrees to join her army if he meets up with her in a bubble later in exchange for becoming her grand thresh. after, karkat goes on a walk and meets up with terezi, who feels insecure compared to her dancestor, and he actually has a really sweet conversation with her where he reassures her about it and shows that hes really moved past his cringy actions in a6a2. after, terezi briefly chats with meenah, before meenah unlocks the aranea end.

in mb3, the first room presents a puzzle with damara, rufioh, and horuss, wherein you untangle the backstory of their relationship drama as you go to unlock the next room. in the second room, meenah can speak with kanaya and porrim to unlock the door to the meteor, and walk around the meteor and interact with dave, rose, and a sleeping karkat, all while supervised by kanaya. after unlocking the door, you can do the same with damara, unsupervised. being damara replaces araneas final booth with a booth run by hussie, who gives shitty rundowns on all of the dancestors. meenah can proceed into the final area, where she meets up with vriska, tavros, and john, which leads up into the aforementioned meenah/vriska strife.

The Characters

i am going to be honest. i have read the dialogue scripts for openbound (openbound meenahbound whatEVER who even cares back in my day everyone called it meenahbound) like a zillion billion times as research for writing projects to make sure i got the dancestors voices just right, so there wasnt a lot here that was new for me, and at any given moment i seem to have both more information abt the dancestors than the average person and more than anyone should have. but ill take some time to touch on all of them here anyway, because lbr, characters are the most important part of hs and at least 75% of why we read it.

before that, though. something that isnt stated often enough about the dancestors is that theyre jokes, and seriously not substantial characters when you try to analyze them sincerely. theyre exaggerated caricatures of mostly tumblr stereotypes. there genuinely is not a lot to them and theyre pretty much all nasty, shitty people, and a lot of them are built on jokes that can come off kind of problematic to outright bigoted. i am not going to get super in depth re: the bigotry bc while im critical of hussie thats not what thsi post is about, but ill probably mention it here and there as it comes up. youll have to research that stuff on your own.

edit: since tumblr user calware just made a post about it and reminded me, just fyi, dancestor = descendant/ancestor, and technically both groups of trolls are dancestors. canonically, meenahs group are the "alpha" trolls, while karkats are the "betas," presumably bc karkats were introduced first?? this has never made sense to me, and has clearly never made sense to anyone else either bc ive heard both groups called both beta and alpha interchangeably. afaik, the only exclusive and clear term is post-scratch and pre-scratch. but im tired and im going to say dancestor bc thats the most popular fandom term and idc

Damara

of all of the dancestors, damara to me is the most.... hhh. her character is built on racist tropes. lets just put that whole thing out there where we can all see it. even the "meek girl" to "vicious, overly sexual, vindictive ex" thing is like. it ALSO builds on racist tropes! so its really difficult to engage with her story at face value, bc the racism is just so... unavoidable.

but her story, as its given to us, is that she was originally kind and friendly, and met rufioh through what is essentially an anime club. they started dating. however, when rufioh began cheating on her w horuss, it made her insecure and sad, and she felt really shitty about the whole thing. these feelings were pushed to a tipping point when meenah got involved and began rubbing it in her face and bullying her about it (more on that when we get to meenah), and she became aggressive and violent. her and meenah got in a huge, long fight, wherein she almost killed meenah, paralyzed rufioh, and according to aranea, she spent the rest of the session tormenting her fellow players and making sure they wouldnt win at any turn. the only time she was cooperative was during the scratch, which seemed to be only because she was certain it would make the others miserable. aranea has theorized part of her turn in personality was due to influence from le, which seems correct, based off of her conversations with rufioh, where she mentions the inevitability of le and her desires to serve him. as far as i can remember, its unknown whether or not she godtiered.

