tenaciousChronicler

Where I shall (hopefully) follow @homestuckreplay in digesting Homestuck over the next 7 years..... icon: @kociakarma

[tenaciouschronicler]

January 1 2026

=>

[I know you are rather occupied but would it not be prudent to at least inform everyone on your goals?]

>Huh? What?

>Oh, you.

>Hmm.

>I guess you're right.

>6 months of updates /are/ gonna take a mo'.

>Take it away then, I'm still working here.

[Naturally.]

>Sam: Inform the masses.

Happy New Year!

Uh ok how do I start this. I was a /bit/ over confident that I was recovered enough from my depressive episode back in mid July which brings us to today.

I havent updated in six months.

I slumped again mid August and only started feeling closer to myself in September. It still wasnt to the degree I felt 100% myself until November. At that point I felt bad for being so far behind on everything.

For. Six. Months.

It wasnt my fault, just a matter of circumstance. With that said, Im planning on making posts that cover at least a weeks worth of updates at a time or to natural story beats. Whichever makes the most sense until Im caught back up. In between these posts will be reblogs from @homestuckreplay that line up to my posts.

Im looking forward to posting again and to anyone still here I appreciate you.

.

Oh! One more thing!

I havent been completely Homestuck free. Here is what 6 months of on again/off again cross stitch progress looks like.

Bye for now! Expect something from me at regular human hours.

[homestuckreplay]

This was originally intended as the top section of a significantly bigger piece! I've been super busy and had to give up one of my 4/13 projects, so I gave up this one. I'm still hoping to finish this at some point (maybe in time for 6/12....) but for now, here it is in its beta version.

one of my favorite quotes, said from my favorite troll to my favorite kid <3

[tenaciouschronicler]

Happy 4/13!!

Seven months of work, over 33,600 stitches, 24 colors, and various mishaps later my project is complete!

From Homestuck panel to full canvas this is my most ambitious creation. Edited my own pattern and made adjustments on the fly to fix mistakes but here it is! All I need is a frame and it will be ready to enter to the county fair in August.

Here's some progress pics from over the months. The majority was done at Saturday Farmers markets.

I'll upload the pattern after I make some adjustments and color edits. I've got a new desk job that gives me a lot of down time so I'm hoping to actually, finally get back into the comic and posts. I've missed you guys but I'm still here! Love ya'll (platonically)!

[homestuckreplay]

IT IS APRIL 13, 2011.

Lady Gaga's Born This Way, Katy Perry's E.T. and Rihanna's S&M are on top of the charts. Fast Five and Thor are about to release in theaters. Game of Thrones is days away from its TV premiere. Tumblr is four years old.

Andrew Hussie has just posted pages 3710 - 3714, the two-year anniversary update of their groundbreaking webcomic Homestuck.

TWO YEARS AGO TODAY, I turned on New Reader Mode in the Unofficial Homestuck collection. Every day, I wake up, I read the Homestuck pages posted fifteen years ago to the day, I read forum threads and social media posts from 2011 documenting people's real-time reactions, I look at fan content, speculation and sometimes drama, and I try to understand the live reading experience for this comic. A year ago the fandom was small but dedicated. Now, it is becoming something massive, and it is no less dedicated.

You can join in with the ongoing read by catching up on pages 1 - 3714, and following this blog for daily updates as we gear up for the end of Act 5. Or, you can start a new replay from 2026-2033, reading pages 1 - 16 today and using this spreadsheet for daily updates. (File -> Make a copy to edit and customize the sheet for yourself).

It is April 13, 2011, and Tumblr has a Homestuck community, but it is not yet the Homestuck website. Perhaps, this year will be our year.

[homestuckreplay]

'kNoWiNg ShIt JuSt StEaLs Up AlL tHe FuCkIn MaGiC fRoM mY mIrAcLeS' wHo Is GaMzEe MaKaRa?

HONK HONK. Gamzee Makara is the second troll introduced in Hivebent, and the first who hadn’t previously interacted with the beta kids. He’s an immediate contrast to Karkat, coming across as fun-loving and easygoing where Karkat was angry and intense. In Gamzee’s case, some of his interests say a lot about him and others very little – but even so, I’ll use Gamzee’s full list of interests (p.2012) as a framework for understanding him as a character, and the two major new themes he introduces to the story.

This analysis is based on pages 1989-2276 of Homestuck Act 5. About 5.1k words below the cut. Content warnings for discussions of religion (section 1) and drug use/addiction (section 3).

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1. You get pretty excited by CLOWNS OF A GRIM PERSUASION WHICH MAY NOT BE IN FULL POSSESSION OF THEIR MENTAL FACULTIES.

You belong to a RATHER OBSCURE CULT, which foretells of a BAND OF ROWDY AND CAPRICIOUS MINSTRELS which will rise one day on a MYTHICAL PARADISE PLANET that does not exist yet. The beliefs of this cult are SOMEWHAT FROWNED UPON by those dwelling in more common lawnrings.

Gamzee is a whiteface clown, so far only seen wearing his makeup, and includes a clown nose in all of his emoticons :o). His walls are covered in posters of various other clowns, and his floor littered with clown paraphernalia such as his juggling clubs, which he uses as a strife specibus. For Gamzee, clowning is not simply an aesthetic or even a lifestyle – it’s a fringe religion that he’s dedicated himself to.

People become religious, or stay with religion, for a variety of reasons. Those who feel a lack of control over their life might look to religion in an effort to reclaim this, finding that prayer makes them feel like they’re taking actions to change their fate. Religion can bring a sense of meaning, structure and purpose to somebody’s life, as well as a framework for understanding the world – there’s less decision making needed when the path to happiness is already laid out by a doctrine. Faith can be all encompassing and affect every part of life, and if someone genuinely believes in a divine omnipotent being, it only makes sense to orient life towards their will. Religion gives people a social community to be part of, and participating in shared rituals brings pleasure. When I was actively religious as a teenager, it came from wanting to fit in somewhere and be a part of something, which I struggled to find elsewhere outside of the Internet. People look for patterns and see intentionality even in random processes, and when something like the natural world is too complex for us to understand, religion can provide an explanation that makes sense. Religion can also be used as a means of social control, enforcing order, morality systems, health decisions, or making struggling people believe that their suffering is divinely ordained instead of something they can rise up against.

Gamzee lives alone with no other hives in sight (see p.2019) and his lusus is largely absent from his life. He’s probably lonely, and doesn’t have anyone nearby to provide a sense of direction. His friends are physically distant and all have conflicting beliefs of their own – Karkat and Sollux actively make fun of Gamzee’s religion (p.2027). Unlike some other trolls, Gamzee doesn’t have a career path that he’s interested in pursuing, and even though he mostly seems happy living life one day at a time and rolling with the punches, it makes sense that he wants something bigger to seek guidance from, and people with shared interests that he can spend time with.

Gamzee’s religion is oriented towards the future – his mirthful messiahs do not exist yet, but will someday. In Christianity, followers are similarly future oriented, planning both for their own afterlife and hopeful entry into Heaven and for the eventual Second Coming of Christ during the apocalypse. For Gamzee, the coming of the mirthful messiahs will also happen during the apocalypse, as it’s only after the destruction of Alternia and Gamzee’s Sgrub session that he’s able to learn about humanity, and the real incarnation of Insane Clown Posse. So Gamzee has lived his whole life on Alternia surrounded by the ‘not yet’ and the idea that the present doesn’t matter except in how it prepares us for the future. This could be part of why he whiles away his days without any clearly defined goals or even hobbies, as to him, the coming of the messiahs is so important that it far eclipses anything else he could work towards.

Religious traditions and rituals tend to look strange to an outsider, but be normalized and feel self-evident among people who follow them, and I think the same is true of clowns. They’re seen as ‘unnatural’ due to their makeup and exaggerated features that can appear to hide their true emotions, unpredictable in their movements, and as concealing themselves from the audience. The juggalo subculture specifically, which is closely tied to Insane Clown Posse, is an intense, dedicated subculture which is often stereotyped as violent. Clowns also appear in a lot of horror media where they’re specifically intended to heighten these feelings, which are then projected back onto benign clowns. Religion, too, is a fairly common element in horror movies and an entire horror subgenre of its own. So Gamzee’s religion seems like it’s designed to be offputting to readers as well as to the majority of trolls, marking him as an outcast outside of his specific community.

I recently went to a two day clown school where we focused on vulnerability and audience connection, two key elements that are in some way opposed. On the one hand, clowning is about connecting with your own inner essence as a clown, expressing beauty, outrage, bravery and personal truth in ways that aren’t always socially acceptable. On the other hand, clowning is about paying attention to the audience, understanding what gets a reaction from them and what doesn’t, building on what they want to see more of and downplaying what they don’t. So the challenge of being a clown is essentially about uniting these two things – genuine, honest self-expression that responds to what other people want to see. Gamzee may embody that same tension. He wants to be part of a community of worship that congregates around the same messiahs, but probably has his own unique interests and desires that he might be downplaying to better fit into his faith.

Gamzee prays to his mirthful messiahs (p.2021) but really in clowning, the audience is the god, the entity who makes the final judgment on whether the clown is worthy. This is true of Homestuck as a whole, a comic that is far more about responding to its audience and incorporating their feedback directly and in real time than the average piece of media, just like a clown performance. When Gamzee is alone in his hive falling into a pile of horns with a giant HONK (p.2016) or outside praying to his modus and launching Faygo into the ocean (p.2021-2), there’s no audience around him – but in clowning there is no fourth wall, so we are the ones who he is performing for, and we are the rowdy and capricious minstrels on the mythical paradise planet who can judge whether he’s funny or not.

Gamzee is actively against knowledge and science – he doesn’t like it when Karkat explains why his Faygo bottle starts hissing when he opens it (p.2010), and thinks lemonade is ‘squeezed out of miracles’ instead of being made from lemons (p.2011). He prefers to find things wondrous and mysterious, and could be described as anti-intellectual in his avoidance of truth. Until now, Homestuck has held religion and science as two things which coexist without conflict, with Skaia representing both advanced knowledge and technology that can be accessed by people, and the distant omnipotence of an unknowable god. It’s possible that Gamzee will struggle with playing Sgrub if he sees Skaia as a false god, or thinks that any visions he receives from Prospit are stealing the magic from experiencing the future as it comes.

Gamzee prays and uses special stardust to attempt to retrieve his husktop from his miracle modus, but it doesn’t work. It’s possible that Gamzee’s Faygo being launched into the ocean and later retrieved by caligulasAquarium is an event with greater long term significance, meaning that a miracle was performed, just not the one Gamzee expected. However, Gamzee then reaches over and physically takes the husktop from the modus, something that shouldn’t be possible if the modus is an abstraction. Therefore, it’s also possible that Gamzee’s miracles are more like Karkat placing a curse on his friends, or Vriska experiencing terrible luck. According to grimAuxiliatrix, these are due to Karkat and Vriska’s ‘Perception Of Events As Intrinsically Negative And As Tailored To [Their] Personal Dissatisfaction’ (p.2204). Gamzee’s ability to perform this miracle is the opposite – he believes his messiahs are here to help and will carry out events to his liking, and so they do. This is also how plenty of people rationalize their own religions, linking positive or negative events to their god being either on their side, against them, or on their side but acting in mysterious ways.

Overall, Gamzee’s religion blends elements of major religions and of clown culture, creating a faith very appropriate to Homestuck, where humor, absurdity, emotional connection and the audience reign supreme. Although parts of Homestuck’s lore reflect Christian mythology, this is the first time a character has actively followed a religion, one which may conflict with Skaia’s godlike role elsewhere in the comic. Gamzee’s existence might lead to explorations of religious tensions, or to the ways popular media texts can take on similar roles in modern society to the roles religious texts have filled for a long time.

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2. You like to practice on your ONE WHEEL DEVICE, which you are GOD AWFUL AT because your FEET DO NOT REACH THE PEDALS.

Although Gamzee’s one wheel device has only featured in the story once so far, it provokes general questions about learning, growing and emotional regulation. Gamzee is a kid, but owns a one wheel device made for adults, which speaks to a broader problem on Alternia – in the absence of any adults on the planet, kids are expected to take on adult roles without any guidance from previous generations on how to do that. With Gamzee, this problem is even more pronounced, as he does not have a lusus and does not appear to have any neighbors to potentially receive help from.

Gamzee continues to try riding his one wheel device on a regular basis, and claims to even enjoy it, which does demonstrate perseverance. It could also show that he’s okay with being bad at things, and cares more about enjoying the process than achieving something at the end. However, there’s also a famous phrase saying that ‘the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results’, and Gamzee is using a one wheel device that is literally not fit for purpose. There’s basically no way he can make it work unless he’s waiting to physically grow into it (or waiting to be rendered in a less symbolic manner), so this suggests Gamzee is unwilling to make changes to his life, like getting a new device, even when they’d actively benefit him.

Gamzee’s problem, apparently, is that he can’t ‘figure out how to stay on the thing without flying off the handle’ (p.2015). This is another common phrase, where ‘flying off the handle’ refers to someone getting angry or losing control of their emotions suddenly – and while Gamzee is constantly flying off the handle in a literal sense, it’s hard to imagine him doing so in an emotional sense when on the surface he seems so relaxed. However, his chumhandle is terminallyCapricious, which suggests that he’s eternally prone to sudden changes in temperament. I think it’s likely that we’ve only seen one side of Gamzee, and will see a very different version in his future appearances. It’s possible that he’s worked hard on regulating his emotions, likely with the help of his faith in the Messiahs, his commitment to clowning as an emotional outlet, and his dependence on sopor slime, but that Sgrub will prove such a stressful experience that his existing coping mechanisms will no longer be enough – making him angry enough to eventually troll the kids (see p.1390).

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3. You enjoy a FINE BEVERAGE, and like to do A LITTLE BAKING SOMETIMES.

Gamzee has Faygo bottles scattered around his room, and has regular access to this soda through whatever Alternia’s grocery store system is, until he enters Sgrub and doesn’t know if he can ‘gEt AnYmOrE iN tHiS mOtHeRfUcKiN mAgIc LaNd’ (p.2221) – he also isn’t killing many imps and is mostly just hanging out with them, so he’ll struggle to alchemize much, too. The same may be true of the ingredients for his sopor slime pies. Even so, Gamzee isn’t hoarding what he has left, but happily sharing his pie with the imps in his hive.

On Earth, the band Insane Clown Posse are famous for showering their audiences with Faygo, something that began early in their career when they threw the drink at a group of hecklers. They reference Faygo in the songs ‘Just Like That’, ‘Walk Into Thy Light’, ‘Hokus Pokus’, ‘Wizard of the Hood’ and plenty of others. They’re openly fans of the soda and have expressed desire for an official partnership. Even though the brand has refused, many people associate the band with the drink, and ‘Faygo showers’ have become part of juggalo culture more generally. If Gamzee or his fellow acolytes are prophets who have received visions from their messiahs, they probably see these Faygo baptisms as part of their religious canon and have adopted it as the holy beverage. Because of this, Gamzee isn’t actually drinking it because he likes the taste – he may even be suffering through it or have trained himself to like it over time. He’s drinking it as a sign of community membership, and his sadness over its running out might be as much because he depends on it to feel part of the group as because he’s literally thirsty. Getting a ‘fRoStY bReW’ is what helps Gamzee get into the clown headspace when he raps with Tavros (p.2123).

