#s✰my

i mean this first one is maybe a bitttt of a stretch, but considering the whole rose and vriska situation i think its reasonable. at around 10:38 (youtube timestamp) in [S] Cascade, gamzee is shown corresponding with doc scratch!

its small, so i'll put a translation in alt text if you cant read it

the first thing i wanna point out is, surface level. that gamzee is talking to doc scratch at all. you Know. but that on its own isnt particulary damning, so lets talk about it some more ::::0 gamzee saying "thats all done" should raise some alarms, because its implying he was carrying out orders given to him; which would mean they had a longer correspondence than just this set of messages.

small irrelevant tangent here, you can skip to the next paragraph if you'd like: considering doc scratch's insistence to "not turn your back on the bodies", plus the fact that storing the bodies was eventually beneficial for lord english (gamzee prototypes his friends into the alpha kid's sprites -> preventing the kids from reviving their guardians to continue to fight the condesce -> who was, in turn, working for lord english), you could even argue that doc scratch mightve actually instructed gamzee to decapitate all the corpses and preserve them, but hey thats another topic entirely.

i think its interesting that prior to gamzee's freak out, he had absolutely no reason to be devoted to lord english. sure, lord english is, in a way, the mirthful messiahs, but gamzee already has anti-casteist beliefs that directly contradict his religion. see his second conversation with tavros

sure, right after that he goes into foreshadowing of The Incident, but i'd argue that casteism directly contradicts his religion (see: the grand highblood also being a devotee (?) but still perpetuating the culling of lowbloods as righteous). Especially combined with this detail from the equius conversation

which implies that gamzee is... naturally non-violent, actually? (for reference, john, noted good guy, straight up murders all his imps; like you're supposed to! they're video game npcs!) Despite having no moral obligation to do so, he goes out of his way to befriend the imps he has every incentive to kill, just like tavros did. Summarized: gamzee suddenly deciding to worship lord english is some retcon lazy-writing bullshit.

Perchance. theres also the fact gamzee describes lil cal (who's lord english/doc scratch/whatever the fuck. theyre interchangeable honestly) as "helping him discover who the real messiahs are" while screaming at dave.

a lot of people talk about gamzee like he had his world view shattered, and then decided of his own free will to Fuck Everything Up as revenge. but, hey, no. he DIRECTLY SAYS here that LORD ENGLISH. WAS HELPING HIM "REFIGURE OUT THE REAL REALITY ABOUT MIRACLES" he had LIL CAL IN HIS EAR LIKE THIS

AFTER A HORRIFIC CRISIS OF FAITH, TELLING HIM WHAT WAS REAL.

so yeah, some form of grooming was definitely involved to get him so ready to fuck shit up. whether it was sexually abusive (see doc scratch's comments towards rose) or just regular abusive? i mean thats your interpretation, but. cmon. Doc Scratch. still though! nonsexual grooming still counts as grooming ^^^^_^^^^

now, was this intended by the author? LMFAOOO NO....... thats why i said accidentally ::::) Narrative framing is important to consider when talking about authorial intention, and, well there's really not much here to talk about ::::(. we already know how doc scratch's predatory behavior is depicted, mostly through vriska, and really, in gamzee's case? it's never elaborated on, or even thought about, past this brief five second mention. We're supposed to believe gamzee's just kind of Like That and did everything on his own consensual accord, irrelevant to outside influences. And thusly, thats how he's painted in the surrounding narrative and author commentary. gamzee does not Get to be a complex character like vriska does. it doesnt matter he was also just a kid.

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okay, now here's the second example, and it's gonna be much shorter. Because, one; it involves the epilogues, and i dont really wanna talk about those; and two, everything that can be said about this whole situation has already been said, and by people much smarter than me.

im gonna assume everyone has a vague understanding of how gamzee... is, in the epilogues, but i know a lot of people won't have seen specific examples about how aggressively he's sexualized for just doing normal shit. ::::(c And, more importantly, this specific detail: ages in the epilogues are a bit murky, and this was a bitch to try and track down, but since tavros crocker is a baby here, gamzee should be around 16 to freshly 18, while jane and jake are at least older than 23. this is from chapter 18 of the candy epilogues

keep in mind gamzee was pulled out of the fridge and into the candy timelines directly before [S] Collide, making him 15-16. meanwhile, everyone else was 23. He was a teenager, surrounded by adults seven years older than him. everyone else shouldve known he was still a child, and yet jane entered sexual relationship with him. I can't state enough how EVERYONE treats him like this. EVERYONE around him was complicit in this, especially jake. oh my god. oh my god?

again, i doubt this was intentional, and was probably an oversight in the same way gamzee and vriska was an oversight. but shit. holy shit. i havent even talked about the racism and this is already so long.

my highlight of 2024: