First of all, Gamzee’s status according to the fandom and his status according to Hussie were always at odds.
Hussie saw Gamzee primarily as a joke character. This was all but confirmed by him in multiple Q&A sessions, and demonstrated within Homestuck itself. Hussie utilized Gamzee as comic relief and then later made him an antagonist during Murderstuck (which was, being so unexpected, darkly hilarious in itself). To him, Gamzee was just a silly clown used for laughs and jokes. He was a character meant to be brought in to surprise people and entertain the readers with his wacky antics (why does he dance in front of the horn pile? man, fuckin miracles. Why does he wear a codpiece as fake-god-tier? Who knows? The unknowableness of it is the whole goddamn point). Much emphasis was put on other characters’ fear of clowns (John) and mystification at Gamzee (Karkat, Tavros, Dave, etc.)
However, other readers have figured out other things about Gamzee that I feel are worth mentioning. Whether Hussie likes it or not, many aspects of Gamzee’s life resonate with abuse victims and those who have or had a relationship to drugs—namely Gamzee’s absentee lusus, religion that turns out to be false but that he holds incredibly dear, and him being unwittingly high on sopor slime in the beginning of the comic.
Basically, as people much more intelligent than me have pointed out, Gamzee has never had a true moment of free will. Between the sopor slime, and then themindcontrol effects of Li’l Cal/Lord English/even the Serkets, we have rarely if everseen Gamzee act under his own power, for his own wants and needs. His entire story from his perspective has been things that happened to him. In other words, Gamzee Makara has never had a chance to exercise his own Agency.
There were theories going around a while back that Gamzee was going to save the whole session, perhaps by earning a Heroic Death. Some main points:
Gamzee had never died (this might have been redacted at some point recently, so if I’m wrong pls bear with me). In a story with so many deaths, even including the huge ghost army of dead trolls, Gamzee was never shown perma-dead on screen even once. Vriska at one point mentioned that she was not aware of even a single timeline in which he died. It’s almost like Hussie, or the narrative itself, was saving Gamzee for something big.
Gamzee had been called “the most important character of Homestuck”. In retrospect, this might have been a joke. But given how much influence Gamzee ended up having over the failed timeline session, the rise of Caliborn/Lord English, and how he raised both cherubs, I would argue the title suits him.
Gamzee never had a single moment of agency, as established above. Wouldn’t it be cool then, if the one time he did, he used it to do something with immense meaning and concrete effect?
The whole God Tier outfit thing was never clarified. In the final pages of HS it seems to have been confirmed fake, but that still leaves a lot of questions. Hussie could have used it to play for laughs, as he often does with things related to Gamzee.
Whistles the clown. There’s a summary here with more details, but basically Whistles was a character from one of Hussie’s previous projects, a clown whose loyalty to his master ran so deep that he could never overcome it, even to the point of cutting off his own arm and killing others in his master’s name (sound familiar?). Hussie even named Gamzee as a sort of spiritual successor to Whistles. Here’s the kicker: one of Hussie’s quotes was this: “I did plan on giving Whistles a heroic end. I always intended for him to overcome his obsession with his master.”
o What was the point of Gamzee paralleling Whistles so strongly, then, if Hussie never meant to bring Whistles’s story to it’s long-awaited conclusion through him?
What if, instead of a half-assed Fridge joke, we got something like this:
A selection of the kids and trolls stand together in the final fight against Lord English before/after passing through the door. Gamzee is there as well, having been summoned to LE’s side. His loyal servant, as always. The timetravelling demon is weakened due to the loss of the Green Sun, the source of his power. Perhaps now, the players can do it. Perhaps now is the only time that the boss can be truly killed.
Maybe some of the kids and trolls are off dealing with the Condesce, because let’s face it there’s no way a simple sword thrust would be enough to kill her, but anyway the situation is still pretty dire.
And Lord English HONKs at Gamzee and orders him to kill them all.
Gamzee smiles, as blank-faced as always. The trolls tense. Memories of Murderstuck flash through their heads. They know how dangerous Gamzee can be.
Gamzee’s hands tighten around the handles of his clubs. To anyone watching, the choice is clear: serve his god, or help his friends. Considering it like that, it seems like Gamzee already made his decision long ago.
But he hesitates. Something is different this time.
And we don’t know why. We’ll never know why. When it comes to Gamzee, we are constantly prevented from knowing why. But it doesn’t really matter.
Gamzee might say “sure, motherfucker” and start heading toward the trolls and kids. Or he might just be silent. Either way, his next action shocks not just everyone present, but paradox space itself.
He strikes a crippling blow to Lord English in a move too fast for anyone to see.
The players are stunned. The very fabric of reality seems to warp with the force of the blow, Lord English crying out, his health bar plummeting down to an amount that actually almost seems manageable. Karkat and the other trolls blink. It’s just like what happened in their session against the Black King.
And on the sidelines, Gamzee just smiles, but for once the others think they can see a sort of genuineness in it, a sort of freedom that wasn’t ever there before. “YOU’RE NO GOD,” he declares. “at least not one that I would wanna be motherfucking believing in. I KNOW WHO I ALL UP AND GOT MY FAITH AT. and it’s the motherfucking rude ninjabitches what’s been with me all along.”