Sopor slime is a sleep aid used by all trolls we’ve seen, and sleeping inside it helps avoid nightmares (p.1995). However, they’re not supposed to eat it, as it ‘does funny things to a troll's head’ (p.2017). Gamzee isn’t being rebellious by eating it – he was never taught not to, and likely tried it on a whim, enjoyed the effects and kept going. Even when the slime is too hot to eat, Gamzee ‘can’t help [himself]’ from having a taste (p.2017). Addiction is a theme that’s been explicitly mentioned in relation to both Vriska and Equius, and people under a lot of stress in their day to day lives – ie. everyone on Alternia – are more likely to struggle with addiction. So while it’s not the only interpretation, it seems possible that Gamzee is addicted to the sopor slime.

Gamzee’s pie making being described as ‘baking’ may have a double meaning, as ‘getting baked’ is a slang term for smoking weed. Gamzee, who is drawn with hooded, tired eyes, likes to captchalogue items just to watch the colors (p.2014), and spends so much of his time spaced out that Tavros ‘WASN'T EXPECTING [HIM] TO NOT BE ZONED OUT’ (p.2123), does demonstrate some signs of a habitual weed user. Drinking a lot of liquid due to a perpetual dry mouth, headaches, confusion and brain fog – potentially the ‘funny things [slime] does to a troll’s head’ – and laziness or disinterest in starting tasks are other signs he displays. Heavy and long term weed use can lead to delusions such as the idea that two mythical clowns from a futuristic planet are the true messiahs, and paranoia like Gamzee believing that he needs to take a juggling club whenever he leaves the house despite nobody else living nearby.

Gamzee reaching for the sopor slime immediately after a negative experience, falling off his one wheel device and onto his horns, is a definite sign of dependence. People who regularly use drugs, including weed, often feel like it makes them better at day to day tasks – even cognitive ones – despite its effects on the brain. This can be true, as it’s possible for weed to reduce anxiety or ease physical pain thereby making concentration on tasks easier, but it can also be a sign of dependence and mean that the user is going into withdrawal when they’re not high, functioning worse than they otherwise would. Gamzee needing to ‘gEt Up On [HiS] ChIlL’ before playing Sgrub could be him needing to get high on sopor slime in order to game, something which should be a fun hobby.

Finally, after being high almost every day for a long time, it’s easy to forget what type of person you are without drugs. It’s also pretty common for drugs to stunt a habitual user’s emotional growth. After quitting, the user might mentally feel like they’re still the age they were when they started regularly using. Gamzee is only thirteen now, and might have been using for years already, in which case he’s missed out on some key stages of growth. He hasn’t learned how to regulate his emotions or respond to experiencing hardship, and he might have forgotten what clear-headedness even feels like. Terezi thinks it should bother Gamzee that she only wants to play games with him because his name sounds like games, and it’s highly possible that this would bother Gamzee if he wasn’t dulling his emotions with sopor slime, as it’s suggested several times that ‘chill’ is a state that Gamzee needs to achieve instead of how he naturally exists.

Quitting any kind of drug is a difficult process both physically and mentally. It’s made even harder if it’s done cold turkey instead of tapering off, and if it’s done by necessity instead of through choice. Sopor slime is easy to acquire on Alternia, and Gamzee takes for granted that he’ll always have a steady supply – as a highblood, he almost certainly doesn’t need to worry about money. But as Gamzee is already running out of Faygo, his supply of sopor slime is sure to run low soon too. After that he could be faced with cravings, difficulties with sleeping and eating, intense mood swings, and a struggle to enjoy things he used to enjoy while high. Over time as he adjusts to sobriety, his personality, interests and goals may change significantly. He could lose interest in his religion and in clowning, for example, and might pick up a new interest to fill the void left behind by drugs – exercise is a fairly common one. But he’ll still be developmentally behind his friends for a long time, and might struggle with learning, complex decision making, and interpersonal relationships. All of this makes Gamzee perhaps the most unknowable of all the trolls right now, as we really have no idea what his ‘sober self’ looks like.

On Earth, addicts are often blamed for their own condition, and treated as lesser or failed members of society. This can extend to fiction about alcoholics and hard drug users, although stoners in fiction are more likely to be played for comedy, with quitting weed framed as more of a lifestyle decision equivalent to going to the gym more often instead of overcoming an addiction. This might reflect some people’s actual experiences, but doesn’t reflect my own or those of my close friends. If Gamzee’s addiction (and those of his friends) are explored in more depth, there’s the potential for a more compassionate and nuanced understanding of addiction – how almost anything can be addictive under the right conditions, how it usually occurs in response to other needs not being met, and how society’s response to addicts can be even more harmful than the addiction itself. When Sgrub destroys the current world order and gives the trolls a possible blank slate for the future, they might be able to see their own dependencies, and the reasons behind them, in a new light.

It’s worth noting that Gamzee is already not portrayed as completely useless or entirely a joke. He’s capable of being a good friend and extending kindness to others, and when he needs to connect with Tavros in Sgrub he’s capable of explaining the game’s current state and what Tavros needs to do to join the game. Gamzee does not feel like a mindless machine who’s only defined by his drug use; I think he’s clearly intelligent and creative outside of that, but it’s ultimately hard to say how much of his personality is affected by the sopor slime.

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4. You've got ALL THESE HORNS all over the place, and sometimes you step on them and SCARE THE SHIT OUT OF YOURSELF.

Gamzee’s interest in horns leads to some obvious jokes where his musical instrument horns are conflated with the horns on his head, like his saying to Karkat ‘MaN yOu KnOw YoU wAnNa GiVe My HoRnS a GoOd SqUeEzE. :o)’ (p.2010). Some trolls are already known to be violent killers – if Vriska, for example, had a pile of horns on her floor, it’d mean something very different to Gamzee’s pile of horns. Gamzee’s horns are able to scare him with their loud noises, but they don’t pose an actual threat, and nobody was harmed in their making. So this suggests that although Gamzee is a highblooded troll from a cult that appears dangerous from the outside, he’s ultimately harmless.

When Gamzee scares himself by stepping on a horn, Karkat says that he’s ‘GOT TO GET RID OF THOSE THINGS’ (p.2010). He’s right – why does Gamzee keep the horns around if they keep making his life worse? One option is that the horns are another symbol of his clown cult, so he keeps them for the same reason he might drink Faygo even if it’s not his favorite taste – they connect him to the clown community. His making ‘hOnK hOnK’ noises during his conversation with Tavros, where he’s otherwise talking about clown things (p.2123) could be evidence for this. Another option is that Gamzee feels like he’s in more general danger, and he needs to stay on his toes, not getting too comfortable even inside his hive. He lives right by the ocean, and according to him ‘the SEA DWELLERS are quite hostile’ (p.2019), while Gamzee’s lusus is often away at sea and therefore can’t defend him against anyone who may try to hurt Gamzee. The horns could be an alert system. Should a sea dweller ever invade Gamzee’s hive, they’ll step on a horn and loudly announce their presence.

Living in constant fear, whether it’s a legitimate fear of nearby sea dwellers or just the fear that comes from being startled by loud noises, definitely isn’t easy. It shows that it’s not only lowblooded trolls like Karkat who have to live under threat of danger – even someone as high in the caste system as Gamzee is vulnerable. There’s no sense that Gamzee gets any tangible benefits from his upper caste status. He still has no support system and no protection, no special powers, and his hive isn’t even bigger or better equipped than his lowblooded friends. He’s probably spent his entire life being told that his high status means something and perhaps even that he should be grateful for it, but without experiencing any material benefits, it’s no wonder that he doesn’t believe in the system.

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5. You like to chat a lot with your pal Karkat, who is usually pretty cranky, but he is your BEST FRIEND.

Gamzee is ‘always down for shooting the wicked shit with anyone that who'll put up with [him]’ (p.2020), which is a clear sign that he’s lonely and knows that many people find him offputting, but he’d choose social connection with someone who doesn’t actually like him over no social connection at all. He also never takes it personally when people are rude to him, even when their insults are direct and targeted, such as Karkat’s regular assertions of ‘I REALLY CAN’T STAND YOU AND I HATE HOW YOU TYPE’ (p.2010). Gamzee’s first relationship is with his lusus, someone who – as Gamzee sees it – clearly isn’t willing to put up with him. So the bar is pretty low, and someone who wants to be around Gamzee long enough to be mean to him is already an improvement. Gamzee even makes friends with the imps in his Sgrub land, so his willingness to be friends with ‘anyone’ isn’t limited to the trolls around him. He’s equal opportunity when it comes to friendship and doesn’t discriminate either inside or outside of the caste system.

Gamzee also doesn’t express dislike towards any of the characters, and might be the only troll who genuinely likes all the others. If Gamzee ever has an enemy, I think that would be a significant turning point for his character – for example, if it turned out caligulasAquarium was the one to kill his lusus in anger over the Faygo washing up on his shore. Clearly, insulting Gamzee’s religion – something that tends to be of deep importance to its acolytes – isn’t enough to anger him, so whatever provoked that reaction would have to be very serious.

Gamzee doesn’t pick up on Karkat’s sarcasm when they talk, and seems to pick up the general meaning of conversations pretty well, but be less attuned to subtleties and specific wording. His responses to messages tend to be on topic, but broad and vague, and he doesn’t always answer questions when they’re posed to him. He doesn’t talk differently based on whether someone’s being nice to him or being mean, and has a genuine interest in how his friends are doing, asking Karkat ‘WhAt'S uP wItH yOuR bAd SeLf’ (p.2010) and telling Equius to ‘SpIlL iT, dOn'T bE aLl KeEpIn ThAt ShIt BoTtLeD uP’ (p.2221) when Equius says there’s things he’d like to get off his chest. Later in that conversation, Gamzee says that ‘It'S cOoL wE cOuLd AlL uP aNd MoThErFuCkIn OpEn Up A lItTlE bIt WiTh EaCh OtHeR’, even though Equius is the only one who has opened up, and Gamzee hasn’t really shared anything.

It’s possible that Gamzee doesn’t think his friends are interested in hearing about his problems, as they’re so dismissive of his interests – even Tavros, who likes talking to Gamzee and shares his interest in slam poetry, says that he doesn’t understand ‘THE CLOWN THINGS,’ (p.2123). It’s also possible that Gamzee has squashed down his loneliness and other struggles enough to the point that he doesn’t fully recognize them, much less know how to put them into words. He may legitimately want to help his friends because he thinks that their lives are harder than his own and that they need someone to lean on more than he does, even if that’s not true. Or, he could be fully aware of his own problems but simply not enjoy talking about them, finding greater satisfaction in helping others.

Gamzee considers friendship a ‘dIsEaSe’ but a beautiful one, and a miracle (p.2010) – so he understands that friendship is aberrant to the normal functioning of troll society, but he sees that as a good thing overall. Gamzee says that he’s ‘GoT tO sHoW sOmE fAiTh In [HiS] FrIeNdS’ and that if he could make Equius smile ‘iT'd Be ThE bEsT fUcKiN mIrAcLe’ (p.2221) so he links friendship to his religion in multiple ways. In the same way that he dreams of a mythical paradise planet, he also dreams of a world where he’s closer to his friends. In combination, these suggest that Gamzee is generally unsatisfied with troll society, as he’s so focused on ways it could be different and better, and his favorite parts – his clown cult and his friendships – are both outside of the norm.

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6. Your trolltag is terminallyCapricious and you speak in a manner that is JuSt A lItTlE bIt WhImSiCaL.

Typing quirks appear to be a means of self-expression for trolls, a way to show symbols or tone that they see as core to their personality. Gamzee’s sense of fun and whimsy obviously doesn’t define him, but if he sees it as his most important trait or the one he’s most proud of, then he might try to exaggerate it in his chatlogs while downplaying other parts of himself. In his very first chatlog Gamzee proves that he’s capable of not using his typing quirk, but says that it ‘feels so motherfuckin unnatural’ to do so (p.2010) – it’s inauthentic and hiding an important part of himself, like someone with purple hair being forced to dye it brown for a job interview. It’s both freeing for a troll to express themself through a dedicated text style, and restrictive to then be limited to that. A troll changing their quirk is probably a significant event for them, and something not done lightly.

Gamzee’s whimsicality and easygoing nature is seen as unbefitting of his blood caste by Equius, who believes Gamzee should be more forceful, controlling, and willing to look down on others. Gamzee doesn’t understand the caste system or feel like he fits into it, but he’s also not actively against it – he’s okay with indulging in Equius’ casteist roleplay, and certainly has no interest in tearing down systems. So overall, I get the sense that Gamzee just doesn’t take the caste system very seriously. Isolated and on drugs, he might not realize the reality of what life is like for lower caste Alternians, as to him some occasional online roleplay is all there is to it.

--

Final thoughts

To me, Gamzee’s character is defined by escapism. His physical disconnection from the rest of troll society, his religion, his drug use, and his desire to connect with other outcasts all seem designed to keep him far outside what passes for normal life on Alternia. It’s hard to say if he’s experienced mainstream Alternian life in the past and disconnected from it, or if he’s afraid of the very idea of it, but either way his unwillingness to participate is clear. In this way, he’s even more of an opposite to Karkat, who wants so badly to fit in.

It’s hard to draw firm conclusions, because how long Gamzee has been using sopor slime and what exactly it does to him affects how I’ll interpret his character. Gamzee defining himself by his whimsicality is especially relevant here, because it’s a trait that may be enhanced through his drug use. Sobriety could change his self-definition as well as how he appears to others. Addiction and religious devotion are both themes that could be important to the story beyond Gamzee as an individual character, so it might be productive to see him as a vehicle for introducing these themes just as much as a character in his own right.

Hussie has said that the trolls don’t directly parallel the beta kids, and I agree. But, I linked Karkat to John a few times in my previous post due to their shared role as protagonists, so if I had to link Gamzee to a beta kid, it would be Jade. They both share a carefree attitude and sense of fun that covers an intense isolation, and a belief in forces much bigger than themselves that will guide their future path, meaning that they can live in the moment and trust in these forces to make major decisions for them.

[homestuckreplay]

That’s cool, you can ri88it if you want.

(page 2256-2276)

This update shows us the next 'accident' in the FLARP teams' endless revenge - the loss of Vriska's arm and seven of her eyes. Three down, with only Terezi left to get hurt.

It will take no skilled manipulator to orchestrate her downfall. She's a waste of your talents. (p.2257)

I have such mixed feelings about Terezi in this update, and in general. Her FLARP group is taking out these dangerous revenge plots on each other, ones that are deeply rooted in the hurt they’ve all suffered, but Terezi seems to think she’s a level above everyone else. She sends Doc Scratch an unsolicited message and gets in cahoots with him, putting herself on his level, sees Vriska as a waste of her talents, and used to see herself and Vriska as ‘L1K3 4 V1G1L4NT3 DUO D1SP3NS1NG JUST1C3’ (p.2237) where she got to decide who was good and who was bad. She already sees herself as legislacerator and judge instead of a participant in this drama, even though she’s undeniably a part of it.

