Homestuck Character Analysis

Welcome to the HCA, a place where readers and fans of Andrew Hussie's webcomic can read and share their analyses of any and everyone in Homestuck. Whether you're looking to improve your roleplaying skills, characterization in fanfiction, or want a simple view into a character's psyche, then this place is for you! Note: Please read the RULES and FAQ before submitting. Thank you!

[passiveinferno]

Continuing from here!

Caliginous wwandshippin is serious business with this guy. Don’t be afraid to dish out all the synonyms for dark and black as possible, Eridans.

Going on a tangent and ranting from Rose not being a worthy rival to him being the mighty...

[passiveinferno]

A quick guide to Eridan, brought to you by [S] Kanaya: Return to the core. 

Eridan is humble enough to say thanks to his friends for showing faith in him and spending some time on him. 

He may be a bit conceited while saying his thanks, but you know, still. 

If you say anything about hope, he’ll want to know exactly what it’s about. 

Let’s have a look at his relationships. 

We’ll start with Feferi. 

At this point of time, he’s over her, and doesn’t really want the topic to come up much more. (In addition, he’s telling Sollux to lay off any black implications.) 

Eridan wants to stay with her, and he’s totally okay with the fact that they’ll just be friends. It hurts, of course, but it’s better than losing her. 

He is also perfectly capable of being civil, and he’s seriously tired of everyone constantly bringing up his quadrants when he just wants to talk about something completely unrelated. Such as switching sides for self-preservation. 

Sollux! 

Sollux is a dick towards him.

Really, if you’re on Trollmegle and you meet an Eridan, being Sollux (or Rose in a bad mood) is nearly your only excuse for being a complete asshole towards him, but in turn, you get to treat the seadweller like shit while staying in character. 

Eridan is an asshole back, though. 

A lot. 

Karkat next. 

Karkat actually gives a shit. 

When I see Karkats on Trollmegle being complete dicks towards Eridans for more than a few moments of exasperation, I weep for characterisation. 

Eridan talks to Karkat when he has quadrant problems, because he knows Karkat will actually listen and give him advice. 

Kanaya! 

Like we’ve seen, he’s grateful as all hell to Kanaya. 

Kanaya is a supporter. She made his magic wand science stick, and Eridan has trust in her. Also, Eridan doesn’t sense the sarcasm, and genuinely intends to use his powers in the way he thinks will be good. 

She’s sarcastic to him about it sometimes, but she doesn’t really mean to. In fact, she makes sure to admit it early when she worries she might have offended him. This has absolutely nothing to do with his royal status or anything - just respect for a friend. 

And guess what? No offense taken! 

In fact, he takes so little offense that he offers to give Kanaya lessons in being more offensive. Read into that as you will, but they’re tight, man. 

Let’s round things up for now. 

I could go on and on about characterisation of Eridan, but that’ll have to wait. For now, I’ll just say that [S] Kanaya: Return to the core. should be mandatory brush-up for anyone roleplaying as Eridan, writing Eridan, or interacting with Eridan as Sollux, Karkat, Kanaya, or Feferi. 

[parkchanwoohoo]

LET ME TELL YOU about EQUIUS ZAHHAK

((Links to character analyses featuring Eridan, Gamzee, and Feferi can be found at the bottom.))

In terms of fandom perception, we often see “The Sweaty Guy,” “The Creepy Guy,” “The Fetishist,” and “The One I’m Ashamed to Call My Patron Troll.” While I can’t say too much about the first three, I don’t know why some people are ashamed to have Equius as their patron! Is it the sweating? Because some people sweat a lot and that is an unfortunate fact of life. Or could it be the horse porn? Is it the horse porn?

Well another uncomfortable truth about life is that some people have strange fetishes and they cannot really control it. However that is not the point of this diatribe so moving swiftly along…

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[doctor-whomura-deactivated20150]

when people characterize kanaya as this prim and proper super serious girl who doesn’t understand humour at all it bugs the hootin’ heck out of me because

kanaya

is

actually

sassy

as

fuck

and no one seems to realise it.

