h[o]mestuckReplay

1. You have the most noble blood possible, the only of your kind known to possess it […]

What is Alternian royalty? What role does the Empress play in trolls’ day to day life? What are her duties, what expectations lie upon her, and who or what if anyone does she answer to? If Feferi were to live and someday take on the role of Empress, what would that mean for her, and what does she currently know about the realities of this job?

In the actual world and in many fantasy stories, heirs to the throne are raised by existing royals, with ideas of a ‘royal bloodline’ passed down directly between generations. On Alternia, discontinuity between ancestors and descendants leaves Feferi alone to prepare for her role. She’s not raised to take over from the current empress, and this empress makes no effort to instill values, beliefs, or plans for troll society into Feferi. If the world wasn’t about to end, this would be a huge mistake; one leaving the empress vulnerable to a coup, or to a future for Alternia that wasn’t the one she envisaged.

The world, however, is about to end, and perhaps that’s why Feferi isn’t considered a threat.

Feferi’s noble fuchsia blood makes her a sea dweller like Eridan. She’s the only troll primarily seen underwater, including in our first glimpse of her (p.2180-2). She demonstrates extremely strong swimming skills, able to drag heavy cargo deep underwater. Like Eridan, she wears elaborate clothing and gold jewelry, status symbols for the Alternian elite without practical function. Her Disney Princess-style castle is a home she is ‘entitled to 8uild […] to set [her] far apart from the commoners’ (p.3912), suggesting greater access to materials and greater freedom in design, her importance recognized by the carpenter droids who facilitate hivebuilding. She is likely protected from culling despite expressing political opinions heretical to the current order, arranging the killing of other trolls’ lusi and befriending trolls across the hemospectrum, her royal status giving her additional protection to what Gl’bgolyb can offer. She and Eridan’s introductions differ from all other trolls – the commands for Feferi to ‘do something adorable’ (p.2423) and Eridan to ‘do something awesome’ (p.2409) give them control over how they define and present themselves, unlike other trolls who receive specific instructions.

Although sea dwellers are privileged by status and possibly length of life (see p.3758), Alternia isn’t actually built for them. Feferi tries to open a can of Troll Tab (a product of the Troll Coca-Cola Company) and finds the liquid escaping and mixing with the seawater around her. She doesn’t appear to have any friends underwater who she can visit in person, and isn’t able to get into robotics because technology is ‘hard to work with under water’ (p.2993). Even though she can breathe and move underwater without issues, the water presents logistical challenges, preventing Feferi from eating, drinking or pursuing hobbies like other trolls can – and she can’t leave the water alongside Eridan, because of her responsibilities to Gl’bgolyb. Any material benefits Feferi receives as a sea dweller aren’t mentioned, and as the only person with her blood color and the only troll trapped beneath the sea, her daily life appears both lonely and challenging.

Feferi’s Sgrub planet, the Land of Dew and Glass, literalizes this by placing Feferi’s hive in a sparkling fishbowl – an underwater prison preventing her from exploring her land or progressing through the game. Passing through her first gate requires her to escape the water, suggesting that the sea, her life beneath it, and her relationship with fellow sea dweller Eridan (who she breaks up with immediately before passing through this first gate) are what’s been holding her back prior to entry, and leaving the water is necessary for her personal development. Notably, once she enters this gate, she’s never seen underwater again and doesn’t reminisce upon her time there.

Both Feferi and Sgrub have an uneasy relationship with her high status. On Alternia, Feferi was the only troll with the title of ‘princess’, while in Sgrub, all trolls are princes and princesses of their respective moons with theoretically equal status. Feferi is the first character we see kissing another to resurrect them, which is described as a ‘universal remedy’ (p.2478), though perhaps one Feferi is quicker to understand than the others due to being a princess all her life. Sgrub also allows Feferi to retain her royal tiara (though interestingly, not her other embellishments) while dreaming, suggesting that Feferi sees her tiara and therefore her royal heiress status as an important part of herself, and that Sgrub agrees with this importance and wants to validate it in-game. Feferi continues wearing this royal tiara while awake all the way until her death – she may have been required to wear this on Alternia, but after leaving she has full control over her appearance, and chooses to keep this outward sign of importance visible during every face to face interaction with others. She could have cast aside this status symbol with the same ease that she cast aside the water, but she does not.