GC: 1 GU3SS 1M LOOK1NG FOR SOM3 R34SON TO CH4NG3 MY M1ND GC: 1 DONT KNOW WH4T YOU C4N S4Y TH4TLL DO 1T GC: 1 SORT4 HOP3 TH3R3S SOM3TH1NG THOUGH (p.2258)

This is the one moment in the update that made me see Terezi a little bit differently. On Alternia, there is no such thing as a defense attorney, or a defense (p.2032), and once someone is in the courtroom there’s basically no hope for them. But Terezi does give Vriska the opportunity to defend herself here. It’s a small hint that she has room for a more complex understanding of justice, or a suggestion that she’s cool with her hardline, black and white concepts in theory when she’s playing with plushies, but finds it more difficult with real people. So her dispassionate, above it all demeanor is a little bit of an act.

I have a harder time with characters who are convinced they’re in the right compared to characters who struggle with guilt and uncertainty over their actions, which is probably why I’ve connected to Vriska but am much more critical of Terezi. Here, she knows that Vriska is trapped in a massively unequal power dynamic with Scratch, and she decides that the correct and just thing to do is to take away the one small advantage that Vriska has, exacerbating that power dynamic further. It doesn’t sit right with me, especially since it feels like a more calculated revenge compared to the ones Aradia and Vriska took on each other, which felt like they happened in the heat of the moment when the two of them were overcome with anger or fear.

I also don’t see much evidence that Terezi is actually the skilled manipulator she claims to be, and that Karkat claimed she was – ‘SHE COULD MANIPULATE PEOPLE SO WELL WITHOUT RESORTING TO CHEAP MIND TRICKS’ (p.2178). It doesn’t take much skill to share a secret you’ve been told in confidence with the person it’s a secret from. Although I can’t deny that it is effective. Scratch gets legitimately angry and loses control for the first time that we’ve seen, and I LOVE that this extends to his words, and he’s able to type his flashing, crackling ‘SHE HAS WHAT?’ (p.2263) via a typewriter – or unable to stop himself, but still, most people can’t use a typewriter that way.

I guess that Scratch kind of mirrors Terezi, in that he has voluntarily gotten involved in drama with two middle schoolers, and in doing so he’s become emotionally invested in what’s going on. Terezi is trying to raise herself to Scratch’s amount of levelheaded distance, while he’s being pulled down to their level of rage and revenge. Not to say that adults are somehow better than middle schoolers, because I don’t think that at all, just saying that someone with Scratch’s omnipotence does not need to explode an orb in Vriska’s face to keep his plans on track, and he should be able to distance himself from that argument, but he either can’t control his anger in the moment, or goes above and beyond hid ‘job’ by deciding to teach Vriska a lesson.

So what I’m saying is that if Doc Scratch is the secret thirteenth troll, and if all the trolls are based on archetypes of people who hang out on the Internet, Scratch is definitely the adult who keeps getting into flame wars with kids.

I also saw this great post on the Giant in the Playground forums comparing Doc Scratch to Laplace’s demon – a scientific justification of determinism claiming that if a demon knows the exact location and momentum or every particle in the universe, said demon can also calculate all their past and future states. Scratch is basically this same idea, but expanded to account for people’s motivations and decisions. It is a fascinating idea but I wonder if the very existence of this demon itself impacts the particles’ location and momentum, and if Doc Scratch could also represent the observer effect, the idea that the act of observation in itself changes what happens in a system. A First Guardian is meant to protect and facilitate intelligent life on any planet where it will exist, but even a completely hands off First Guardian surely impacts the development of that life just by the nature of being there. And Doc Scratch is an imperfect being who’s not aiming for scientific integrity and is quite happy to nudge his data a little bit to get the results he wants.

I was hoping the MAGIC CUE BALL from Jade’s gadget chest would show up again. I was also hoping to see Vriska’s vision eightfold in action! The idea of a magic cue ball that ‘make[s] predictions with alarming precision and specificity’ but ‘lacks a portal on its surface that allows you to view the prediction’ (p.805) might actually be one of my favorite Homestuck jokes, and seeing that it functions exactly the same as a magic 8 ball where a triangle floats to the surface bearing a message which in this case can say literally anything, honestly makes it even funnier.

Back in the present, the avalanche from the destruction of Vriska’s doomsday device has killed Aurthour and seriously hurt Vriska’s lusus, causing Vriska to have to mercy kill her. Vriska rolls well – one each of numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 on 8d8, which is both super unlikely, and allows her a guillotine attack that gets the job done quickly. If that final die had been a 3 then spidermom would have been mauled by a bunch of weasels, which would have been effective, but wouldn’t be pleasant for her or easy to watch for Vriska. And then Vriska gets saved from an oncoming avalanche right on time. Which means that her good luck is back!!

If you acknowledge this amnesty and regard it as sincere, you may begin to find the odds falling in your favor again. (p.2202)

It’s hard to say for sure, but there’s no suggestion that Vriska accepted Scratch’s amnesty – when rolling, it was Aradia’s words going through her mind, not Scratch’s. If Vriska is able to get her luck back without making amends with Scratch, that means that she doesn’t need him, and never needed him in the first place. And I love that so much. The advice I see D&D players give to people who aren’t enjoying their campaigns is that no D&D is better than bad D&D so I’m gonna take that wildly out of context and say that no First Guardian is better than a shitty First Guardian who gets mad when someone even comes CLOSE to beating him at a game. I would be delighted if the red and blue teams could merge through recognition of a bigger enemy, whether that’s Scratch, or Lord English, or Skaia, or something else yet to be revealed.

Finally, Vriska and Aradia talk, while Vriska is covered in blood and Aradia is a frogsprite. Vriska is pissed the fuck off and honestly I think Aradia reminds her of Scratch with her ‘it had to happen this way’ demeanor that comes off as superior, even if she doesn’t intend it like that. And combined with Vriska’s self centered attitude where she genuinely believes the world is set up to make her life harder specifically with everyone scheming against her, instead of just set up to be bad in general, I think this conversation is just bringing up all kinds of bad memories for her.

I’ve always loved Homestuck’s chatlogs but I have really noticed a step up in quality during Hivebent. The characterization and the dynamics between all the different trolls come across so well through their conversations – extra impressive considering how many characters there are, with each dynamic only getting a handful of chatlogs at most. The ones with Vriska tend to be especially well done, with a lot of attention paid to exploring her many feelings. It definitely feels like the vast majority of characterization comes from the dialog now, and far less from the images or narrative text, and this is where the story really shines.

huge revelation: VRISKA IS ON THE RED TEAM. I’m so excited about this development. I was just saying the other day that the FLARP campaign also had a red and blue team because of its two clouders, so the trolls are just replicating this same team system. For Sgrub they’ve swapped, with Aradia being a red character on the blue team and Vriska a blue character on the red team, which makes so much sense because ‘the teams are meaningless anyway’ (p.2276). It also means that after Vriska bragged to both Tavros and Karkat about being on the blue team and how she was gonna kick the red team’s ass, she has to change allegiance and figure out how to work with these two people who she’s been nothing but antagonistic towards. My hope, though, is that this will lead to more interactions between Vriska and grimAuxiliatrix now that GA will be Vriska’s server player.

So now we have the full team roster, and it didn’t even take 300 pages. perfectly simple story that is not convoluted at all <3

RED TEAM: Karkat ← Terezi ← Gamzee ← Tavros ← Vriska ← grimAuxiliatrix

BLUE TEAM: Equius ← Aradia ← Nepeta ← caligulasAquarium & cuttlefishCuller ← Sollux

I’m really excited for GA’s official introduction, but I gotta say, there’s already so much going on with the ten characters we know, so much drama and backstabbing and complex relationships, that I am… not especially excited to meet the sea dwellers? There’s gonna have to be something really special about them for me to care as much as I do about the existing ten.

[homestuckreplay]

transcription: a post from MSPA Forums user Hutlocked1 on July 19, 2010 at 10:31 AM.

Littlest Homestuck Fan Hey guys, long time reader, first time writer, heh. I just thought you should all know that yesterday I was rushed to the hospital to give birth to my first child who I have named John Karkat [surname] in honor of my favorite comic of all time. I was kind of concerned I'd miss the updates but fortunately my luving hubby (<3 babe) was on hand with his laptop and iphone and we were able to use the hospital wireless, lucky huh? Being able to read the comic to unwind after the stress of labor was a huge relief, though using a laptop is not the easiest thing to do while holding a baby, heh. Here's a pic of the bouncing baby boy, he came out totally healthy no problems at all but he is kind of big! 9 pounds, wow. [picture of newborn baby] I'm going to totally raise him to be an MSPA fan, I think MSPA has a big potential for educating the youth because of all the advanced words and exciting storytelling though I'll probably skip the unsuitable pages, heh :D Anyway that's all I wanted to say, going to go and be with my baby and hubby now. Nice to meet you all!

Welcome to the world, John Karkat, born 7/18/10. May his inventory systems be terrible.

[homestuckreplay]

This Vriska character seems like someone you just have to have thoughts about, isn't she?

YES very much so!!!!!!!!

you said it perfectly, because it’s impossible to imagine someone reading hivebent and having no opinion on vriska. or even one stable opinion – I feel like every time there’s a Vriska Upd8™ it’s full of brand new, shocking information that casts her in a totally new light. even today! like, terezi sold her out to Alternia’s Insufferable Supercop and took away the one thing she could use to defend herself against him? how dare she! vriska didn’t deserve that! but in a few more days we’re gonna see the horrible way vriska blinds terezi in response, and it’ll be so disproportionate that I’ll feel different again. so she’s an absolute rollercoaster ride of a character, especially reading day by day, and having time to think about her between each revelation.

I remember seeing a quote from hussie a couple of weeks back – something about how no matter how bad each of the trolls seem at first, they have to eventually become likeable, otherwise they wouldn’t be fun to write. (I had a look but unfortunately can’t find the quote again but I’m 99% sure it’s real). with vriska, that had to be a pretty tall order because the stakes of what she does are so high. making karkat and sollux likeable when they’re general purpose dickheads is one thing, making gamzee and nepeta likeable when they’re part of ‘weird’ internet subcultures is one thing, but making vriska likeable – as an actual person we care about and not just a Cool Villain – after she’s killed thousands, including another major character, is a tall order! there HAVE to be some pretty serious mitigating circumstances to make that work! so once the villainous things about her were established, then in order for hussie to achieve that goal, they had to also make her less in control of her own actions and give us big reasons to feel sorry for her, otherwise the whole goal of the trolls doesn’t work!

so yeah because she is more extreme than the other trolls in both directions, of course people are going to have strong opinions. whether that’s a hardline opinion that there’s no excuse for treating other people like she does, or that she had no choice in her actions and therefore no responsibility, or any of the infinite nuance in between. and that gets even more complex when we add in predestination, which doc scratch keeps getting at with comments like ‘you were, and are, going to do this regardless’ (p.2244), but then also the fact that it is possible to take actions that aren’t destined and lead to dark timelines, it’s just inadvisable? plus we see inside vriska’s head in the narrative text, hear her talk in pesterlogs, get her possibly unreliable version of events, in ways that we haven’t with other villains like jack noir, which gives her a whole lot more depth and ambiguity.

I obviously don't claim to know hussie's intentions with all this, but, something that kept readers really engaged in acts 1-4 was solving mysteries like 'what's in the green present jade sent to john' and figuring out patterns like 'what will rose, dave and jade prototype their sprites with' and because hivebent is faster paced and more condensed, there's less space for long running mysteries like this. when everything is solved two days after it's set up there's less incentive to discuss things in forums. the real draw of hivebent is in its having 12 (now 13) new characters, so having one or more of these be a morally ambiguous sympathetic villain type who provokes a lot of different strong opinions, is probably a really good way to keep that engagement going. and the constant new information about vriska keeps that conversation going day after day, and keeps people reading during an arc that's a BIG swerve away from the story people signed up for.

(sidenote: vriska being so hard to make definitive judgments about makes her a SUPER interesting counterpart to terezi imo, as she's so focused on black and white justice and those situations where she can make definite calls about right and wrong).

it also feels like there’s more attention paid to vriska than some of the other characters, too. for example, she’s the only troll whose typing quirk changes with her emotional state, which is a really easy way to make her feel more three-dimensional. she had to mercy kill her lusus in an 8-page scene while everyone else’s has died suddenly in a single panel. she has the fluorite octet as a weapon, which has HUNDREDS of possible unique attacks, while most of the other trolls have something much simpler. even her design – robotic hand and eyepatch, or glasses of vision eightfold before her accident – is more striking and unique compared to the other trolls.

as much as I might want gamzee and sollux and nepeta and equius to be super important to the long term story, the focus on the FLARP team’s history together makes me think they might be the trolls with the biggest overall impact, once their story catches up with the kids again. MAYBE also karkat, but even he hasn’t been seen for almost a hundred pages! grimAuxiliatrix has the line about how ‘Dangerous People Can Be Really Important’ in reference to vriska (p.2204), plus vriska was disabled by doc scratch himself – maybe the most important/powerful entity on alternia – and used by him for a long time. plus her symbolic links to spades slick and snowman! so she’s definitely set up to be at the center of things! and if she is going to have a big role in the story, it makes sense that hussie would want to get people talking about her to a greater extent than the other trolls.

I for one think it’d be really cool if vriska got super into free will and not being manipul8ed by any more powerful forces, and teamed up with rose to try to tear the game down.

[homestuckreplay]

Bad Cueball, Worst Enemy

(page 2239-2255)

Aradia, pre-death, might be the most regular, even well-adjusted of all the trolls, despite already being haunted by the voices of the dead. As regular as trolls get, I guess. She’s like a John or a Karkat with her interest in archaeology linked to one of her movie heroes, Troll Indiana Jones. Silly laptop, dice set in her blood color, lusus curled up in her room. Excited about seeing her long distance internet middle school boyfriend. Remember that note Dave sent to John where he talked about how he was so excited for the two of them to meet in person someday and bump filthy wifebeaters (p.1662)? It’s like that. She’s so excited about the tiny chance that Sollux might have come to visit her that even though she thinks it’s a trick, she can’t help going to the window. She has emotions: that excitement about Sollux, and her understandable anger towards Vriska.

TA: have you ever been angry? TA: ii dont remember you gettiing angry about anythiing. AA: maybe i never was AA: i feel like i was th0ugh AA: 0nce (p.2085)

Every part of Aradia and Sollux’s early conversations hits different knowing about this part of their backstory. It seems like Sollux has no idea Aradia is dead, and he might even be the person she’s trying to conceal it from when she asks Nepeta to ‘please keep this a secret’ (p.2193), but it’s unclear if Aradia remembers that Sollux was the instrument used to kill her. If she does, it makes her levitating up to his hive and psychically blasting him into the mind honey even darker. And if she does, she clearly knows he was controlled by Vriska, and doesn’t blame Sollux for his part in things.

AA: but y0u like t0 talk t0 me AA: this a fact n0t a questi0n AA: they t0ld me (p.2085)

The moment of Aradia’s death is also the saddest possible moment to reveal her and Sollux’s relationship. To be a weird 13 year old dating another weird 13 year old, probably both of your first relationships, figuring out what it means to care for each other across distance and when you’re supposed to treat everyone around you with suspicion and hatred, and then for your partner to suddenly, inexplicably, lose the kindness and personality that drew you to her. To continue to care for her even beyond that, even when it seems like she can’t feel the same thing for you, to hold onto whatever part of that relationship you still can because she’s that important to you, because you’re not willing to give up, because you’re hoping one day she’ll come back to you… yeah.