[parkchanwoohoo]

LET ME TELL YOU about ERIDAN AMPORA.

Yeah, this guy.

It bothers me to see so many people flanderize this guy into the Forever Alone Troll whose one and only ambition is to get laid by anyone, anyone at all. He is so much more than that!

“wweh im desperate fill my buckets, evveryone, wweh”

Many people seem to forget that Eridan is the equivalent of a thirteen year old. If there is one thing he is desperate for, it is to be perceived as an adult. To be taken seriously. So what does he do? He tries his best to emulate his Ancestor, and to play the role of the “violent seadweller” that he feels best represents those of his blood color.

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[parkchanwoohoo]

LET ME TELL YOU about GAMZEE MAKARA

((I originally planned to make a character analysis of every troll who, in my opinion, went badly represented by a majority of the fandom. My hopes were that someone would read them and, as a result, maybe have a better understanding of the finer nuances of the character’s personality and become a better roleplayer, fanartist, writer, etc. I’ll be honest, the popularity of the Eridan post is both flattering and extremely terrifying, and hopefully this won’t disappoint! I doubt this will get even a fraction of the notes that the Eridan post somehow got, but as long as one person reads this and gets to know Gamzee a bit better, I’ll be content!))

Gamzee Makara fascinates me in that, unlike the relatively uniform flanderization of Eridan, he is portrayed by fans in wildly different ways. He is the whimsical circus-aficionado, the crazed murderer, the mindless idiot, the loveable goofball, and even the charismatic nymphomaniac. I’m going to address the “mindless idiot” and the “crazed murderer” parts, and I would appreciate it very much if someone could please tell me where in the world that last one came from.

This is the face of a boy who will woo all the trolls with his vast knowledge of the intricacies of romance.

Now, I can’t help but wonder what accounts for these enormous differences in the fandom’s perception of Gamzee? The world may never know…

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[amora-the-chinchilla-blog]

Karkat's Quotes and Insults Masterpost

Yeeeeaaaah, in the last month or so I went through most of Karkat’s logs, collecting various insults and other quotes from him. Mostly for people to use as inspiration for their own Karkat insults, whether it be fore fanfics or roleplaying, or for anyone who just wants to laugh at some of the hilarious things he ends up saying.

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[hikaribakuras-deactivated201304]

Can I just take a moment to patron pride up in this shit bc its my birthday tomorrow/in half an hour

Look at this little dude. This is Tavros fucking Nitram. He’s definitely very cute, yeah, we all get that. But when it comes to doing things - being a badass, doing the shit like other characters do - well, most people are just like “lol tav what a pathetic piece of shit he ain’t done shit and he has no capabilities whatsoever”

Well I’m here to set you fucking straight on that.

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[parkchanwoohoo]

LET ME TELL YOU about FEFERI PEIXES

((Links to the Eridan rant and the Gamzee one are at the bottom, for those who are interested. And yes this is querulous-hebetation, I changed my url to something I thought far superior.))

Often referred to as “The Nice One,” “The Excitable One,” and “The Closest Troll Equivalent to Jade Harley That We Have,” this little tirade is to provide a better insight onto her character, as well as showing that she’s capable of more than just “———EXCIT-MENT!” and acting as resident shipping fodder for Sollux, Eridan, or whomever.

As with my other two rants, my goal here isn’t to be like “I KNOW MORE ABOUT THIS CHARACTER THAN YOU DO HAW HAW HAW,” but more to remind readers of certain details that may help them improve their roleplaying, writing, etc.

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[notzilon]

Anonymous asked you:

Errr.. you are making Eridan a bit out of character. And making Feferi cry over getting her hands stuck in that garbage. She’s stronger than that and Eridan is less caring than that, sorry to say.

First, thank you for taking time to crit me. This has been coming up occasionally in comments and reblogs - particularly the bit about Feferi, and I’ve been trying to find a good method of addressing it. Your ask gives me a solid chance to handle it.