Can you imagine the sheer weight of that decision? What does it take for someone to be abused, to take solace in a warped faith, then become disillusioned with that faith, and realize, slowly, that their gods aren’t worthy of being gods anymore?
What does it take to then voluntarily break away from that life?
And what if you could overcome those forces that controlled you? Denounce them and claim for yourself what you believe to be righteous and true, what you believe in more than them? What really deserves your loyalty? Wouldn’t you then, in effect, become your own god?
More than that, what does it take to break the vicious cycle of abuse? Especially for someone like Gamzee, when misuse and abuse of his mind was all that he had ever known. If he finally had one small chance to act and demonstrate not only to others, but to himself, who he really was, wouldn’t those final moments be the perfect opportunity?
(Especially since Gamzee was implied to be responsible for raising the cherubs, and when he meets Caliborn in real life he remains mindlessly dutiful, loyal to his god even when that god does nothing but hurt him over and over again. To be the person to strike the final blow (or a crippling one) against Lord English, who is part Caliborn, would mean that Gamzee’s story would come full circle. He would be complicit in both the raising and the smiting of his own God, the Mirthful Messiahs. It would also fit in with the ties of his chumhandle, terminallyCapricious (already alluded to in the panel where he inserts clowns into John’s dreams, claiming that he thus made the Kids’ universe “terminal”. Why not do bring the opposite destruction to his own?) )
What happens next can be up to anyone’s imagination. For instance, what if the kids and trolls combined manage to land the final blow, success only made possible by Gamzee’s initial strike. They stand in their victory and feel the first traces of relief as Lord English collapses into a black hole, or is sealed away inside of the house-shaped Juju. They look at each other, basking in the moment, even Karkat daring to look up at Gamzee-
And the troll is yanked backwards.
Gamzee lets out a choked sound as Lord English’s large green hand grasps at the streamers from the cape of his god-tier outfit and drags the troll along with him. It happens so fast that the players don’t even have time to blink.
Karkat cries out and rushes forward. But Gamzee has already slipped too far away—being absorbed into whatever awful house-stuck monster Lord English is crunching down into.
“FLY, YOU FUCKING IDIOT!” Karkat yells at him. “USE YOUR WINGS, GOD-TIER PIECE OF SHIT!”
But Gamzee just looks back at him. He smiles.
And everyone knows in an instant that his outfit has always been fake after all.
You can picture whatever final ending you would like, but I prefer to think of Gamzee extending his hand out one last time, reaching towards Karkat and the others, going out with a smile of course as he softly whispers, with his normal quirk this time or maybe one entirely new, “bEsT fRiEnD…”
[^^^ The above is kindof semi-fanfic, but I digress.]
An ending like this would have been much more characteristic of Gamzee, much more true to the narrative of Homestuck, and much more satisfying.
Having Gamzee be a Hero, if not the Hero would have been:
Ironic (thus fulfilling one of Homestuck’s favorite tropes)
Unexpected (thus in line with Gamzee as a character)
Clinched the redemption of the Whistles parallel (which had been very strong)
Given Gamzee his long-awaited Agency (thus providing an inspirational moment not just in general but as an incredibly profound statement for anyone who identifies with the hardships Gamzee struggled to overcome)
Been fucking hilarious (another thing Hussie loved to do with HS, and also in line with Gamzee’s clown character theme)
Fulfilled all the strong foreshadowing of ‘You can’t keep down the clown’ and ‘Bards are notorious for being both their session’s ruin and their savior’ and ‘Gamzee Makara is the most importat character in Homestuck’ AS WELL AS Gamzee’s whole duality with the Mirthful Messiahs :o) Do: ‘both being him’.
Like, it was right there, Hussie. It was right there. You wrote it yourself.
But no. Gamzee gets stuck in a fridge for a death that’s not even a death, that doesn’t even get the dignity of recognition during the final act. He fades away without us even knowing that he’s fading. His was an ending without confirmation that it was an ending. In fact, it was no ending at all.
(And not in the usual way, mind, where it’d be like ‘lol there goes gamzee being ambiguous and unknowable again.’ This didn’t feel like a tease. It felt like a dropped stone.)
The real tragedy is that Gamzee was forgotten, even by his own creator, despite having potential for such importance. Here’s the thing: Hussie saw him as a joke, but within the narrative, Gamzee became something more. And you shouldn’t be afraid of that as a creator. You should be freaking pleased and let your characters become who they are trying to be, because for god’s sake in some way they are real people too.
After seeing all of these signs and putting everything together, I’m honestly mystified as to why Hussie would completely toss these threads out in order to use Gamzee as a joke until the very end. It’s just…a real shame, as a creator.
Gamzee was supposed to be the HERO.
And Hussie motherfucking forgot about it.
(End note: I’m promise that I’m not trying to be an entitled fan or a rabid fangirl with my analysis here. As a writer myself, I’m simply interested in the narrative choices that Hussie chose to employ and frustrated that he never saw the grand potential in this one character that, to me and many others, seemed to have reached such a vital stage of importance. I apologize for any factual errors or misstatements here since it’s been years since my HS fandom heyday, and thus I’m sure I’ve forgotten a lot. Lastly, thanks to whoever decides read all of this; I know it’s pretty long.)
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