I think it’s relevant that the FLARP clouders are Aradia and Vriska, red and blue, same as the two Sburb teams who will eventually go head to head, same colors, same fight. Here, Aradia’s revenge seems completely justified – it’s against someone who’s much higher in the caste system than she is, and someone she knows has hurt and killed a lot of people, the most recent of which is a good friend of hers, and she blames herself for getting distracted. Even though her methods are dark as fuck, from her perspective, extreme measures are needed.

But we get both perspectives and personally I am struggling to take a side. All I can do is feel bad for this girl who is so small and scared and powerless in her conversations with an omnipotent being who is using his powers to punch down at somebody who can’t possibly threaten him back. She doesn’t even try to hide that she’s ‘kind of fre8king out’ and wants to ‘curl into a little 8all and cry’ (p.2244), and even though she used FLARP as a weapon to get food for her lusus, she also LOVES the game and she just wanted to be able to play with her friends for fun, just one game where she didn’t have to hurt anyone and could enjoy it, and this guy couldn’t even let her have that??

It’s really hard to analyze this story when I can’t stop being sad about how much all these characters are hurting. Which was true of the beta kids too, but it was less surface level, and the kids also weren’t causing that hurt for each other.

I also don’t even want to try to rationally analyze all this, because Doc Scratch is EXACTLY the type of guy who acts like his rationality makes him above it all. Like the kind who plays devil’s advocate in an argument about people’s human rights and thinks the ability to stay calm in that argument makes him inherently better and more qualified to discuss it than someone who has an emotional response. I fucking love when Vriska calls him the ‘dum8est omniscient person [she] ever met’ (p.2244) because he really is talking bullshit throughout this conversation, he’s just calm and composed about it. ‘positions of tangential involvement’ and ‘didn’t talk [Vriska] into anything’ and ‘no room for delusion’ my FUCKING ASS!!!! YOU USED HER!!!! you took somebody who was already vulnerable and turned her into a fucking blunt instrument to accomplish your own ends that you are absolutely powerful enough to achieve without her help! you made her ruin the only positive relationships in her life for NO REASON while you stood and watched for your own entertainment!

FINALLY I have found a Homestuck character I can hate more than Bro Strider.

So really the way Vriska uses Sollux as a weapon isn’t so different to the way Doc Scratch uses Vriska, except that Sollux was 100% directly mind controlled with no ability to resist, while Vriska was ‘just’ seriously manipulated and put into a situation where acting differently was nearly impossible, but technically made her own choice. So, where’s the line? Because I really think Hivebent is primarily about ethics and morality, and how people determine those things when people’s society and families don’t teach them, and when they’re constantly under threat. And it’s asking questions about where agency begins and under what circumstances somebody is responsible for their actions, not just with the FLARP accident but with Karkat’s curses and Gamzee’s miracles and Equius’ uncontrolled strength and Sollux’s quitting the game and Aradia’s inevitability of destiny and Vriska’s bad luck and the trolls’ many and varied forms of psychic powers.

And the fan response to all this is very strongly about who is good and who is bad, which aren’t really questions anyone was asking about the beta kids. People are asking serious questions about the trolls’ actions in the text and beyond, asking ‘would we judge Vriska differently if she was a man’ and ‘is Terezi killing John justified because it’s the punishment he would have received in the Alternian justice system’ and 'does Vriska feeling guilt over her actions affect how we should interpret them'. And it might be a story about aliens but it’s pretty relevant to Earth, because our world is also set up to reward people for being selfish and cruel and screwing each other over, and set up to make sure people are stressed and busy and don’t have the time or resources to help each other. I have no idea if people are transporting these ideas to their real lives, but if this is letting people develop compassion for people who are kinds rude and unpleasant because they’re under extreme pressure, or helping them see that not all bad acts are equally bad and should be judged relatively, then I think that would be an actual positive impact for this story to have.

Anyway, we’re on Alternia’s green moon!! The moon that looks suspiciously like it’s made out of pool table felt, just like some other guys I saw on future Alternia. Doc Scratch’s house is also the same shade of green as Lord English’s mansion, and the panels are made in the same way, with a heavy green filter applied to photographs, unlike the mostly hand-drawn backgrounds of most of the comic.

Doc Scratch represents the cue ball with his blank white face, while Lord English’s name is now written with the O cycling through all the balls at once, just like in Sollux’s demon-summoning virus (p.2091). The Tumblr interface simply does not allow me to write Lord English’s name in this way. L🌈rd English? Is that anything????

Doc Scratch is a guardian, but he’s more aligned with the exiles and Sburb agents than anything. Like WV who doesn’t know what a captchalogue system is (p.670) or Spades Slick who carries everything in his war chest (p.1161), and like how the Midnight Crew are associated with playing cards, the Felt with pool and Skaia with chess, Doc Scratch apparently holds Pesterchum conversations via a typewriter and a piece of paper. He’s analog while the kids and trolls are digital. He’s also got two models of Skaia’s battlefield in his room, like how the battlefield is contained in the orb above the king’s scepter. Almost like Scratch is the closest thing Alternia has to a king, maybe?

Officially, Doc Scratch is a FIRST GUARDIAN who watches over his planet’s intelligent life, and is a follower of Lord English employed to help bring about English’s summoning at the end of the universe. These are two separate things, although English probably tries to employ the First Guardian in every universe he enters, because that’s a powerful ally. Scratch crackles with the exact same green lightning that Bec does (for example, p.980), and Bec also fulfils the criteria of being ‘almost as old as the planet itself’, being made from an ‘especially potent genetic sequence’ and having ‘near omnipotence’ (p.2253). Bec, however, is a good dog and a best friend who would surely not betray Jade by working for an indestructible demon. He’s also a dog who doesn’t know how to use a typewriter.

Bec was created by the Draconian Dignitary, who cloned Grandpa Harley’s childhood dog and combined him with the MEOW code from Rose’s journals. The gods of the Furthest Ring tried to prevent this from happening by telling Rose to destroy the journals. So, what’s the agenda? A First Guardian is required for a planet to have intelligent life, so this could just be DD fulfilling the oldest and most important time loop of all – while the gods are trying to oppose Skaia by breaking its loops, starting with the biggest one of all, such that this incarnation of Skaia never exists in the first place.

Alternatively, this could be less about the First Guardian’s existence and more about the specific form it takes, which varies wildly between planets. Alternia’s hypercompetent First Guardian takes a firm hand with its development, and if the gods of the Furthest Ring are the ones who summon Lord English – as they’re the one who distribute his pool ball server to various universes – they probably want a humanoid First Guardian to ensure his summoning. So perhaps they wanted Rose to destroy the code because they wanted the First Guardian to be created from, say, Grandpa Harley instead of Bec. Meanwhile the Midnight Crew, who might be an antagonistic force against Lord English in all universes, wanted the First Guardian to take a form which didn’t promote English’s arrival. In their case this was Bec – someone who protects the kids instead of manipulating them and leading them to their doom. On Alternia, Lord English won, but on Earth, the Midnight Crew won, and that’s a key difference between their sessions.

Doc Scratch’s immense First Guardian power makes it SUPER impressive that both Vriska and Terezi are able to blindside him here – Vriska by getting closer to beating him at chess for reasons he can’t understand, and Terezi for contacting him via Trollian when he doesn’t have an account name. I guess when you’re omniscient you can get a little too comfortable. A little too okay with teaching people your tricks because you just see them as stupid children whose actions don’t matter. And then they surprise you by turning your own methods against you.

This is extra exciting to me because Doc Scratch is not in the Intermission, and he could still be hiding on the moon, but he also might no longer be around. Which means Vriska and Terezi might actually defeat him somehow. Unlike the increasingly tragic revenge plots between the trolls, that’s a victory that would actually feel good.

[tenaciouschronicler]

GUYS!!!

I wanted to wait till I caught up but I just got my commission and I NEED to share!!

LOOK AT IT!!!

@markmaker36 did amazing!! I'll make a seperate post later on the trolls but I just had to share!

Left and right troll designs- @markmaker36

Middle troll design- @ozuzo

[tenaciouschronicler]

July 16-20 2025 2010

Just a heads up the last part will touch on some topics regarding sexual nature. Nothing graphic but if content regarding teenage hormones sounds questionable to you there will be a content warning before the section.

You try to be the white text guy, but fail to be the white text guy. No one can be the white text guy except for the white text guy.

The white text guy is known as Doc Scratch.

Hello. Why are you looking at me like that? I feel like Ive walked into somewhere I wasnt supposed to or like ive just interrupted a meeting. The mansion makes sense given he works for L@ord English though Im way more interested in the cube. We've seen one of these when we were getting the explaination of the chess game inherent to SBURB. Doc here is lowkey terrifying. Not visually in looks but from how he stands, full of power and the flickering of green lightning weve only seen with Bec so far. If the cube is the troll session and that sphere is the kids session how much power does he hold? How much can he manipulate?? Compounded with the fact we are explicitly told we cant be him so any and all motivations can only be gleaned from what he displays. Speaking of Bec.

Scratch is Alternia's FIRST GUARDIAN. Every planet destined for intelligent life has such an entity meant to protect it, and facilitate the planet's ultimate purpose. A first guardian is typically almost as old as the planet itself, and each has a unique, circuitous origin through the knots of paradox space. They can be born into a great diversity of forms, though they all share a common, especially potent genetic sequence. The code grants them near omnipotence, and when merged with a host of great intelligence, near omniscience as well.

Excuse me what? Theres a lot to unpack here. Lets look at some of these details..

almost as old as the planet itself- landed in lava at the creation of Jades island

a unique, circuitous origin through the knots of paradox space- witnessed when Droog used the ecto machine in [S]Descend where we saw many other cycles completed/started

all share a common, especially potent genetic sequence- cant be fully confirmed that the code was the same MEOW sequence but we do know that was used for Bec

can never be told what to do- in hindsight makes sense, Jade had difficulty controlling Bec

This recontextualizes a ton of if not all of Becs actions regarding the game session and Jade. It seems like typically the First Gaurdian role is as a background manipulator with direct action only when necessary. Perhaps its the dog loyalty genes. Perhaps its how sensitive Jade is to the machinations of Skaia and needing to keep her in check. “Guardians can never be told what to do. Neither the omnipotent kind, nor the ordinary kind who raise kids in houses. It's a universal law of reality.” I want to keep this here for later musings. I can say for now how true this is as we've seen. Even when seeing the game from the Gaurdian perspective it was by proxy (hat, pony) rather than directly becoming the gaurdian.

Looks like he's pondering over his next move in a game he is playing [...] she has been getting closer to beating him lately, and he has no idea how this is possible.

Uncertainty, though rare, is quite a troubling sensation for the omniscient.

GC: H3Y WH1T3 T3XT GUY

GC: 1 H4V3 4 T1P FOR YOU

Terezi? Hello!? Though he gains the answer pretty quickly its still surprising that Sollux was able to not only trace the connection but somehow use tech to print Tere's messages to the typewriter. At first the typewriter seemed an odd, if asthetically correct, choice but I guess you don’t need screens when you are all knowing and all seeing. I am side eyeing the choice with suspicion for one reason we return to; how much influence does Doc Scratch have? Sure, white is his signature color, but whos to say its the only color. Is there regular black for the typewriter? How exactly does he pave the way for LE? How much should we worry he cant be controlled. Even the exiles had command prompts. And if they can suggest ideas to the kids, whos to say Doc cant do more? Cant go beyond the confines of the story?

In the conversation with TZ and Doc, which is line with the current past, we learn a couple of things. First, Terezi's synesthesia is not present yet; “[Y]ou may refer to me as Mr. Vanilla Milkshake. It is perfectly in keeping with a habit which you will develop in the future.” Ive said before that it seems theres a lot of blind prophets. Thinking on it I almost feel like its less the blinding that is the pertinent part rather its the ‘seeing’. Removing sight only leaves other methods of navigating the world. So which do you follow, the straight path before you, tread by others or the winding one from your new perspective?

Second, Schrodingers Aradia. “Yes, I said you believe she is dead./ And soon, you will believe she is not./ Both statements are true./ And yet each exhibits a trace of falsehood.” Wow thanks Doc I love riddles /s. I guess for both to be true the current reality will not be the future reality. Perhaps Aradia does some sort of memory manipulation? For the falsehoods its probably the weird undeath of being a ghost.

Third

GC: WHY DONT YOU CONSULT W1TH YOUR L1TTL3 4DV4NT4G3

GC: 1T S33MS TO H4V3 4LL TH3 4NSW3RS

[...]

GC: YOU KNOW YOUR3 GONN4 4NYW4Y

GC: 4DD1CT1ON 1S 4 POW3RFUL TH1NG >:]

Vriska is a cheaty mc cheater and cue balls are crazy. “Each at one time belonged to the strange and powerful man fabled to live on the green moon, but have since managed to escape his vision.” Side tangent, I love the world building implications of there being a man on the moon that is actually on the moon. There's always myths and stories that explain something out of place or mystical before science so imagine those myths being reality. Anyway, Vriska has one of these and she is not supposed to. I wonder if this cue ball is the same one from Jades chest or a different one? How many does Doc have? I looked back at the panel to check the text and in both instances the text is near exactly the same. “It is said to make predictions with alarming precision and specificity. Unfortunately it lacks a portal on its surface that allows you to view the prediction.”

Where they differ is Jade is a human with human limitations and places both the cue and 8 ball back in the chest. Vriska on the other hand has VISION EIGHTFOLD. Upon activating the power the blacked out lense (not eyepatch) channels a form of x-ray vision allowing the future to be seen. Bad idea as Terezi has just informed Doc and hes not happy. The outpouring of green lightning causes an explosion not unlike the one that occurred on PMs terminal.

Back to the present aftermath of the doomsday device explosion. Equius finds Aurthour, his session is in play and near the body is a kernel. Vriska on the other side prepares to use her dice to kill her injured Gaurdian; “Maybe the dead girl is on to something. Maybe the only way to beat your bad luck is not caring about the outcome.” I got out my calculator to figure out what 8^8 is and wow. 16,777,216 possible options and she gets a giant Guillotine. Id say thats lucky but its all a matter of perspective. Im sure Vriska doesn’t think the sudden deluge of blood is very lucky. Nor the aftershocks triggering Equius's already precarious hive to topple. I actually skimmed over the fact Equius's session had started on my first read so my first thought was ‘Now where did the hive go?’

Vriska gets back to her room in record time and starts furiously typing. Shes furious her carfully curated double crossing plan just went sideways.

AG: […] you could have a 8ody again and everyth8ng would 8e fine. Then we could go 8ack to 8eing friends again.

AA: were we ever really friends

AG: Yeah!!!!!!!!

AG: I don't know. I felt like we were even if you didn't think so.

AG: I guess I'm not very good at acting like a friend. Or saying stuff like, hey friend! You're my friend! It doesn't really occur to me.

AG: 8ut we were! Why would you play with me if you didn't think I was your friend?

AA: i d0nt remember

AA: it d0esnt matter

Every one of these trolls has some level of emotional constipation thats so painfullly normal for a teen. Vris has made bad choices in line with whats expected of society but shes also taken many of those too far. Theres an inherent need, I believe, in teens to be seen as able to make adult decisions. The problem lies in the fact they are woefully unprepared to handle adult consequences. Vriska wants to be liked. The motivation behind it Im unsure of, but she wants to be liked and she cant wrap her mind around the fact her choices are poor ones. On top of that she takes others actions so personally as an attack. Upon learning shes not on the blue team, Vriska has a tantrum.