So, Feferi. The thing is, I agree with everyone! Feferi is absurdly strong. She carries whales and can jump through her gates like Equius. She’s actually my favorite troll, and I have a heavy dislike for when people paint her as a perfect princess or damsel in distress or a weakling. She isn’t. Here’s where my real failure lies, I think: Eridan is not a reliable narrator. The askblog is from Eridan’s point of view, and relies on Eridan’s memories and his interpretations of events. Eridan is a very dramatic troll, and sees things in a dramatic light. While Feferi could easily break those cuffs (scissors wouldn’t do anything if she couldn’t, that’d be some absurdly strong stuff,) Eridan sees the event as him being the big damn hero and Feferi being put in danger as a result of the careless land dwellers. In reality, she’d probably be laughing and twirling her wrists around while he yells at her to take this seriously because THIS IS WWHY THEYRE A THREAT FEF.

The problem is, I failed to make the distinction between narration and point of view clear. In an attempt to not go overboard and use a soft touch, I didn’t provide enough information. The end result is a lot of confused people asking why Feferi didn’t just pull her wrists apart. It’s a plot hole, and something that I need to be more mindful of in the future. While it doesn’t absolve me of any errors, I’m really new to this whole askblog thing - I’m kind of blindly punching my way through this metaphorical paper bag. I am glad that this did come to a head before I got further into the blog, however, if only so I can be more mindful to making sure all points of view and reality can be understood.

However, I have to disagree with your point that Eridan is less caring that what I portrayed. Looking at canon, if anything, Eridan cares too much. Eridan is a spoiled, selfish, angry, frustrated douchebag of a child. I will admit that all openly. However, his entire character arc revolves around his feelings for Feferi, and how he’s incapable of being able to stop caring. The thing keeping him from easily reaching his genocidal goal is he doesn’t want her to be sad. She’s the only one he extended his “join me and be safe” invitation to, not even KK got that, and Karkat was the one who actually offered to visit him. The child has a lot of things wrong with him, but being uncaring towards Feferi isn’t one of them.

[brutusbuckeye-blog]

Massive Eridan Feels: An Eridan Analysis

As much as I love Eridan, I still have to admit that he does get a certain split fanbase. (Insert obligatory joke about him being cut in half here.) There are the people who tend to hate him because of his actions, and then there are those who seem to completely woobify him and paint him as this abused little seadweller and oh no nobody loved him on no. 

The thing is, what makes him an interesting character is kind of a combination of the two views! First of all, what Eridan did was completely wrong and rather unforgivable, but what makes him an interesting character that I like so much is the gradual process that led him to be the type of person that made that decision!!! 

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[miamor3cadenza-deactivated20120]

okay hi. this is a text post about how eridan doesn’t use fish puns.

mostly because nearly EVERY single eridan roleplayer i’ve ever seen uses fish puns. particularly “oh my cod” which he has never said. ever.

he thinks fishpuns are dumb. he uses them around feferi to humor her.

i really can’t take any eridan seriously if they use fishpuns, i’m sorry.

it’s fine if you do it to be ‘style-ized’ or whatever but i’ve seen people say it’s canon. it’s not.

so there you go.

[hideaki-anno-blog]

lots of Kanaya feelings...

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[brutusbuckeye-blog]

I like Eridan too much so I was like ‘what if I just made a post about it’.

And by that I also mean intense character analysis kind of. Let’s see where this goes.

But yeah, ERIDAN! I think one of the main moments I liked him at the start was that despite being this huge dickhole, he would keep on having this moments where he would be a genuinely nice person or you would just see some horrid emotional issues! And it just made me get…really attached to him!

The thing about Eridan is that he gets a lot of his self-confidence from other people! His self-esteem is at it’s best when other’s respect him. At the first pesterlog with Feferi, he’s pretty cordial and the main emotional problems he’s having are actually due to a loss of respect from someone! Eridan claims to be genocidal but he doesn’t have the balls to kill everything - just to kill enough to gain people’s attention and respect. 

When the attempted angel genocide ended up not getting respect or affection from anyone (on the contrary, it made him look like an idiot), he started trying more direct routes. He started using pathetic routes to fill quadrants, because if someone wants to fill a quadrant with you, it means they like you enough and that you’re considered worth something in their eyes. Except he just got rejected, woops!

