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davestriderascend · 9 months

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the homestuck reread, pt 4

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

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

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

The Plot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Characters

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

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

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

Damara

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

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

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

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

Rufioh

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

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

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

Mituna

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

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

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

Kankri

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

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

so now its time to talk about kankris activism.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meulin

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

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

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

Porrim

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

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

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

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

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

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

Latula

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

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

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

Aranea

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

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

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

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

Horuss

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kurloz

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

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

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

Cronus

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

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

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

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

Meenah

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

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

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

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

Final Thoughts

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

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

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

damara, the megidos, and stereotypes

on damara

damara as a generic "oriental" woman

racism in hs (broadly speaking)

antiblackness in hs

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

update: a6a4-a6i5

#hs reread #recaps #i was feeling good about this until i started digging through tags and now im really worried this is gonna be controversial #blech #well see

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