AG: I get it. I finally see now. This is your revenge.

AG: You finally did it, Megido. You got me pretty good. Well played.

AA: its n0t revenge

[...]

AG: What a load of SHIIIIIIIIT. You've 8een plotting your revenge since day one. And I fell for it like a sucker. Can't say I 8lame you.

AA: ive never th0ught ab0ut revenge at all

Vriska believes everyone else functions on the same mentality. Its why she cant understand why everyone else is so pressed about her actions. I cant say for sure but I believe the higher up the caste you go the more you have to worry about agression from all sides. Especially in a situation like Vriskas where you have to kill others for your own survival (feeding her Spidermom). Whos to say she descriminates and only targetz those of lower blood. Or that those of lower blood arent like Nep and have friends of higher blood who have the means to take revenge.

AG: Fuck the 8lue team, fuck your conniving, fuck Equius's dou8ledealing and the stupid muscle8east he rode in on, and fuck you for s8ving my life.

cw: sexual innuendo

First off

AA: equius im ab0ut t0 thr0w an abluti0n trap thr0ugh y0ur wall

AA: heads up

CT: D --> Call things by their proper names

AA: what

AA: y0u want me t0 call it a bath tub

AA: that s0unds ridicul0us

Yes, good! More plumbing shenanigans!!

And soon, in a place known as the LAND OF CAVES AND SILENCE...

Equius gets down to business laying down the ‘law’. Of course Aradia has no particular feelings one way or the other “AA: ive underst00d f0r s0me time that this will be my r0le/ t0 functi0n as y0ur server player/ and that y0u w0uld be the team leader as the first in the chain”. Equius doesn’t understand the full implication of these words only seeing the surface where someone is properly following the system. Aradia explains the true purpose of a server player as one who “manipulate[s] y0ur envir0nment t0 help y0u advance”.

CT: D --> To consider that someone so low could be in a position of authority over me is

CT: D --> It's just so

CT: D --> Disgusting

AA: y0u really are quite a sn0b

CT: D --> No it's

CT: D --> FILTHY

[...]

CT: D --> Where the fuck are all my fresh towels

Ok. I didn’t talk about this the last time Equius got so flustered during the conversation with Gamzee but we are gonna talk about this now. Teenage hormones are weird. Were he human, Equius would absolutely be diagnosed with excess testoterone/progesterone. Everyone has these hormones and in fact women have higher levels equal to men the closer to mensturation. Testoterone is typically connected to the following traits in men: aggression, strength/muscles, and sexual ‘prowess’.

I can only really attest to the female experience but from my understanding, anything and everything can cause an arousal response. Equius's seems to be tied to feelings of power and domination. I don’t want to touch too deep on the subject of BDSM because these are teens, but if Equius in the future goes down that path he will need to get a good grasp of consent and come to terms with his own personal feelings of the caste system. Consent is near non existant with this boy. Sure, Gamz went along with Equius but hes clearly not in the right headspace to understand what the implications are. Aradia on the otherhand, for all her stoicism, does if “0_0” is anything to go by. The problem in their dynamic is that Equius doesn’t see Aradia as equal. He finds thrill in the fact their relationship would be salacious in others eyes, handing over power to someone so low, but hes not actually considering if Aradia would be ok with that dynamic let alone accept his affections.

CT: D --> You may role play and proceed to deepen this already irretrievable debauchery

CT: D --> In fact I command it

CT: D --> I command you to have free will and do as you please

CT: D --> And continue being bothersome and unpredictably destructive

CT: D --> I mean

CT: D --> If you want

Add another mark to the ‘do we truly have free will?’ conversation. Jokes aside this is the prefect example of what I mean. They are not in a relationship. They have not had any conversation about this in any context. Even so, its very contradictory to command someone to do what they please. How will you know that their actions are not then influenced by what they think you expect of them?

Counterpoint, if their defiance is what attracts you does then not telling them to be defiant defeat the purpose of defiance? Could it not then also make them feel like ‘well if I have permission theres no point cause then I am just doing as they want’? And that just compounds further with what happens next.

Equius makes quick work of entering the second gate to meet Aradiasprite and deliver the robot. (itching to stitch this god its pretty) The newly ‘alive’ Aradiabot takes some time to register the change

EQUIUS: D --> Can you detect anything within you might describe as

EQUIUS: D --> Smoldering passion

EQUIUS: D --> I mean

EQUIUS: D --> Just out of curiosity

AG: May8e I sh8uld just rip my he8rt out of my chest and pound it to a 8loody pulp here on my desk with my sup8r strong ro8ot arm.

ARADIABOT: did y0u pr0gram this r0b0t t0 have feelings f0r y0u?

ARADIABOT: R0MANTIC FEELINGS???

ARADIABOT: ANSWER ME BLUE BL00D SCUM

AG: Pound pound pound pound pound pound pound pound!

EQUIUS: D --> Is that not ok

AG: Look at that, more nasty 8lue 8lood all over me. Why not! Might as well op8n the floodg8s and p8nt my whole hive with this oh so envia8le cerulean SWILL.

ARADIABOT: GET IT 0UT GET IT 0UT GET IT 0UT GET IT 0UT GET IT 0UT GET IT 0UT GET IT 0UT GET IT 0UT GET IT 0UT GET IT 0UT GET IT 0UT GET IT 0UT GET IT 0UT

Aradia rightly freaks the fuck out. Not just a consent issue anymore this is a whole autonomy offence. Equius has so little understanding of others feelings, much like Vriska, that he is genuinely confused that the person he has placed on a pedestal isnt just following the script in his head. While Vriska believes others have the same beliefs, Equius believes he can enforce his will and others will simply fall in line. Thats not how people work.

How did we get here?

[homestuckreplay]

i guess 0ur gaming days are 0ver

(page 2220-2238 but mostly a long discussion of robot ethics)

Content warnings: non-explicit discussion of sexual assault

In the far future year of 2019, researchers at Cornell University will invent an energy-dense liquid used to power robots and allow them to perform tasks for longer. They will refer to this liquid as ‘robot blood’. This, too, is Homestuck.

This update reveals the present that Equius and Vriska have prepared for Aradia, which turns out to be a fully robotic body not unlike Jade’s dreambot, presumably one her ghost could inhabit to one again give her a physical presence in the world. However, where ghost Aradia’s eyelashes, lips and Aries shirt symbol are dark red, the robot body’s are the same dark blue as Equius’.

But worry not. Your heart will pump no more of that despicable red sludge. You have been given a new heart. You can be taught the ways of the class you were always meant for. No one is beyond redemption. (p.2226)

Here, Equius explicitly links the Alternian caste system with a troll’s literal blood color, which according to him is something that can be changed. I don’t think the troll caste system is analogous to any hierarchy that exists in the real world – it doesn’t map neatly onto (human) race, caste or class, and I’m not sure it’s meant to. First, troll blood color can be empirically determined by a single factor, so it’s a lot more simplistic and it’s rooted in a genuine biological truth (even if the way it’s used to discriminate is invented). Second, trolls don’t have parents or direct ancestors, and are all hatched together with a seemingly equal chance at the trials in the brooding caverns – at least there’s been no suggestion that the bluebloods would be given an advantage in these trials. There must be somebody enforcing this hierarchy, but it’s different to an inequality that accumulates over generations. But even with no direct human analogy, the caste system raises general questions about power structures and our abilities to change our status within them.

Equius is the biggest proponent of the caste system, but he’s also the one who is most actively questioning it.

CT: D --> How is it possible for one of your distin%ion to be so ignorant CT: D --> And loathesome CT: D --> Whereas CT: D --> A member of the most abject, verminous b100dline of all CT: D --> Can conduct herself with such grace and possess nothing but admirable mannerisms CT: D --> I find these striking ju%tapositions perple%ing, and I confess strangely into%icating (p.2221)

His belief in the system is theoretical, he can easily think of lower caste people as scum when they’re a faceless monolith far away from him, and then he actually meets one and she’s literally just a person. And the way he rationalizes this is by deciding that biology or the system’s enforcers made a mistake, so he puts himself above even those things, takes matters into his own hands, and finds a way to raise her status. Which is fascinating, because he’s making himself an arbiter of a system he claims to see as an inherent truth.

Does everyone on Alternia become a ghost when they die? Because if so, Equius could take this further. He’s in cahoots with Vriska, (sorry, cahoooooooots) who kills people and feeds their physical bodies to his lusus. He then judges their ‘true’ caste status and gives them a robot to match. They can either stay dead, or accept the life he offers. And surely there’s other roboticists on Alternia, or other biologists who might be able to offer this to someone who’s still alive? Like, how is this not a whole industry on Alternia for people who are trying to raise their own caste status to give themselves an easier life? What are the ethics of someone willingly deciding to change their own blood color, given that the caste system itself is unjust? Does that change based on whether they’re changing it to be a lower or higher caste than their original birth? How would robo-Aradia be treated on Alternia? Would people assume that because her robot has blue blood, she also did when she was alive, or would they jump to body modification right away?

I think that with this ONE image of a blue-blooded robot Homestuck is raising a lot of possibilities it is definitely not going to explore the implications of (the world is hours away from ending), and honestly I don’t know enough about the reasons behind the Alternian caste system to say much more, but if it ever had any meaning, this massively undercuts it. Maybe I have to go become an expert in cyberpunk literature so I can talk about all this some more because that seems like the closest analog here.

It seems like Aradia didn’t have a hand in this robot’s creation, and maybe doesn’t know about Equius’ plans for her blood. More than that, Equius proves that he retains control over his robotic creations even over short distances, as he makes Vriska robo-slap herself with her own arm (sidenote: second visual parallel between Vriska and Jade in the last couple dozen pages, and they also both own 8 balls, which may or may not mean something). Equius is clearly attracted to Aradia, and he’s built a robot in her likeness that he’s already acting out romantic scenes with, calling the two of them ‘illicit lovers’ (p.2226) so there’s an obvious question of if he’ll keep trying to do this when Aradia’s spirit is piloting the robot.

There was some flirting between kids and trolls in Act 4, but this is the first case of attraction between two trolls. It shows up just a few pages after the reveal that ‘in troll language, the word for friend is exactly the same as the word for enemy’ (p.2220), so I wonder how that applies to romance. Back in Act 4, Karkat mentioned his and Terezi’s ‘CANDLE LIGHT HATE DATE’ (p.1603) so, is romance on Alternia just more antagonistic than it typically is on Earth? And how does that link to the idea of consent, both in general and when a controllable robot is added into the mix?

Consent is already complicated between humans (or in this case trolls), especially when there’s a power dynamic involved, such as two people being from significantly different castes. Technology makes it even more complicated. I did a little research and there has been a fair bit of discussion on the ethics of having sex with robots, which will probably become a bigger discussion the more advanced AI systems become. There’s also lots written about whether it ‘counts’ as sexual assault to perform sexual acts with someone’s avatar in a virtual world without their consent. I’ve personally dealt with a situation where a D&D DM had one of his NPCs sexually assault a player’s character, in their game, without any of the players’ real world consent. In general, mobility aids, prosthetic limbs, religious dress and even cell phones are sometimes considered extensions of someone’s body. None of these are identical to the Aradia situation, but they are relevant, because they’re all about what qualifies as someone’s body.

If Equius can in theory mind control Aradia’s robot body, then even if he chooses not to, does that impact her ability to consent to a relationship with him, even if she’d otherwise want to? She’s a powerful psychic herself, and can move objects around and put people to sleep with her mind (as can several other trolls), so an argument like this could be extended to troll relationships more generally. Equius is also physically strong in a way he can’t control, so even if Aradia wanted to kiss him, who’s to say he’d be able to stop himself from breaking the body he made for her? And how does the dynamic change further when he’s the one who designed her body to be – in his opinion – the ideal physical version of her? There are definitely no easy answers to any of these questions, and even though we don’t have mind control and psychic powers, they do overlap with real world issues.

I guess overall, the ideas in this update about robotics, control, consent and ethics are REALLY interesting to me, and all of them do fit in with established themes in Homestuck, which is already about technology and genetic engineering and mind control, but Hivebent is intended to be a mini arc. I think it’s good when an author takes risks, and in general I would prefer to see someone try to explore a difficult topic and do an imperfect job than tell a safe, sanitized story. But I also think that ideas like this might need more room to breathe than they’re gonna get, given the current pace of Act 5.

I basically can’t stop thinking about this robot but I guess some other stuff happens here too. Gamzee is hanging out and eating pie with the imps on his land instead of fighting them, which is a weird parallel to Nannasprite baking cookies for the imps in John’s house, so maybe all the Sburb/Sgrub underlings are secretly just hungry? Why exactly does Skaia build its soldiers to both want and need food? Is this an intentional glitch for players to exploit??

Equius also talks to Vriska, and they’re basically both like ‘wow we are so cool and better than everyone and Definitely Not planning to secretly screw each other over :::;)’ even though they are, in fact, planning to do so. This is of course why the red team will win (at least, I’m supporting red).

When Equius punches a robot out the window, it makes Vriska’s completed doomsday device, the Catenative Doomsday Dice Cascader, explode, destroying the nearby cliffs. Rocks collapse on her super cool and a little bit sexy lusus, and Aurthour also falls to his death. The doomsday dice cascader is my favorite piece of Problem Sleuth bonus content and I am a little bit sad that it just breaks and falls, and doesn’t get a chance to activate again. Hey Vriska, why did you string a heavy doomsday device up above your lusus’ lair anyway? What’s up with that?

Gamzee is actually doing a REALLY good job of building Terezi’s hive – it’s very neat and orderly and has none of the whimsy or getting distracted that might be expected from him. The imps already show three lusus prototypings: crab pincers from Karkat’s, dragon wings from Terezi’s, and sea goat horns from Gamzee’s. Sgrub is real and it’s happening (for the red team at least).

Vriska and Terezi discuss a possible truce, which Terezi rejects. Vriska I think is extremely transparent and gives so much of herself away in every conversation she’s a part of without even realizing it, and her assertion that Terezi is one day ‘going to do something t8rri8le to some8ody and wish [she] could t8ke it 8ack 8ut [she] c8n't!!!!!!!!’ (p.2237) is such an obvious admission that Vriska really regrets what she’s done to her friends, even though earlier she claimed she didn’t even do ‘anything that 8ad’ to Terezi. Maybe also a hint that Terezi will eventually feel bad about killing John too??

At the end, we cut back to the FLARP campaign, and for the first time see Terezi before she lost her sight. It feels strange and wrong to see her with regular troll eyes. And by later in the story she seems to agree with this, given that she ‘N3V3R R34LLY GOT TH3 CH4NC3 TO TH4NK [VR1SK4]’ for the accident (p.2237), which is the thing that allowed her to finally connect with her lusus and wake up on Prospit. It’s a little different but it kind of links back to the earlier themes, where a change to Tereziz’s body, done without her consent, is eventually something that she feels happy with and that made her more herself.

It seems like there will be a flashback for each of the four trolls’ FLARP accidents to better establish their pre-Sgrub dynamic. Tavros is hurt, Aradia is unwilling to accept help from Equius (or even suggest it to Tavros as a possibility), and she’s out for revenge. There’s also a hint that Terezi has also been talking to White Text, and that he appeared in person during the campaign. This is a great tease for next update, and I’m already excited to see more.