It can be concluded that he might’ve eventually joined Jack to feel like he was winning for once, or so that others would fear/respect him, or maybe to gain the respect of Jack himself.

The other thing I always liked about Eridan is that he always has these small moments of honest not-dickheadedness in the middle of his dickheadedness! He could’ve been a good person if he was raised up differently!

But Eridan was raised with the idea that he was better than everyone due to blood! And he started finding every reason to support that idea that he was better! And soon he just had this paradigm of all the lowbloods, and even if he did like some of them, he would find some excuse to show that they weren’t friends even if they were!

And basically, when it comes to the point where the hemospectrum isn’t supported anymore, he still had this view of all lowbloods as inferior, and he pushes it around everywhere, and then he gets confused why nobody likes him because of it because on Alternia he at least got some respect based on the fact of his blood. 

And the lack of people’s affection towards him (in Eridan’s view) eventually makes him go out to prove himself or find something better with leads him to join Jack.

I might type more later when I’m not so lazy. 

[homestuckcharacteranalysis]

Thanks needlekind for hooking us up!

[homestuckcharacteranalysis]

Hmm, under tips & references, how about a little directory for fish puns? Like sure -> shore, what are -> water (it makes sense.), fin -> thing (every now and then), well -> whale, real/really -> reel/reely...I can't think of much more.

Oooh, a pun tag would be really great idea! I have a friend who's fairly good with fish puns, perhaps we'll make a list. -CC

[homestuckcharacteranalysis]

tips about Jade!

By mez82 Lots of people use Jade as a side character-especially before the EOA5, mainly because of the Kids she seems to be the only one that is not a jerk to people that she likes (John is such a douchebag sometimes, kawaii moe angel he is not-but that’s a soapbox for another day). Maybe because she's a bit more two-dimensional compared to the other kids, or it's more widely accepted that she doesn't have enough depth, I don't know.

 Jade, however, is not perpetually cheerful, and in fact seems to be using that as a sort of ‘shield’ so that she can function. After the [S] Wake, she was legit terrified and bewildered and was really, really snappy with the trolls and Jadesprite and anyone who she didn’t like. However, when one of the Kids tried talking to her she immediately reverted back to her “:D I am very cool with things and also how are you john!” sort of attitude.

 It’s telling because up till now we thought that was the only side of her. Now it begs the question-how many times has she felt like crap and still sent a million smiley faces to the other kids? She doesn’t seem to confide in them at all!

But I don’t think it’s trust issues. She really does love and trust the Kids. I think it’s because she just thinks that her problems can’t measure up to the problems of other people. She thinks that something’s bad, then something happens to her friends-and suddenly Jade thinks, “holy moses, I can’t bog them down with my bad thinking! I have to go make sure I am nice and adjusted so that they don’t have to worry about me!! They’ve got enough on their plate!”

It’s similar to Rose trying to mask her true emotions with snark and psychoanalysis, except Rose is more transparent. Probably because we expected her to be something like that, while Jade seemed like a straight-up dose of sugar.

And when she has to own up to the fact that she's scared, she does not take it well. Jadesprite represented all the feelings she tried desperately to repress from people she admired, who she thought wouldn't like her or something if she had to use them as an emotional crutch. They're two opposite ends of the spectrum, and as a rule the situation was played for laughs. Haha, Jade is slapping herself up like Karkat! Oh, this is some fresh irony here!

Yeah, that was a teenage girl trying to beat down any show of weakness.

In fact, you can tell when someone's become her friend by how fast she is quick to redirect the conversation if it tries to be about her. Karkat obviously hit that friendship event horizon when he tried to ask her if she was okay after Dave died, and she countered with "i'm fine!!! dont worry karkat i'm sure that jack was just trying to be like bec" or something along that vein.

So, no, I don't think it'd be easy for Jade to fully open up to someone who isn't a stranger, or is someone she respects. It'd take a lot of pressuring and, well, it'd be hard to see what was wrong if the person you're worried about won't stop smiling.