in the afterlife, damara is hostile to everyone, but seems to take particular delight in tormenting rufioh, locking up his lusus, who rufioh describes as his "happy thought." shes overtly sexual and nasty, and its just. rough. the only people she shows any kindness to are (ironically) rufioh (who is also the only dancestor who seems to be able to communicate with her, due to her "thick accent"), and rose and dave. she has a pretty sincere conversation with rufioh, actually, and with the kids shes polite and friendly. however, we see that when she spots a sleeping karkat, she seems to have cruel intentions, and is stopped by terezi, who reacts to her with hostility and wards her off. ive seen some people suspect based off of her interactions with the kids that she actually still is nice, but her interaction with karkat makes it seem like that was a farce, so idk. there are different interpretations, and ive always been inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt.

all in all, she was one of the most unpleasant characters to interact with for me, both because of the horrifying racism and because of the awful things she says. really. did not like it. ive tried to mostly just present facts about her as they appear in the text because i really just. i dont even want to get into her. the whole thing is just too uncomfortable. this is not my suitcase to unpack. ive seen some people do really incredible things with her character in fanworks that i really admire, but the racism makes it difficult to enjoy her in the canon text.

Rufioh

rufioh is pretty obviously a spoof of the character rufio from pan, played by dante basco (who READ the comic and became a pretty prominent (and cringy) member of the fandom for a while. i knew ppl who were in his music video. wild shit). as such, his character makes frequent references to peter pan and lost boys and all that shit. i havent seen pan, so dont ask me to get into that. like tavros, he also struggles with self confidence, but where tavros is bullied constantly, multiple characters assert that rufioh is hit on like constantly, by everyone. hes real hot shit in his session.

rufiohs backstory is that after growing up insecure about his wings, his lusus introduced him to what is simultaneously a lost boys joke and an anime club. he got really into the animes and got way more confident, and also met damara there and started dating her. however, for whatever goddamn reason, horuss one day decided that he didnt hate rufioh (rufioh says he previously acted like he did), and started hitting on rufioh instead, and rufioh wound up cheating on damara with horuss. rufioh is pretty blase about this, referring to it as "hanging out" when he even admits himself that it was a lot more than hanging out, and says that he has no idea why damara got so mad about it. he continues to date horuss well into their session and afterlife, though someone suggests they dated on and off periodically, and at the time of mb2, hes trying to break up with him. hes unsuccessful, and during meenah and vriskas strife, hes seen trying and failing again, and then hitting on an aradiabot. sort of suggests that cheating is a thing with him.

rufioh seems to be one of the only dancestors on good terms with meenah. he mentions appreciating her "standing up for him" with damara. but overall, we get the impression that hes flaky, insecure and yet overconfident when it comes to his attractiveness, aaand a cheater. also, he REALLY likes the animes, and it never gets less terrible to read about.

Mituna

mitunas probably one of the characters we know the least about, in terms of backstory. aranea states the whole thing is clouded in a lot of mystery. we know that as a player of doom, he spent a lot of time trying to warn his session mates about danger early in, and wasnt taken seriously (not unlike sollux). eventually, he used his powers to subvert some great danger, which caused him permanent brain damage. however, the only witness to this event was kurloz, and given that kurloz is nonverbal, theres no saying what really happened.

mituna fluctuates wildly between aggressive, sexual, and rude, and overly apologetic and meek. this is no doubt a joke about how solluxs bipolar disorder was often exaggerated in fancontent. its not unusual for people with frontal lobe damage to undergo personality changes wherein theyre uncharacteristically aggressive and sexual, but mituna is a joke character, so its questionable whether or not its worth even analyzing him through that framework. something about ableism and hussie and hussies handling of disabled characters here. however, on the subject of his disability, i will say- things mituna is NOT: a fragile, cute, uwu sadboy who relies on kurloz and latula for everything. infantilizing disabled people is CRINGE.

mituna is a huge play on stereotypes about 4chan users. his text background is different from everyone elses, sporting the 4chan text box, and using shitty, handdrawn memes as reaction images. he uses "racist slurs" against seadwellers (which, while kankri does describe them as slurs, kankri also acknowledges that theyre in no way equivalent to slurs used against members of the lower castes due to the fact that lowbloods dont hold political power over seadwellers), aaand some pretty sexist language, in keeping with most perverted characters in homestuck (i think equius might be the only exception, somehow???). he skateboards, and hes a game bro.