[tenaciouschronicler]

July 13-15 2025 2010

It should be noted that in troll language, the word for friend is exactly the same as the word for enemy.

Equius likes structure. Theres expectations he follows and outside of that hes unsure how to navigate his emotions. I feel like part of that is his innate need to keep his strength in check. When he gets angry its harder to excert his already tenuous control so clinging to the rigid idea of blood caste systems is a grounding method.

CT: D --> You will stop

TC: WhOaAaA, i WiLl?

TC: hOw Do YoU kNoW tHaT?

CT: D --> No, you don't understand

CT: D --> It's not a predi%ion, it's an order

CT: D --> I command you to stop

TC: Oh, AlRiGhT bRoThEr.

[...]

CT: D --> No

CT: D --> This is una%eptable

CT: D --> Ok, let's start over

[...]

CT: D --> Don't you understand that you're better than me

CT: D --> Can you please act like it

CT: D --> That's not a command, it's just a polite request I guess

As we can see in this conversation with Gamzee, deviating from that is to some degree distressing especially when faced with an individual who has a much looser grasp on the rules of society.

CT: D --> Honestly I'm confused by the social order

TC: mAn, Me ToO. i DoN't KnOw WhAt Of FuCkIn WhAt CoLoR iS wHaT, sO i DoN't BoThEr WiTh ThInKiN oN tHaT mOtHeRfUcKeR.

CT: D --> See, that's what I mean

CT: D --> How is it possible for one of your distin%ion to be so ignorant

CT: D --> And loathesome

[...]

CT: D --> I find these striking ju%tapositions perple%ing, and I confess strangely into%icating

Even still he likes it. He doesn’t want to like it but he does. Without order, without rules how can he conduct himself in the correct manner. Even still theres a draw from not having to follow those rules that he cant help. We see this after his conversation with Vriska. In it we learn that present for Aradia was made by him and more about how little the two trust each other. “You naturally will doublecross your accomplice, just as you assume she has plans to doublecross you. You assume she is assuming the same of you. Business as usual for blue bloods.” Exhausting business isnt it?

Heres where Equius starts to toe the line.

How ironic that someone of your blood purity must work to win the favor of the lowest sort of peasant. Humiliating. Strangely titillating, even. But in the end, class order will be restored.

You don't know what to make of the feelings she stirs. For one like you to entertain thoughts of attraction for such genetic filth would be utter depravity.

Exquisite, delectable depravity.

We can see the full extent of Equius’ issues from this reveal of robo Aradia. He has problems reconciling his feelings with the need to follow class structure. I think he is mixing his genuine feelings with the seductiveness of breaking the rules. Its similar to the addictiveness of breaking his bows. He doesn’t want to but it feels good because its out of his control and just a small way that he can excert power that he tries to reign in. Its not healthy.

But worry not. Your heart will pump no more of that despicable red sludge. You have been given a new heart. You can be taught the ways of the class you were always meant for. No one is beyond redemption.

A gift for Aradia it might be in an objective sense, but from this we can see its just a way for Equius to gain back the control hes ‘losing’ by not sticking to the class structure. He sees no wrong in this move beecause thats just how it should be, the upper class dictates what the lower one does and should be. So wrapped up in his fantasy, he punches one of the nearby robots out of the hive and down onto the doomsday device below (which I just made the connection to with the game Trouble). While the device itsself doesn’t explode it does break the chains sending down onto the spider below. Aurthour is an unfortunant casuallty.

Back with Terezi for a moment we see a conversation between her and Vriska.

GC: TH3 TRUC3 W4SNT 4BOUT NOT PL4Y1NG G4M3S TOG3TH3R DUMMY

GC: 1T W4S 4BOUT NOT ST4BB1NG 34CH OTH3R 1N TH3 B4CK 4NYMOR3

GC: 4ND STOPP1NG TH3 3NDL3SS CYCL3 OF R3V3NG3

GC: 4ND 4BOV3 4LL NOT US1NG YOUR POW3RS TO HURT P3OPL3 WHO DONT D3S3RV3 1T!

[...]

GC: W3 W3R3 SUPPOS3D TO B3 L1K3 4 V1G1L4NT3 DUO D1SP3NS1NG JUST1C3

GC: 4ND YOU COULD T4K3 TH3 B4D GUYS HOM3 4ND F33D TH3M TO YOUR STUP1D SP1D3R

GC: BUT 1NST34D YOU JUST F3D H3R 3V3RYBODY!

GC: 4ND L13D 4ND L13D 4ND L13D

A flashback to shortly after the FLARP accident gives us more context to what occurred on the Tere/Ara side. At some point in the Clouder session Vris’ mystery white text friend managed to appear much to the confusion of the girls. More importantly my confusion. I’ve likened this guy to the exiles but this shows hes not only known by some of the other trolls but actually able to make direct contact in the current plane before the game even starts. That will have to be touched on in the next post since I feel like the reveal is gonna be crazy. The page link taunts me. (Also I realized the second voice in my pinned post is very reminisent of this guy. That was totally accidental. My second voice is not a douche.) But with how recent the incident was to this log the emotions are still very fresh.

GC: 1 HOP3 YOUR3 NOT TH1NK1NG OF DO1NG 4NYTH1NG 1N R3T4L14T1ON

GC: 1TLL 3ND B4DLY

GC: YOU SHOULD L3T M3 H4NDL3 1T

AA: im n0t scared 0f her

AA: she cant c0ntr0l me

This story is all about cycles. We’ve seeen many of them repeating and self fulfill. Weve seen them being created and destroyed. Weve seen them reach conclusions that are both good and bad. “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” What Aradia decides to do next, against Terezi’s advice, is just the starting domino in a string of bad choices. Using her powers, Ara summons the spirits of the dead trolls fed to Vriskas lusus. A ‘physical’ representation of Vriskas actions. White Text’s chat bubble appears slow, a bright beacon in the sea of grey but just as haunting and dangerous.

Aren't you going to kill her?

AG: Who????????

Your friend.

The one who summoned the spirits.

AG: Will that make them go away?

Does it matter?

She brought them here to torment you. This obviously warrants revenge.

You know you're going to anyway. You won't be able to help yourself.

AG: I don't have to do shit!

AG: May8e I don't mind ghosts. May8e they'll 8e gr8 company once I get used to them!

[...]

I will go.

But maybe you're right. Maybe you are a person with free will and you won't kill your friend.

What do I know?

Enjoy your haunting.

Througout this conversation all I can get is a sense that WT is toying with Vriska. Not necessarily because he finds enjoyment in it but more so like a cat toying with prey. Doing it because he can. Doing it because seeing the struggle is more facinating than the final kill. Hes essentially dangling his own power in front of Vriska tempting her to prove him wrong. But she cant. Shes not strong enough, in character, in will, in bravery. But is it against an adult authority? Against fate and predestination? Against the cycles Skaia orchestrates?

How about this guy? Unfortunately, you can only control him about half the time.

Then again, that should be all the time you need.

AG: Arrivederci, Megido.

[homestuckreplay]

You Know What I Dont Think Even I Really Understand What I Just Said So Nevermind

(page 2200-2219)

Happy 1.25 years of Homestuck!! To celebrate there is YET ANOTHER new troll (as well as another mysterious new character?), bringing us to 9 out of 12 trolls officially introduced, and increasingly I kinda love them all in their own ways.

Vriska

Vriska has to ‘ditch an unwelcome solicitor’ by physically kicking a notification off her computer (p.2200), a gambit previously employed by Jade (p.1373). I loved it when Jade did it and I love it again here. As Homestuck goes on it becomes a lot more common for characters to interface physically with things like notifications and strife specibi, and it isn’t the novelty it once was, just a part of life for the trolls – the same way games that directly impact the physical world are just part of life for them. So it’s probably something I’ll point out less unless there are any examples I have something specific to say about. Here, I just love the visual of it because I’ve had SO many notifications that I’d love to physically kick away.

Vriska does NOT boot her second notification, a pure white bubble. It’s possible that she can’t – this contact doesn’t have a chumhandle or associated symbol, and isn’t confined by the ‘normal’ rules of Trollian. They are to Vriska as the trolls are to the beta kids – able to override block filters, able to contact but not to be contacted, some kind of higher being with superior knowledge. They even play a similar gambit to GA’s with Rose, telling Vriska upfront what their ‘trolling’ strategy is in order to supply a motivation and engineer a specific response.

All the ways I've exploited you were meant to bring about the events that will take place this evening. Knowing this will provide context for the events in your near future, and will affect how you behave in response. (p.2202)

WT (White Text) has been talking to Vriska for a while, and claims to have exploited her, using her as a tool to engineer a chain of events that would culminate in the trolls playing Sgrub. They’re intentionally cryptic, and make their text difficult to read for Vriska and readers alike – bright white on MSPA and Trollian’s very light backgrounds. They’re someone with either a lot of power, near-omniscience, or both, so I don’t think it’s impossible that Vriska is talking directly to the narrator.

There’s honestly way too much going on in this conversation to analyze the whole thing, but here’s a few things I think are especially relevant. First, WT definitely reads like an adult, and I think Vriska has learned a lot of her tricks from this guy. The ways she tries to exert power over Tavros, Aradia and Karkat are probably attempts to mimic what’s worked on her. I’ve mentioned before that Vriska talks like she’s a generation older than the other trolls even though they’re all the same age, and this could be why.

Whoever WT is, I think their messages work kind of like exile commands. The beta kids are aware of a foreign presence in their mind but can’t identify it, and they’re able to resist the commands but it causes them distress (see p.264). Back in Act 2 I thought a lot about the ethics of mind control and of WV giving commands, but he never asked John to do anything bad, so I never had reason to ask whether John could be held responsible for following WV’s orders. WT’s commands are similarly disembodied, and phrased to suggest they’re not optional. And their commands seem much less benign than asking for a can opener.

But of course it was your unpleasant, simplistic temperament that made you so easy to control. Vicious and predictable, like an insect. If you turn a swarm of wasps on a crowd, the outcome is certain.

From the limited amount I’ve seen of Vriska, I think this is accurate, but not the whole story. Vriska is sort of being pulled in two directions – she’s got these two entities trying to control her; her lusus who is an actual giant bug and motivated by base animal instincts like hunger, and WT who is cerebral and omniscient, motivated by grand ideas about the workings of paradox space. So of course WT sees that insect influence in her, because they don’t share it. And Vriska’s lusus probably sees the more rational cunning Vriska employs to lure prey, compared to what she herself could do. I wonder if one of those two instincts will win out, or if Vriska will try to take a third path.

The only question is whether you will live long enough to see it. I'm not a gambling man. But if I was, I wouldn't bet on it.

WT is making a strong implication that Vriska is going to die, but it’s entirely a scare tactic. Vriska feels that she’s had ‘terrible luck ever since [her] accident’ (p.2197), so she’s primed to believe that if she got into a dangerous enough situation, she would die. But earlier in this same conversation, WT gives her advice for improving her luck – and just a couple of pages later, grimAuxiliatrix says the following:

GA: The Curse Had Nothing To Do With It GA: And Karkats Notion Of A Curse Is Inseparable From His Perception Of Events As Intrinsically Negative And As Tailored To His Personal Dissatisfaction GA: And Your Bad Luck Is The Same Way (p.2204)

This is a rare suggestion that characters’ fates aren’t actually set in stone, and they might actually have some amount of free will. I think that’s super interesting coming from GA, as it’s a contrast to Aradia who definitely believes that everything is fixed and unchangeable (see p.2085), and they’re the two characters who have a direct line to Skaia by living near the frog temples. GA also made efforts to change her and Rose’s personal timeline when trolling her, by going back and inserting extra conversations into the sequence, so I think she’s held onto this idea of taking fate into her own hands at least a little bit.

Vriska’s Pesterlog with GA might be one of my favorite chatlogs in the whole comic, it’s such amazing characterization for both of them. There are lines in this that I think are gonna be way more important for the story going forward than anything WT had to say, like the above line about curses and luck, and also the following:

GA: Its Ok To Be Dangerous GA: Lots Of People Are GA: And Dangerous People Can Be Really Important GA: Maybe Even The Most Important Sometimes

I’m not taking any of the trolls (or WT) as an infallible authority on anything, but, GA might be the only troll who both genuinely cares about her friends and isn’t so wrapped up in her own life that she can’t see the bigger picture. So I’m inclined to cautiously trust her. It seems like GA has basically identified Vriska as someone who will be important, and is keeping an eye on her for that reason, providing whatever guidance she can. GA is lined up for the red team and Vriska the blue, so she’s doing this regardless of team allegiance.

I’m also FASCINATED by the tidbit of GA’s lusus being a virgin mother grub who abdicated and renounced brooding, again a pretty major exercise of free will and probably a rare thing to happen on Alternia, but I’ll save that for when she’s introduced.

Vriska, on the other hand, continues to be very self centered here – upon learning that GA’s lusus is dead, she makes that all about her own disappointment that she won’t get to meet her, instead of sympathizing with GA. She also gets worked up enough to ‘put 8's in places that don't really make a lot of sense phonetically’ (p.2199), and is I think the only troll whose typing quirk varies based on her emotional state, which definitely shows a lack of self control and a failure to mask on her part. She also expresses a wish that GA would ‘TRY AND ST8P [HER] FROM DO8NG B8D THINGS’ (p.2204), which is the first hint of any genuine understanding that she’s not always justified in her actions. So the typing quirk + the comment about being stopped are the dichotomy between her lusus’ and WT’s influence all over again.

Vriska spends a few panels walking downstairs thinking about how cool she is, how she has all these responsibilities, powerful friends, projects on the go, irons in the fire, etc. And really she just looks sad and scared, like a kid who was forced to grow up when she was really, really young, and copes with that by thinking of herself as adult and capable and resilient because it’s the only thing that keeps her going, and admitting that she’s traumatized by it all would shut her down entirely.

BUT DAMN WHAT A COOL GIANT SPIDER!!!! It’s so big <3 <3 <3 quite a few of the trolls have lusi significantly bigger than them, but like 10x their size, while Vriska’s is more like 50x her size. Makes her look even more small and scared in comparison. I think it’s visually cool that Hivebent has kept the stark white used for the kids’ guardians – like the oppressively minimalist Landlord White paint, the same color in a million different houses, the bright white working as a reminder of someone else’s power over the house and therefore its resident.

For personal reasons I think the white is extra effective here, because spiders in media are almost always black, maybe occasionally another dark color. An exception would be D&D’s phase spider, which is light blue and white, and can move in the ethereal plane. that’s also a cool spider design! Vriska I am so sorry about your trauma but I do love to see a giant spider winning, so, I’m super glad we got to see her alive,

Equius

Equius is apparently Vriska’s neighbor, the two of them living on adjacent cliffs with a giant spider spinning its webs in between. This explains the parallels between them – blue bloods first seen hidden in shadows, the narrator pulling away from introducing them, both presented as crueler and worse than the other trolls, both arranging to be co-leaders of the blue team with Aradia, both with messy rooms full of broken things which they have to stop breaking ‘but addiction is a powerful thing’ (p.2195, 2211).