Feferi does believe somewhat in ‘sea dweller supremacy’, seeing her typing quirk as a ‘royal mark’ and removing it as ‘peasant-IF[YING]’ herself (p.2850). She implicitly thinks that she can speak for others and doesn’t need to dirty her hands the way her subjects must. Though she caused the prototyping that makes the enemies especially dangerous, it’s for her lowerblooded subjects to do the fighting due to her own lack of ability (see section 4), and though the Vast Glub is still a threat as the Black King inherits this ability, it’s for an army of low-caste Aradiabots to neutralize now. Feferi says ‘we have to stop you’ (p.3321) in reference to herself and Sollux preventing Eridan from joining Jack Noir, but then stands aside and lets Sollux duel Eridan alone – her use of ‘we’ refers to herself giving an order and a lowblood carrying it out. When she does enter the fray, it’s an emotional reaction to Sollux getting hurt instead of a belief in righteous action or personal responsibility.

These actions are at odds with her telling Eridan that sea dwellers ‘AR-E NOT B-ETT-ER T)(AN ANYBODY!!!!!’ (p.2448), and her desire to redefine troll society and unite the races if she became the empress. It’s likely that Feferi hasn’t examined the possible contradictions within her own belief system, especially as her introduction to the world was a lusus who separated her from other trolls and whispered in her ear that she was special, different, and a savior prophesized to unite the two races. In her mind, she will use her power in morally correct ways, which legitimates her having this power in the first place and using its associated aesthetic markers. Additionally, Eridan’s sea dweller supremacist language is so extreme that it’s easy for Feferi to use a softer version of this and still consider herself kinder and more respectful of others than he is.

It’s also possible that Feferi is calculated, intentionally expressing different views according to what benefits her in a given situation. Feferi acts as a leader and a diplomat while introducing a reluctant Jade to horrorterrors and dream bubbles, exercising authority so that Jade trusts in her expertise. Feferi feels comfortable utilizing her status here because she believes she’s acting for everyone’s overall benefit, while when she talks to Eridan she finds it beneficial to express pro-land dweller views to avoid validating his beliefs or being complicit in his actions.

Feferi’s strongest statements towards equality happen before she breaks up with Eridan, and her strongest pro-sea dweller statements happen afterwards. Since moirails are intended to ‘balance and complement each other's emotional profiles’ (p.2401), Eridan’s beliefs may be so strong that they actually push Feferi towards a more radical equality to counterbalance him as a moirail. When their moirallegiance ends, Feferi naturally falls back towards the Alternian status quo, especially if she comes to understand her prophesized uniting of the two races as referring to trolls and humans instead of land and sea dwellers, an interpretation of the prophecy which allows hierarchies within trolls to remain.

The goal of Sgrub is to create a new universe, destroying its players’ home planet and species in favor of moving forward and building something new, allowing them a fresh start free of their upbringings to avoid repeating their ancestors’ and society’s mistakes. Feferi asks the horrorterrors to create dream bubbles, which she describes as ‘the past, brought back to life by a witch’ (p.2992) – an eternal replay of the kids’ and trolls’ childhoods on their home planets with no hope of moving forwards, the exact antithesis of Sgrub’s purpose. Feferi’s direct communion with the horrorterrors to create these suggests that dream bubbles are not common to all sessions, with dead players usually receiving a different afterlife that Feferi chose to deviate from. I believe that Feferi grew up in a world which caters entirely to the young, but never personally had the opportunity to participate in this. In her mind, she didn’t have a childhood, she only had burdens and responsibilities. By dying and creating dream bubbles, she finally gets to live a ‘normal’ life by accessing everyone else’s memories. She parallels her ancestor by creating a world eternally populated by the young, and contrasts Aradia by experiencing childhood in death, which represented adulthood for Aradia.

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2. This makes you the HEIR APPARENT for Alternian rulership, which ordinarily would place you in considerable jeopardy.

HER IMPERIOUS CONDESCENSION would steer the flagship from the fleet and make an attempt on your life herself, if not for the protection of your monstrous lusus.