Kankri

kankri is one big joke about sjw bloggers on tumblr. drill that all the way into your brain and keep it there. he is easily the least understood of all of the dancestors, due to the fact that his text is unreadable to most people and ridiculously long, so im just going to say right fucking now, where we can all see it: kankri is not sweet. kankri is not naive. kankri is also not an aggressive, badass bully. celibacy =/= asexuality or aromanticism, and you are doing the entirety of the aspec community a disservice when you equate it as such. celibacy also =/= sexual naivety, and neither does aromanticism or asexuality!!!!! god. if youre a kankri fan youre probably my worst enemy, but ive been analyzing kankris character back to front up and down for years, and i do actually like him, so i will be gracious and give you my thoughts so you can be less annoying.

the backstory were given on kankri is relatively limited. he was (perhaps self) designated the leader of the dancestor session, and tried to enforce order through the use of long, insufferable memos, similar to karkat. however, the contents of his memos were largely just the same shit we see from him in the afterlife, and ineffective. he says hes celibate and that hes sworn off wordly possessions, as a part of his whole holier-than-thou, priestly shit, but he also very obviously has a massive crush on latula (which is like, karkats worst moments when interacting with terezi, cranked up to a ten), and claims that the sweater porrim made him actively goes against his worldly possession thing, so. take all that how you will, i guess. unlike signless, his seer powers were never fully realized, having never godtiered, and he also says that he disagrees with signless's methods and disapproves of the rebellion due to the violence and swears involved. a lot of his schtick is an extension of the troll jesus joke with signless, with references made to priesthood and sermons and shit like that, and its safe to assume pacifism would be included, despite how hilarious it would be if kankri just had a shitload of guns named trigger warning.

so now its time to talk about kankris activism.

most of the time, when talking about social justice theory, its impossible to tackle every single problematic thing in the world. at a certain point you just have to assume the person youre talking to is smart enough to make some assumptions on their own, ie; not picking apart the nuances of the variety of forms aspectrum identity takes and the possibility that someone on the aspectrum could also be celibate when saying, hey, equating celibacy and aspectrum identity is bad. yes, i could have gotten into every single little detail about that, but you guys are smarter than that, and thats a lot of words that i dont need to force you to read, or myself to write. however, kankri does not do this. kankri includes all the disclaimers. thats how he gets those massive, long tangents- bc hes trying to cover everything, regardless of the degree of relevance.

how much does kankri actually buy into his own "activism," though? how much of it is legit? well... its difficult to say, because kankri is a joke. theres a very good chance that hussie takes absolutely nothing kankri says seriously, and all of it is a joke and meaningless horseshit (which im sure says something about hussies views on social justice, but this isnt that post). but ignoring that, and looking at it as though it might all be sincere, he does make some valid points. kankris strongest moments of sincere activism are usually when hes talking about castism- an issue that impacts him directly. while some of the things he says may appear silly upon first view- such as the existence of off-caste trolls, mutants, polyblooded trolls, or trolls who identify with a different part of the spectrum than theyve been assigned- we could take these to be sincere issues. what if someone does have a color that doesnt fit neatly into the caste system? how would they identify, and what would that mean for their position in the system? after all, kankri and karkat are off-spectrum, and lime bloods are notorious for not fitting properly into the system. so, we could take kankris opinions on the caste system to be largely sincere, especially given the sensitivity he shows towards being coddled.