Equius, we are told, LOVES being strong. I’m not sure I buy it, actually. Equius IS strong, and he’s made that a big part of his personality, to the point where admitting he’d rather not be strong would be like giving up a huge part of himself. In the movie 50 First Dates, the poster for which is on Karkat’s wall, the female lead’s brother Doug takes steroids to increase his strength and muscle mass, but as side effects, they give him heightened aggression and wet dreams. Still, he can’t or won’t quit.

Equius is in kind of a similar situation, and doesn’t even have the option to quit. He pretends his strength comes from drinking lusus milk, but in fact he’s ‘really strong because [he’s] kind of a freak’ (p.2216). His superhero-level strength appears to cause nothing but problems for him as he doesn’t know how to control it, and regularly damages his lusus, his prized possessions (especially his bows) and himself. He has an absolute passion for archery but a physical incapability of pursuing this passion – kind of like Tavros with his desire to fly, but harder to deal with, because lots of trolls can shoot a bow and get good at archery. Equius has definitely put in just as much effort into learning the craft as any of them, but his body doesn’t work that way.

I think Equius’ strength could be considered a disability, or at the very least a medical condition. He has no access to any resources or professionals who might be able to help him manage this, and it has a debilitating impact on his life. It seems like he also has a massive superiority complex, does not treat his lusus Aurthour well, and has a strong belief in the caste system, and I’m sure I’ll have more to say about those things soon, and more criticisms of this guy. But right now it just strikes me how Equius is the character the narrative literally cringes away from, but he turns out to be just another kid with genuine problems and a lack of emotional regulation. But he has even less of a support system than the others, because he’s treated as disgusting both by his peers and by the omniscient beings with control over the story.

Imagine feeling like God themself is repulsed by you and then tell me you don’t feel bad from this guy. What the fuck.

‘Equiup a bow’ (p.2218) is very funny though.

I’m 100% going to bat for both of these characters. This story is so god damn tragic.

[homestuckreplay]

‘I AM A HATCHED LEADER AND YOU KNOW IT.’ WHO IS KARKAT VANTAS?

A new protagonist takes the stage: his demeanor, angry. Act 5’s ‘Hivebent’ arc introduces a new cast of twelve characters, long before they begin trolling John Egbert and his co-players. Karkat is the first of the twelve introduced, the first to enter their Incipisphere, and the first Homestuck character with any real determination to drive the comic’s plot.

Using Karkat’s list of interests from his official introduction page (p.1994) as a framework and information from pages 1989-2199, here’s my analysis of Karkat as he’s presented at the beginning of Act 5. About 4.4k words below the cut.

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1. You have a passion for RIDICULOUSLY TERRIBLE ROMANTIC MOVIES AND ROMCOMS.

Karkat’s first listed interest is also his most surprising one. I think that every Homestuck character, as well as everyone I’ve ever met in real life, has at least one interest that I wouldn’t have expected on first meeting them, and with Karkat it’s his romance movies.

Karkat’s favorite movies are the troll versions of Serendipity, Hitch and 50 First Dates. If the troll versions are similar to the human versions, all three of these feature a heterosexual couple who fall for each other, temporarily break up due to miscommunication, belief that they’re better apart, or belief that fate will reunite them if they’re meant for each other, and get back together at the end of the movie. Like most romantic comedies, they suggest that true love can overcome situational obstacles to their relationships, such as difference in class status or life goals, other romantic entanglements, and serious illness.

Karkat doesn’t display any obvious romantic interest himself, so it’s possible that his movies have given him an unrealistic idea of what relationships are like. He’s waiting for his unexpected meet-cute with the perfect partner who appears accompanied by swelling music. Alternatively, he might relate to these movies’ male protagonists, who are able to find happiness despite their personal flaws. Karkat is self-aware about being an asshole and doesn’t yet make an effort to change. These movies could reassure him that he’s still loveable despite his unpleasant exterior. Karkat also doesn’t have strong religious or spiritual beliefs – he actively makes fun of Gamzee’s religion with Sollux (p.2027) and doesn’t have the mystical psychic powers that many of his friends do. For him, these movies could represent a belief in fate. Alternia is a cruel world where culling happens randomly and no troll is ever safe, but if Karkat has a soulmate who he’s destined to someday meet, the universe can’t be entirely uncaring.

Karkat adorns his hive with bright red banners, which in human society is the color of passion and romance. These banners, along with his movie posters, are his one concession to aesthetics in an otherwise functional hive. He’s generally pragmatic about such things, criticizing Terezi for spending his build grist on an ‘UGLY PAINT JOB’ instead of building his hive in accordance with Sgrub’s objectives (p.2061). In addition, Karkat feels like he should be embarrassed for liking these movies, but isn’t. He ‘[doesn’t] care what anyone says’ about them (p.1997) and thinks 50 First Dates is still ‘so good’ even though he has a hard time defending it (p.1998). In other areas of his life, Karkat does care about other people’s opinions, for example badly wanting to be seen as a leader.

So in both aesthetics and in the image he displays to the world, Karkat’s movies are an exception to a general rule – something he feels strongly enough about to override his personal rules. Part of this comes from Karkat being highly emotional, and likely struggling to contain himself when his interests are criticized. I also wonder if this would extend to a real life romance. If Karkat fell in love with someone, perhaps he would allow them to distract him from his future-oriented pragmatism, letting himself relax and enjoy life to a greater extent. If so, his ideal partner would be somebody carefree who tends to live in the moment and has a strong enjoyment of art, as those qualities would balance him out.

Karkat’s enjoyment of romantic movies doesn’t extend to other trappings of human romance, such as fancy poetry or sending letters to loved ones, both of which are largely useless in troll society (p.2005) – so there’s something about movies specifically that compels him. That could be an attachment to specific actors, as he’s a fan of both Troll Will Smith and Troll John Cusack. In a world where a young troll’s only guardian is a vicious beast, it makes sense that Karkat would look to an older troll as a role model. A romantic comedy is also intended as a complete, feel-good story, intended to be watched for its surface level meaning and positive emotions, in contrast to poetry which is often open to interpretation and requires active reading. Karkat’s movies are probably his only form of escapism, the only time he’s not worrying about the dangers of his society and his own future.

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2. You like to program computers, but you are NOTORIOUSLY PRETTY AWFUL AT IT.

Karkat is not only terrible at writing his own code, he also doesn’t understand other people’s code. He exclusively tries to code in the ~ATH language, which isn’t beginner friendly. Karkat has an inflated idea of his own skills and would be embarrassed by the idea of coding in an easier language. This is further shown by his choice of fetch modus, ‘encryption’, which requires hacking skills to retrieve an item. It actively makes Karkat’s life worse, yet he is stubborn enough to continue using it. His struggling with his fetch modus due to not understanding the technology it’s based on is one of many parallels between him and John Egbert.

~ATH is debilitating to machines and its functions are tied to the death of various entities. Karkat seems accustomed to death and destruction, and it doesn’t unsettle him to write code that executes upon his death – at only six sweeps he’s pragmatic about his death, and considers coding a final will and testament (p.2025). He mentions that one of his neighbors was recently culled, so he’s surrounded by the possibility of death at all times. Because of this, he’s more scared of life than death – it ‘FREAKED [HIM] THE HELL OUT’ to later create paradox clones of himself and his friends in Sburb (p.1903).

Karkat compares his programming abilities to his friend Sollux’s, privately considering Sollux ‘obnoxiously good’ at ~ATH coding but refusing to admit it (p.2025). To his face, Karkat tells Sollux that he’s a fraud and that a hacker is ‘SOME BULLSHIT TITLE [SOLLUX] GAVE [HIMSELF] SO [HE] CAN FEEL JUST A TINY BIT LESS LOATHESOME’ (p.2086), calling his bluff and running a code that Sollux claims is dangerous. This reads like projection, as Karkat wishes he was a better programmer and in this case finds it easier to tear somebody else down than to improve uupon his own skills. It’s another example of Karkat being stubborn and rushing into a decision without considering the consequences. If he was able to pause for a moment and swallow his pride, he could realize and admit that Sollux is talented and his code is dangerous.

Karkat spends ‘a lot of time thinking of ways to make the perfect doomsday virus’ (p.2025), so even though he doesn’t know he’ll be involved in bringing about the end of the world via Sgrub, he’s already comfortable with the idea of it. That said, there’s a big difference between fantasizing about killing people and actually attempting it, as the fantasy can be a cathartic way to process difficult emotions with no real intent behind it. Karkat doesn’t actually put himself in any situations where he’d have the power to hurt someone, such as FLARP games. The only things Karkat actually hurts are computers, which on Alternia might be a form of living grub, but certainly a ‘lower’, non-sentient form of life. Overall, Karkat strikes me as someone who’s been influenced by the violent, death-oriented nature of his society, but doesn’t have a genuine desire to hurt people in real life.

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3. When you mature, you aspire to join the ranks of the most lethal members of your society, the THRESHECUTIONERS.

A young troll’s first challenge after pupating is to survive dangerous trials in the brooding caverns, which likely claim the lives of many trolls before they can begin. Ruthlessness, brutality and a focus on one’s own survival at the expense of others is likely necessary to survive these trials – so these traits are common to most trolls, and anyone without them is the outlier. Karkat isn’t satisfied with an average amount of lethality, though, and wants to be among Alternia’s most lethal of all.

Again, I don’t think Karkat is especially violent, but he knows that violence is prized on Alternia, and so he pursues violence for its associated status. His strife specibus is ‘sicklekind’, and a sickle is primarily an agricultural tool for harvesting grain and forage, and more occasionally a weapon. For pure lethality and career progression, Karkat could have chosen an executioner’s blade. Like the scythe, the sickle is sometimes associated with the Grim Reaper, so Karkat possibly chose the sickle to give a threatening appearance instead of causing maximum harm. Karkat does practice with his sickle, so he has a genuine commitment to his chosen path, and the practice pays off when he’s able to completely rid his hive of imps once playing Sgrub, killing them faster than they can spawn.

Karkat’s favorite TV show is The Thresh Prince of Bel-Air (p.2008), and his alchemized weapon is Homes Smell Ya Later (p.2060), which is probably the combination of his starter sickle and Thresh Prince DVD. Making a weapon that references his favorite piece of media is another parallel between Karkat and John. The Thresh Prince himself uses a sickle, so like with his movies, Karkat is probably inspired by an actor or character he admires. In this show, Troll Will Smith is of a lower blood caste than the other threshecutioners but gains their respect by refusing to be talked down to by the upper castes. It’s not explained how young trolls learn about their future career options, but lots of human kids share aspirations with media characters, so it’s possible Karkat’s only exposure to threshecutioners is in this show. If so, he might have an idealized, unrealistic perception of what the job involves. He has a similarly simplistic view of leadership, which I’ll talk more about in later sections.

I think that Karkat wants a defined role in society that he feels able to fill, one that gains the respect and admiration of his peers. He shows an affinity for lawnrings, and for neighborhoods of similar looking hives equivalent to the Alternian suburbs, telling Terezi that living alone in the woods is making her strange and that she needs to move into such a neighborhood (p.2058). So Karkat is very caught up in the ‘Alternian normal’, and is reluctant to deviate from it. Becoming a threshecutioner is the best way he knows to fit into his society, but he’s still young, and if he can find other roles that would give him the same status and comfort, he’d be drawn to them too.

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4. You like to chat with some of your other troll pals, most of which drive you BATSHIT UP THE FUCKING BELFRY.

Karkat is both perpetually annoyed by his own friends, and can’t resist talking to them when they message him. He thinks that ‘no news is good news’ from his ‘loudmouth pals’ (p.2006) and complains about his ‘moron friends […] hounding [him] relentlessly’ (p.2009), but he always answers messages sent to him and doesn’t try to cut conversations short. His messages are highly emotional, and I think once he starts to put his feelings into words and know that they’re heard by somebody, he struggles to stop.

Karkat thinks that ‘MOST OF [HIS] FRIENDS ARE SUCH PSYCHOS’ (p.2027) though he also passively accepts that they are his friends, and doesn’t show any desire to go out and make new ones. He later says that centaursTesticle is ‘ONLY GUY ON THE PLANET WHO'S A BIGGER ASSHOLE THAN [HIM]’ (p.2161), so Karkat is self-aware about not being a nice guy, and while he might wish he had better friends, he also understands that this group might be the best he can get.

Karkat refers to friendship as a mistake and ‘A BIG JOKE OF NATURE’ (p.2010) and on Alternia, I think he’s right. Karkat has probably had other friends, possibly friends local to him, who’ve gotten culled or fallen prey to the many dangers of Alternia. Trolls naturally forming interpersonal bonds but being prone to sudden, random killings must feel unfair, and part of Karkat’s reluctance to admit that he likes his friends must come from having lost friends in the past. This could also be why Karkat is reluctant to bond with the people in his group who he sees as ‘weaker’, like Nepeta, who he sees as overly trusting of CT, and Tavros, who texts Karkat in search of comfort after his FLARP accident and is rebuffed.

While Karkat is rude to everyone, his level of rudeness does differ based on his overall opinion of a person. His most intense hatred is reserved for Vriska, who he tears apart relentlessly, his insults targeted towards her own biggest insecurities – he’s also very clear that the two of them aren’t friends. In contrast, when he talks to Gamzee he’s just as rude about things that are important to Gamzee, like his religion, but he still acknowledges that the two of them are, unfortunately, best friends. He’s also extremely rude to Sollux, but his insults are a lot more generic. He asks Sollux if ‘A FEMALE EVER LOOKED AT [HIM] WITHOUT AT ONCE TURNING SKYWARD AND ERUPTING LIKE A VOMIT VOLCANO’ (p.2027) and there’s no particular reason to think Sollux is especially insecure about his appearance or dating abilities, they’re just common insecurities.

In a large friend group, not everyone always likes everyone else. Some outgoing and charismatic people might be central to the group and actively talk to almost all the members, while others are more peripheral, only talking to one or two people. Dynamics also change over time, and the trolls’ friendships would have looked very different before their FLARP game. Karkat is close to Sollux, Terezi and – against his own will – Gamzee, but doesn’t often talk to the others. I think he stays with the group for a couple of main reasons: first, his friends are in some ways an outlet for his anger, an energy which he needs to vent instead of perpetually stewing in it. Second, Karkat values community, shown both in his choice to live in the suburbs and in his desire for leadership. He can’t be a leader without first finding people to lead.

Karkat also has a tense relationship with his giant crab lusus, trying to put off encounters with him for as long as possible (p.2028) and unnecessarily griefs with via ‘a lot of kicking and fussing and gnashing of teeth and carapace’ (p.2070) before feeding him, as is a young troll’s job. Karkat has, however, drawn a picture of his lusus and placed it on the fridge, and also looks pretty devastated when he dies. They’re small moments, but they do suggest that Karkat appreciates his lusus for the protection and mentorship he provides, and possibly understand that he could have it a lot worse, as so many of his friends’ lusi are either absent or near-impossible to deal with. If Karkat’s lusus gives him combat practice and an outlet for his anger, then it’s easy to see how their goals are aligned, and Karkat probably sleeps the slightest bit easier knowing he actually has someone in his corner to defend him. If I’m right that Karkat is hesitant to be too friendly with Tavros and Nepeta because he sees them as weak and therefore likely to be culled, then his lusus is the creature he can rely on. This giant crab is able to take all of Karkat’s attacks while barely getting hurt and still just grumbling for roe. That makes it safer for Karkat to rely and depend on him, and it’s why his death hits Karkat so hard.