(which, is a good time for a side tangent about beforan culling. on beforus, culling is the act of highbloods taking in lowbloods who are deemed unfit to take care of themselves, in a system that frankly seems similar to the conservatorships disabled people are often forced into in our society. we only hear about this through kankri, so its possible that the system isnt that bad, but its easy to see how something like this could become dangerous, abusive, controlling, and infantilizing. obviously, kankri would be at major risk for culling on beforus. the only time we really see kankri get pissed is when porrim acts motherly to him- an act which may feel reminiscent of culling. he hates feeling coddled or infantilized, and makes a point to talk about his own autonomy and independence, telling karkat that hes going to wander around "autonomously." its a pretty weird word to just drop, but he sure does use it!)

however, when it comes to other issues, it becomes foggier. kankri states outright that he doesnt give a shit about gendered roles on beforus, and that theres nothing to the discussion, as its "unimportant and detracts from more important issues" (summarizing, here). this is OBVIOUSLY a load, bc he clearly has no hesitation in bringing up trivial shit when it relates to caste. it seems like he just refuses to engage with it out of some stubborn rebellion against porrim. when it comes to ableism, kankri... seems to care, but also seems to hold a large amount of disdain for disabled people and uses a lot of ableist language and rhetoric, leaving me with the impression that while he thinks hes an ally, he hasnt done any of the unpacking necessary. he says absolutely nasty shit about mituna regarding mitunas disability, and he also talks a lot of shit about how latula overcoming her disability is an inspiration, which is just. yeah, its inspiration porn in action. hes totally ableist as fuck. when it comes to cronus and horuss's kinning shit, he makes it clear he doesnt buy into it at all and thinks theyre delusional, and takes a, "but their delusions make them happy and we should respect that despite thinking theyre stupid" approach that reminds me of christians or atheists talking about other peoples belief systems with disdain. ykwim?

kankri is arrogant and self-centered. his activism stops with its relevant to himself, and he frequently uses it as a vehicle to insult or look down on others. he slut shames porrim, and then loudly proclaims how wrong slut shaming is, while slut shaming her again. he makes fun of skateboarding, he rags on mitunas disability, hes creepy towards latula and doesnt notice when it makes her uncomfortable, he basically drags karkat around and rants at him, and he just.... views everyone else as beneath him, really. hes a fucking asshole, and literally like no one likes him, except cronus (but only as far as kankri sticks up for him or lets him hit on him) and maybe latula, and maybe, maybe porrim. altho fr, porrim and kankri do not have a cute, sweet, mother/son relationship. its more like porrim tries to mother him and he hates it really fucking bad, and then she violates his boundaries and does it again. there is also an instance where kankri suspects porrim of flirting with him and goes off on how disgusting he thinks it would be to date her, likening it to "human incest." so thats there. other characters reference them having a cute mother/son relationship, but its kind of just a joke hussies doing, and i think the joke just kind of... flew over fandoms head.

"leo, this all sounds terrible, why the fuck do you even like this guy" because hes hysterical. hes a giant fucking tool and its so, so funny.

Meulin

meulin is the shippy catgirl. she is literally just like, fanon nepeta, basically. shes a joke about tumblr fandom. shes overexcited about ships and gossip and constantly squeeing and saying omg so fast that it turns into a keysmash, resulting in her frequently using mispellings of omg instead (not JUST mog, but other ones too). shes friendly, forgetful, and honestly pretty cute. it seems like her and nepeta get along really well, which, good for them.

the only backstory we get is in regards to her relationship with kurloz. after falling asleep together one time, kurloz woke up from a nightmare screaming so loud that it caused meulin permanent hearing loss. shes said to be gifted in matchmaking, but has terrible luck with relationships of her own, and thats pretty obvious given her relationships with kurloz and horuss. kurloz and her arent together anymore, but theyre still close friends, and we see that kurloz has been using chucklevoodoos to force her to assist him in serving le, which have caused her severe memory loss, to the point where she doesnt even remember disliking meenah, despite the fact that meenah killed her. aranea comments that she seems to have taken after kurloz's clown religion, occasionally slipping up and saying something about it. her relationship with horuss doesnt seem significantly better, honestly, with them only getting together because equius and nepeta looked so good together, and horuss mentioning that he finds her repulsive due to her lower caste.

anyway, meulin is shit deaf representation. she lipreads and "mimes," which is just like.... a gif of her fingerspelling random shit while some generic tumblr fandom gif plays, and she always yells. its just kind of fucking terrible. the fandom gifs are supposed to be like a joke and stuff, but whether or not it lands is questionable.

Porrim

one of porrims big gimmicks is the motherhood thing, playing off of the dolorosa and kanayas role in breeding the genesis frog and the next mother grub. as such, shes extremely motherly, particularly towards characters like kankri, karkat, and kanaya. ive already mentioned how kankri hates this and the role it plays within the wider context of beforan culling, so i wont get into it again.

another one is the fact that she gets around. i imagine this is meant to be a contrast to the virgo signs themes of virginity, which hussie has talked about before in the formspring. we dont know exactly how many people shes dated or who, but kankri slut shames her, aranea mentions her dating a lot of people, and porrim also implies that shes dated a lot of people. we know that she and aranea dated, but other than that, i dont think anything is explicit. she has a close relationship with latula that ill touch on more in latulas part, and her relationship with kankri is commonly interpreted as pale (tho again, refer to kankris portion), but its entirely up for interpretation.

the biggest and probably most infamous thing, though, is her feminism. its pretty hotly debated whether or not it has any grounds, or if, like kankri claims, its just a distraction from more serious issues. like with kankri, its difficult to say for sure and how much of this aspect of her character is just a big joke hussies making. shes portrayed more favorably than kankri, though, and doesnt really rant and rave about it the way he does, so perhaps we can interpret it to be more serious.

porrim believes that despite alternia and beforus being technically matriarchies, theres still a power imbalance with regards to gender roles. this is informed largely by her background as a jade blood working in the caverns. the jade caste is almost exclusively female, and she grew to really resent both her role and her identity as a woman. however, later, she reclaimed her gender identity and realized (as many feminists do, honestly) that the gender roles forced on her dont have to control her relationship to womanhood, and she can both protest these roles and take pride in being a woman. porrim points out that while the fuschia class is exclusively female, the other high bloods (violets, purples, and indigos) are majority male, and as theres usually only one or two fuschias at a time, most of alternian and beforus society is still controlled by men. in addition to this, she takes an issue with the way that two of the most powerful women on alternia, hic and the handmaid, are functionally puppets of le.

so, is there grounds to this? ehh. its hard to say for sure. ill play devils advocate and look at it from the other perspective. certainly, gendered roles exist, though we dont really know what they look like on beforus, and on alternia they overwhelmingly seem to swing in womens favor (with the exception of the jades, but given that there are sometimes male jades who are treated equally, perhaps this could be posited as more of an issue of casteism?). tavros is made fun of for engaging in "womens games" (flarp), which are violent and dangerous. the women in karkats session are overwhelmingly more aggressive and dangerous than the men, and even equius, whos supposed to be the strongest, ultimately never lays a hand on anyone. the point about the VPIs controlling most of the power is pretty real, but hic wasnt controlled by le at all during the majority of her rule on alternia, and its questionable how significant of a role the handmaid actually had in everyday troll life and mythology. maybe it just feels inflated to the dancestors bc of their relationship to damara.

ultimately, its up to individual interpretation due to how little we know about troll society. im inclined to think she has some valid points, and that at the very least, kankris refusal to engage with it is a crock of shit. but it all depends on what theories you as an individual have about beforan and alternian society and how it works. also, its all probably just a big joke to hussie that means nothing, so, theres that.

Latula

latulas entire thing is that shes a game girl, which i think might be a joke about terezis coolkid obsession and how that may have taken off in fandom spaces. she also cant smell, which is frequently joked about as a ridiculous counterpart to terezis blindness, with her and kankri talking about it as though its a real struggle, and other characters (namely karkat and hussies insert) decrying it as not actually disabling and a stupid thing to pat her on the back about. even aranea and meenah kind of joke about it, though the joke kind of seems like its mostly jabbing at the big deal kankri makes of it. i think we know from covid that losing your sense of smell can be a big deal, but the way its handled in homestuck, it clearly doesnt impact her much, so take that (and hussies handling of that) however you want.