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5. Your trolltag is carcinoGeneticist and you speak in a manner that is ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY ORNERY, ALL THE TIME.

Ornery is defined as ‘bad-tempered or difficult to deal with’, which is a perfect description of my boy Karkat. His friends agree: Gamzee thinks of him as ‘pretty cranky’ (p.2012), Nepeta thinks he’s a ‘grumpy fellow’ (p.2160) and Sollux says Karkat is ‘way angriier than [hiim]’ (p.2085). However, Aradia believes that ‘his anger serves a greater purp0se’ (p.2085) and is somehow important to the trolls’ overall failure/success in their session.

Karkat is okay with being unpleasant if he’s able to get things done, and believes he’ll eventually be liked for his success in life, even if he makes enemies along the way. Before he’s even introduced, he gets fed up by the player trying to give him a derogatory joke name ‘in record time’ (p.1993), already trying to get the story moving. He thinks of himself as ‘a busy guy’ and ‘sort of a big deal’ (p.1996) and tells Sollux that he’s ‘PRETTY BUSY TONIGHT’ and can’t talk for long (p.2027). As a leader, he wants to keep moving. He’ll make a decision by himself instead of engaging in endless negotiations, and he doesn’t wait for permission or show any fear over forging ahead.

@tenaciouschronicler also thinks there’s more to Karkat’s anger than meets the eye:

‘theres moments where he shows concern but wraps it his regular agressive nature […] even his concern is laced in barbs. it just makes me wonder what hes trying to protect so hard that he cant let his gaurd down and makes his friends deal with the collateral’ -from this post

I want to believe that this is true, and that Karkat genuinely cares about his teammates. He talks shit about Terezi to her face, but defends her to rival team member arachnidsGrip, complimenting Terezi’s manipulation skills (p.2178). He feels bad when, in his mind, he goes too far insulting Sollux during his bid for the red team leadership, and suggests deleting the conversation from their logs (p.2027). He’s concerned for Terezi living out in the woods on her own, and offers to help her move to a new hive in his own suburban community (p.2058). And he indirectly compliments Nepeta when he says it ‘BOGGLES [HIS] MIND’ how she could be friends with a guy as bad as centaursTesticle, suggesting he thinks she could do better.

And I think the question of what Karkat is trying to protect with his anger is a really good one. By running Sollux’s ~ATH code in a fit of rage, Karkat places a curse on himself, his friends, and everyone they would ever meet (p.2088) – this includes their past selves, who Karkat will later meet when he ectobiologizes them as larval trolls. As Karkat was the person to bring misfortune to his friends, I can understand why he’d also think it’s his responsibility to fix it. But since his anger and leadership desires came before he ran the code, there must be more to it.

Part of his desire to protect could be in his own desire for glory: he wants to save these people from the end of the world, but he wants to be the one to save them. Pre-Sgrub, Karkat ‘stew[s] in [his] own impotent aggravation’ and feels that he’s meant to be in charge of something huge and important, but hasn’t ‘found the dominion in which [he’s] destined for greatness’ (p.2005). The specifics of gender roles on Alternia aren’t clear yet though gender definitely exists, and gender roles are something Karkat would know about through his romcoms. On Earth, targeted aggression used to protect ‘weaker’ people is part of traditional masculinity, exemplified by fictional heroes such as Superman. So, Karkat might be searching for a way to embody that gender role and prove himself as a man. This is a way he and John are opposites – Karkat is impatient to grow into the typical role of an adult man, while John is reluctant.

Karkat refers to his own ‘GUTTER BLOOD’ (p.2178) though he’s unwilling to share his exact blood color, which suggests he’s unwilling to subscribe to the caste system, and wants to prove his own worth outside of it. If he can lead his lower caste friends to a victory against the upper castes, he’s basically called the entire caste system into question, and the bluebloods will have to doubt their perceived inherent superiority, and Karkat will have his big Troll Will Smith moment. After all, Karkat is the Knight of Blood from a blood-focused society. So, it makes sense for his quest to relate to blood, and for ‘knight’ to be an aspirational title – not something he was born into, but something he can claim by surpassing his typical social rank.

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6. Later, you will play a game with 5 other friends, and go on a big adventure with them.

Karkat thinks he was made for ‘BEING IN CHARGE OF ADVENTURE […] AND FUCKING SHIT UP LIKE A GODDAMN HERO’ (p.2058). Even though the Sgrub server role has more actual power, Karkat is drawn to the client program where he gets to be physically active, moving and fighting his way through a land instead of sitting at his computer, and where he gets to be the first troll to enter the Medium and progress through the game faster. A hero is someone who is admired for their achievements, so again, Karkat’s concerned about others seeing him in a positive light.

Karkat is a competent Sgrub player, and picks up the game quickly without much instruction. He completes the tutorial level without realizing that his house is threatened by meteors, and is later surprised to find out they’re a game mechanic (p.2061), meaning that Karkat is motivated by the game itself and an efficient player who’s focused on game objectives. He’s frustrated when his co-player, Terezi, doesn’t share his game objectives, and once he’s experienced the client role, he quickly wants to join as server too and ‘GET THE CHANCE TO FUCK UP SOMEONE'S HIVE’ (p.2061). I think Karkat is someone who’s afraid of missing out, and doesn’t like knowing there’s a whole side of the game that he’s not part of and can’t control.

When inviting Nepeta to join the red team, Karkat gives her a pretty solid game briefing, concisely sharing the team’s current state, what the future holds, and what he wants her specifically to do next (p.2161). He even makes a halfhearted attempt at roleplaying with her, as it’s more likely to convince her to join the team – they need another member quickly, and the perfect candidate doesn’t exist, so Karkat chooses somebody who’s better than nobody. He isn’t only concerned with his personal role in the game, he’s got eyes on the overall strategy and the status of each of his teammates. While Karkat has never FLARPed with Teams Charge and Scourge, he seems like he has experience with competitive team games, as he does fall naturally into this role.

I think Karkat genuinely believes that he’s the best person for the leadership job, even though the way he claims the role – messaging Terezi and lying by telling her he’s already officially been made leader – isn’t very respectful of her. He also refers to hers as a ‘TRIVIAL SIDEKICK’ role, so he sees the leader as the most important member of the team, instead of someone who literally can’t do their job without subordinates helping them along. His view of leadership would fit in well on capitalist Earth, as he’s okay making decisions that his subordinates will dislike, and having them talk shit about him, so long as they don’t actively interfere in his plans. Interpersonal ethics are definitely not at the front of his mind, and he takes a ‘big picture’ view where the ends justify the means.

Karkat promises to ‘TAK[E] APART THE BLUE TEAM WITH BRUTAL EFFICIENCY’ (p.2178), and the competitive team aspect of the game seems important to him. This is probably a big part of his drive to move through the game quickly and to stop Terezi from meandering his hive and spending his grist inefficiently – beating his friends is a more concrete objective than saving his species. I think that Karkat works well with these clearly defined goals, in contrast to some of his spookier and more spiritual friends.

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Final thoughts

Vriska describes Karkat as ‘impressssssssiona8le’ (p.2178), claiming that she can only control impressionable people and then proceeding to control him. I don’t think Karkat would consider himself to be impressionable, and when it comes to his friends and lusus, he tends to be very stubborn – refusing to consider that Sollux’s virus might actually hurt his computer and refusing to see anyone else as a potential red team leader. But Karkat is deeply influenced by Alternian society, to a greater extent than some of his friends who feel more confident living outside its norms, or picking and choosing which ones to follow. He’s also a fairly private person, choosing to keep his blood color hidden and trying his best to hide his actual, positive feelings about some of his friends. I think that part of being a leader is that it allows Karkat to control the way that he’s seen, to make people less likely to talk back to him and therefore less likely to pry into his secrets. Being a leader allows him to live in a brutal, bloodthirsty society unchallenged and ultimately, safer from danger.

Part of his impatience could be that he knows that any moment not spent singlemindedly pursuing his goals is a moment where he has his guard down, and is therefore at risk. This impatience and fear leads him to be clumsy, to make silly mistakes like captchaloguing his card vault inside another card vault (p.2000), which could have been avoided if he’d ever learned how to take a breath and consider his next move. So overall, everything about Karkat feels like a defense mechanism, a hedgehog puffing up all his spines to deter anyone who might seek to hurt him. But there’s different types of defense mechanisms, and his specific ones being aggression and camouflage into Alternian norms tells me that he’s willing to fight even when he doesn’t necessarily know what he’s fighting for, and that he wants more power for himself because he’s scared of the people and structures that have more power than him.

[homestuckreplay]

SPIDER FACT: jumping spiders can see UV light :::)

(page 2193-2199)

So this is some crazy shit for an author to do right?? Backing up a few days, here's what just happened. First, Vriska is introduced in chatlogs as a deeply unpleasant person by making fun of a bunch of people's disabilities. Then, she appears on screen and her first major act in the story is to back a relatively sweet and likeable gamer boy into a dangerous corner during a roleplaying game and mind control him into jumping off a cliff, paralyzing him from the waist down, directly causing the disability she mocked him for. An act which even some pretty morally bankrupt people would likely describe as reprehensible. AND THEN. AND THEN!!!! It's revealed that Vriska plays that same roleplaying game with countless other groups, and in THESE games, she straight up kills all the other players and feeds them to a big spider and uses those real world deaths for game XP. And this suddenly recontextualizes her earlier act of permanently disabling someone, which for her is a kindness, a choice to leave someone alive and not feed them to the hungry monster living in her home. Suddenly it’s like, what’s so special about Tavros? Why does Vriska like this guy so much that he gets to be an exception to her murder spree? And that is NOT a question I expected to be asking.

Hussie absolutely off the shits with this one. Like yeah Vriska is vile but somehow in a totally different way to how I was expecting.

I mean. Not to get too deep into character morality so soon, but I am compelled by all this. And it seems like other people have really strong opinions about Vriska really fast so I want to get some thoughts out before I'm too influenced by other people's takes. Two things appear to be simultaneously true: first, Vriska genuinely believes that her one, individual life is worth more than all the countless trolls she’s killed and fed to her lusus in a kind of survival of the fittest mentality, AND Vriska has grown up in an environment where she’s never learned the value of a life or how to see other trolls as actual people and possible equals, only as food and prey. In that sense she’s not that different to Nepeta, who also kills for food – young trolls are just Vriska’s lusus’ foodstuff, and it’s her role as a ‘sort of zookeeper’ to provide this. But in another sense she’s equally as bad (or part of?) whoever is randomly culling trolls and forcing young Alternians to live in a constant state of fear.

I think this is gonna be a running theme of how I analyze the trolls: they live in a society where to succeed is automatically to be a person who hurts others. They also live in a permanent survival mode, and survival mode by definition is a mindset where people can’t step back and consider the meaning and ethics of their actions and consider the alternatives, they just act in self preservation. Vriska is an unrepentant mass murderer which is unjustifiable by any reasonable logic but she’s also been at her absolute worst and most endangered for her entire life. I know some people think that how a person behaves at their worst is their ‘true self’ but I don’t personally agree with that, because those are the moments we lose our higher brain functions. Vriska is still responsible for those actions but to get a true picture of her, I would need to see her physically safe and comfortable for a few months and see if she continues this cruelty when it’s not a necessity. Which would make her look very different compared to if she started to change her behavior.

Giving Vriska the benefit of the doubt for her many murders is making me feel like I should have been much nicer to Dave, a year ago, for general low grade asshole behavior. At the end of the day they’re both just kids with shitty guardians.

sidenote: lots of spiders are nice. some of them are so so cute. and most of them don’t eat any babies ever. STOP the spider slander!!!!

ok going a little backwards here but my new worst girl Vriska is linked to both Snowman AND Spades Slick – she’s a destructive missing an eye and a hand, just like Slick was by the end of the Intermission (p.1346), and she’s ‘something of an APOCALYPSE BUFF’ whose hive is filled with 8-balls she’s broken (p.2195), and if you kill Snowman, the 8-ball, you destroy the universe (p.1268). Not to mention that Vriska herself is heavily associated with the number 8. Slick was really, really tempted to kill Snowman despite knowing it was a bad idea, so Vriska might just be the version of him who’s actually willing to go through with it.

Gotta catch a br8k!!!!!!!! When you get worked up about stuff you put 8's in places that don't really make a lot of sense phonetically. (p.2199)

Vriska is also, crucially, a HUGE FUCKING NERD (bluh bluh). ^ look at that she’s just a huge nerd who loves her favorite number and shoehorns it in anywhere. She uses FLARP as a way to lure prey for her lusus, which is of course extremely against the rules, completely destroys the magic circle delineating games from reality, would get her banned from organized play, etc etc, but also she seems to genuinely love the game. Like it might be the one true source of joy in her life. Her game class is ‘PETTICOAT SEAGRIFT’ (p.2196), ‘seagrift’ immediately making me think of pirates. ‘Petticoat’ could be referring to the ‘petticoat trowsers’ sometimes worn by sailors and pirates centuries ago. They were worn by people on land too, but I’m not gonna nitpick because roleplaying games are not known for their perfect period accuracy.

Her character is Marquise Spinneret Mindfang who is the most obvious self insert of all time, like most people’s first characters, and I’ll bet all my boondollars that she’s the first character Vriska ever made because she wouldn’t want to make a new character and lose all her level progression. The art of her is literally Vriska with a long cardigan and silly elf boots and a hook hand!! So in addition to all the murder she really is just a kid who is imagining herself as someone much cooler and in more exciting situations than her real life. Living her best self insert dreams. Vriska also uses dicekind, which is definitely what I’d allocate to my specibus too because I will take any excuse to roll a d20 and it’s the only way I’m confident engaging in combat. I’m pretty excited to see these ‘highly unpredictable attacks’ that the Fluorite Octet is capable of (p.2199). She also has a really explicit theme of luck, which comes up multiple times within just a few pages, and is something I’ve wondered about the role of since Clover was introduced in the Intermission. I’m not entirely sure how luck intersects with destiny. If Vriska is up against a Sapphire Giclops and rolls 11 damage on 8d8, a horrendous roll, that’s bad luck from her personal perspective, but from Skaia’s perspective that’s just part of what’s meant to happen. So luck is just the individual experience of destiny, and the way someone who’s very self centered might view it? Or is there a more nuanced difference?

Vriska stepping on her d4s and hurting her foot is also super relatable. Number one ttrpg player moment. I have a great dice storage solution worked out these days though, I could give her some tips if she’d listen for a moment and not feed me to a spider.

So I can’t honestly say I like Vriska. Objectively she’s probably done far worse stuff than any other character we’ve met so far, even my personal nemesis Bro Strider and I’m giving her so much grace when I’ve been totally willing to condemn others for way less. The problem is that she’s deeply compelling, shares my interests, and I gotta keep an eye on her because she might bring about the end of the universe. Also there was a frog conversation. Aradia ribbits by accident and it is very funny. Also she wants to keep being dead a secret? Aradia ARE YOU GOOD???? This chatlog kinda got overshadowed by Vriska’s introduction which is a shame because it’s very good.

[homestuckreplay]

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user Generallvan on the MSPA forums has been making some voice acting soundbites for the trolls - a couple for Tavros and a couple for centaursTesticle! I absolutely love their take on Tavros, he sounds like he should be in an anime