in terms of her game girl thing, its twofold. first of all, porrim is right when she says that making this big deal out of being a game girl just kind of... backfires. it winds up being more sexist, instead of really offering any kind of girl power. if you listen to the song game grl, youll get what im talking about instantly. god its awful. the whole thing is like that fucking stupid sonic boom quote, yknow? this one:

the second part is about latulas insecurity. karkat says it best when he points out that latulas entire rad persona is obviously very carefully crafted, and because she spends so much time asserting her radness, it just kind of makes it obvious that its just to hide her insecurity. (this is in keeping with the way all knights hide behind personas- karkat, with his anger, and dave with his coolkid attitude.) this insecurity parallels terezis, with both of them struggling to feel needed, powerful, and worthwhile. latula admits to porrim that keeping it up can feel like a chore sometimes, but she struggles to let go of it (except around porrim, who she states is the only person she feels she can really relax around). aside from her persona, we also see latulas insecurity take form in her relationship with mituna, where she states that part of the reason theyve lasted so long is because mituna makes her feel needed. the implication that she sees herself as some kind of keeper for mituna is a fucking loaded one, but its not unusual in troll society (on alternia, just look at the canon pale and ashen relationships), so ill let it go for now. regardless, it definitely speaks to her insecurity that she feels so comforted by that. honestly, i think most of latulas character is dominated by this trait.

Aranea

aranea is one of the few dancestors who gets a prominent role in hs and gets the chance to evolve past meenahbound. however, bc i havent finished my reread yet, adn this is literally just me recapping as of my reread, im going to stick with her personality and actions as they appear thus far, the same way i do for any recap character entry.

hussie asked the question, "what if mindfang was just some loser teenager who liked to tell stories?" and the answer was aranea. aranea was extremely unpopular during her session, with meenah being her only real friend (and vice versa). aranea is frequently a parallel to kankri, with the way she has a tendency to ramble on and on without end. she likes to tell stories, but shes not very good at it, and has a tendency to go on for too long and tell too many details. shes not very good at being manipulative and not very brave, but she dreams of the kind of adventures mindfang goes on.

as for araneas role in her game, we know that aranea is one of two confirmed godtiers. she saved meenahs life, once, but we dont know how. as a sylph of light, she has healing abilities, but all in all, we basically dont know jack from shit about what she did during the game bc shes too busy telling other peoples stories. at some point during the afterlife she dated porrim, but reflects on it as an embarrassing phase.

in the afterlife, aranea spends a lot of time learning about other sessions and their cultures. shes fascinated by the ancestors, and even took to wearing signless's symbol, which meenah describes as akin to some kind of religious affinity. you can take that however you want, tbh, im not touching it. but its worth noting that she does really love learning about other people and their stories, so that she can turn them into stories of her own.

Horuss

horuss's character is basically all of equius's worst traits exaggerated to the extreme. hes racist, hes a mechanic, he loves horses, and frankly you could just stop there. but i wont.

horuss's character revolves heavily around the fact that hes a void player. he talks at length about having a crisis of identity and building himself from the ground up, slowly (in keeping with his page class). he creates himself out of nothing, in this way, and leans very heavily on his interests as a way to define himself as a person.

horuss is a mechanic. he uses his sweat to create steampowered devices, and as such, he has kind of a steampunk thing going on. aranea once calls him a "renissance man." hes made gloves so that he can handle fragile objects without breaking them, robots, and sweat drains for his goggles. hes talked about making a device to translate damaras speech, but hasnt followed through. at one point, he built rufioh a horse body ( :') ), and is rumored to have sent rufioh a fightbot of himself piece by piece (ala brobot. rufioh and horuss parallel dirk and jake a lot).

horuss also really likes horses. equius likes horses, i guess, but for him its more about appreciation of "fine art," which inexplicably involves musclebeasts on alternia (ripped horsemen). horuss likes horses SO much that he wears his hair in a ponytail and has decided that he in fact horsekin. im uh. gonna wait to get into kin until i get to cronus i think.

most importantly, horuss is FUCKING CASTIST. like, equius is racist, but horuss takes it to all new levels of weird. horuss is not only certain of his own superiority over other classes and weirdly worshipping of high bloods, but also fetishizes the fuck out of his relationships with lower caste members. he refers to anyone lower on the spectrum than him as disgusting, and takes a perverted kind of delight in dating down the spectrum, speaking at length about how gross and taboo it is. he will say this shit to peoples faces. hes obsessed with rufioh adn his weird fetish for rufioh and hes so caught up in it that he either doesnt notice or chooses to ignore rufioh trying to break up with him.

the last thing im going to say about horuss is just an offhand note about his relationship with meulin. its like, not healthy, tbh. he talks about how disgusting and beneath his notice she is, and what an inspiration equius is for being so willing to date nepeta. also, before dating meulin, horuss was constantly grimacing and scowling and making faces that meenah describes as unpleasant. however, meulin has convinced him that the best approach to feeling bad is to pretend very hard that you dont feel bad even and especially if it hurts, so now he grins all the time. that probably says something about meulin, tbh, but yeah.

Kurloz

kurloz is a mime. thats his bit. the backstory aranea gives us is that he was so upset by hurting meulin with his scream that he sewed his mouth shut, but kurloz mentions in internal dialogue that he chewed his tongue off and took a religious vow of silence, so who knows. he was involved somehow in the incident that caused mituna brain damage, but we dont know how. he speaks in "mimes" like meulin, but his gifs tend to be unsettling and uncanny, as opposed to meulins traditional fandom gifs, and sometimes make her uncomfortable. please copypaste my sentiment about meulins mimes and asl representation here.

hes a juggalo like gamzee and worships le and the mithful messiahs and blah blah blah, but isnt as high up as gamzee ig, bc gamzee is pretty disrespectful to him. he serves gamzee, and in turn, he forces meulin (and possibly others) to serve him with the use of chucklevoodoos that allow him to communicate telepathically and control peoples actions. cronus mentions that hes heard mituna is actually coherent when speaking to kurloz, and it could be related to these chucklevoodoos.

he used to date meulin <3ways, but now theyre just friends. hes in a pale relationship with mituna. not much else to say about him.

Cronus

cronus is a spoof of both the nice guy archetype (specifically the niche offshoot archetype, "born in the wrong generation") and fanon interpretations of eridan, who is also canonically a nice guy spoof, so great. were full circle. he plays music thats frankly probably terrible, as even though we dont get to hear it, all of the titles make it obvious theyre songs about how people should fuck him bc hes so nice. he talks extensively about being a sensitive soul who listens to cool music and reads poetry and shit, adn goes on and on about how people only wanna date guys who are broken and tortured or bad. he also makes a big deal about how he toootally doesnt care that hes royalty, and clearly expects other people to give him some kind of trophy for it, because he does actually care and thinks it makes him better than everyone else, but hes being nice to them anyway. obviously, he is super casteist, sexist in the way all perverts in hs are (see: end of mituna section), and super ableist, particularly to mituna.

related to the eridan spoof, weve gotta talk about the wizard thing. cronus used to believe he was harry potter, basically, and le was voldemort. just insert the most generic version of the backstory here. eventually he became disillusioned with magic and gave up (see: bard of hope, destroyer of hope, etc), and its rumored that his destined big battle with le will be passed onto the next hope player down the line (eridan, and then eventually, jake). so hes an ex wizard with some powerful destiny, too.

so, the human kin thing. for anyone who doesnt know, "kinning" was really popular on tumblr for a long time and had a really large, extremely drama inclined, crazy subculture here, which is definitely what hussie is spoofing with both horuss and cronus. kinning can be anything from just relating heavily to a character and seeing yourself in them, to literally believing that you were that character in a past life/alternate reality, and that you have some kind of claim on that character as a person. im saying character here, but some people will also kin real life people, animals, magical creatures, or objects (the last three being commonly known as "otherkin"). while there is a lot of nuance to the community, kinning (like so many other aspects of fandom) could sometimes serve as a way for people to manipulate each other, gain attention, or start drama, and some of the stories youll hear about the kin community back in the day are... pretty fucking crazy.

horuss and cronus are both presented as characters who are doing it for attention, to manipulate others into pitying them, or because theyre straight up delusional. i think you could read horuss as genuinely otherkin on the more extreme side of the spectrum, feeling a strong connection with horses and investing some degree of spiritual belief in that in order to make more sense of himself as a person (a very common thing in the kin community, especially with people who struggle with a sense of self like horuss), but cronus reminds me more of kinnies ive met who deliberately pick certain kins to earn certain reactions from others. he uses his kinning as a way to garner sympathy from others, citing it as a way that hes different and tortured and other. horuss just seems enthusiastic about horses, really. but also the kinning thing is just a big stupid joke hussies making and im just reading into it so yknow!!!!!! take whatever you want from it!!!

Meenah

LAST ONE ON MY LIST. like aranea, meenah develops so fucking much over the course of hs, and i am going to recap her exclusively as she exists in meenahbound.

meenah is a punky, rebellious, teenage hic. she didnt want to rule beforus and ran away to beforus's (single!! beforus doesnt have the green one) moon. in the game, she played a similar role to vriska, trying to push everyone to action by riling them up and pitting them against each other. ultimately, it was ineffective, and they still ended up losing. she learned from the horrorterrors (im pretty sure) what the scratch would actually mean for them, and discovered that if they all died, they could survive into the next session, so she brought the tumor with her to the platform and blew everyone in the session up just before the scratch took effect. shes been hiding in the afterlife ever since, but has only just decided to emerge once le starts fucking shit up.

meenah is unpopular, for obvious reasons. her only friend appears to be aranea, although she is on decent terms with rufioh, and states hes one of the only kind of cool people in her session. she seems to get along fine enough with the kids, and she imprinted on karkat instantly like a fucking baby chick. shes manipulative, and can be really mean, but shes generally willing to make ammends and move on (ie; forgiving damara and mituna), and regularly comes to the defense of others (ie; defending mituna when cronus is being ableist, helping karkat sneak away from kankri). she greatly admires hic and her conquests, but is uncomfortable with the way hic treats her sessionmates in the post-scratch universe, seeming upset at the idea of ever treating mituna the way hic treats psii. shes greedy and loves money, and she loves fishpuns, with these things apparently being the fastest way to win her over in any situation (unless youre cronus, actually).

however, meenah is another fantastic example of hussies racism. :') she uses aave (as does hic, after her introduction) and leans into harmful tropes about black women, which is just kind of made worse when now one of the Big Villains is canonically black coded, but also literally a servant. theres a lot more to say about that, but im not the person to say it, and like with damara, i am 100% positive that if you go looking you can find many, many posts by black and japanese fans about hussies racism, and just other fans who are more articulate about this than i am.

Final Thoughts

meenahbound is so fucking timeconsuming. and i had way omre thoguhts about the dancestors than i thought i did. this took me two days to write. frankly idk why i thought id have less to say but i did, and now were here, and the scroll bar is so, so tiny.

i tried to be objective in my recap of the dancestors and clarify when i was straying into opinion, but i do want to say that regardless of this, interpretation is individual. other people are going to come away with different views than i am, and thats all fine and good. i really dont care that much. (except kankri, in which case you can imagine me always standing at the top of a hill with a flag planted firmly next to me, ready to gun down the next innocent fan who says something stupid to me about celibate kankri learning the ways of hot buttsecks from cronus.) interpret and let interpret, yknow?

also, re: racism and the dancestors, the subject of racism in homestuck is genuinely a very important one and while im not the person to be elaborating on it, here is just a very small start on posts about it

damara, the megidos, and stereotypes

on damara

damara as a generic "oriental" woman

racism in hs (broadly speaking)

antiblackness in hs

maybe one day i will revisit this all, in a moment of insanity where i decide its a good idea to make guides on how to write hs characters. but lets all hope and pray that i wont. in the meantime, ill keep chugging through hs, and probably make another recap soon

update: a6a4-a6i5