Many of the trolls express career ambitions related to their personal interests, whether or not they’re realistic for someone of their caste or abilities. Feferi is assigned a specific role, the Heir Apparent, and is given no opportunity to choose for herself. She similarly gets no choice in taking on the responsibility of feeding Gl’bgolyb or being the subject of prophecy, and both before and after her death has no reason to question her future path. She knows ‘w)(y [s)(es] )(ere!’ (p.2328) to a greater extent than any troll besides Aradia, and her own feelings towards this are entirely secondary.

Feferi’s arrangement with her lusus is not uncommon. A young troll’s role is to act as a ‘sort of zookeeper’ for their lusus while the lusus ‘behaves as a lifelong bodyguard’ (p.2070). Karkat, Sollux and Vriska are all seen feeding their lusi, while Nepeta and her lusus hunt for food together. It’s the scale of Feferi’s situation that differentiates her from her peers. Karkat, who represents the ‘average troll’, can toss his lusus a few chilled roe cubes to successfully calm him down, and the worst that’ll happen if he forgets is that his lusus will grumble and gnash his teeth. Feferi’s lusus provides her with greater protection than other lusi can, thwarting assassination attempts from the most powerful troll in the galaxy, but if Feferi doesn’t provide her with a near-unfathomable amount of food she’ll emit a noise that exterminates every living troll.

Similarly, many of the trolls’ lusi die in cruel, painful, dramatic and important ways, but this is exaggerated with Gl’bgolyb. Her death causes her to finally emit this Vast Glub and cause the trolls’ extinction. Feferi then receives a powerful ally in Gl’bgolybsprite, with the tradeoff that Sgrub’s underlings are now incredibly difficult to kill even for the most martially trained trolls. In this way, Feferi is more extreme than other trolls, both the ‘trolliest troll’ and an inaccurate representation of Alternian society as a whole. This is an effective metaphor for royalty both defining the society they rule, and their lives not being at all representative of their people’s actual experiences.

When she’s introduced, Feferi is commanded to ‘do something adorable’. She responds to this by swimming down deep underwater dragging a monstrous whale, a huge physical effort just to give Gl’bgolyb a snack that to her is about the size of a single goldfish cracker to us. Though the pitch black deep sea depths and the massive tentacle monster wouldn’t be adorable to many, the great effort to feed her mom to prevent harm to other trolls – particularly to vulnerable lowbloods – could certainly qualify as such. Even so, trolls without lusi are slated for culling (see p.3474). Feeding lusi to Gl’bgolyb all but guarantees that those lusi’s trolls will be culled, even if Vriska doesn’t feed them to her own lusus first. This is the big picture attitude that rulers are encouraged and expected to take – a smaller percentage of trolls are killed by feeding Gl’bgolyb than by not feeding her, and there’s more equality among those who are killed since Feferi and Eridan target sea dwellers’ lusi as well as land (see p.2461-3). In a violent military society, the death of Feferi’s subjects is inevitable. She only has control over who and how.

It’s made clear that Feferi did not enjoy her participation in FLARP. She ‘partook not in revelry, but necessity’ (p.2462), exclusively working behind the scenes, never taking part in actual campaigns where she could find treasure, go on adventures and roleplay with her friends. She never lived the life of leisure and luxury often associated with the upper classes, instead performing manual labor in unappealing conditions. Arguably, her view of what it means to be a high caste sea dweller is just as skewed as Eridan’s, and she’s just as unaware of the passive benefits she received. Even if she theoretically believes in equality between castes, it’s difficult for her to acknowledge the ways that lowbloods have harder lives, because her genuine experience has been that royal status brings nothing but burdens. Promoting equality is hampered by an inability to see herself or her life as similar to others’, again shown by her association with bubbles, which represent a separation from the outside.

Feferi can be quick to deny responsibility, saying early on that she ‘cant really control t)(e glubs’ (p.2328), something that could refer to either her typing quirk or the Vast Glub itself, and something that Kanaya immediately pushes back on. She doesn’t admit fault for Gl’bgolyb’s prototyping, stating that she just ‘F-ELL IN’ to the kernel (p.2991) even though she knew in advance that this would happen. From Feferi’s perspective, she didn’t choose her sea dweller or royalty role and couldn’t avoid the cosmic inevitabilities of the Vast Glub or this prototyping – her words come across as callous and as refusing to acknowledge her own power and status, but they’re not inaccurate. Feferi is positioned uncomfortably between her power on Alternia and her lack of power in a greater, cosmic system.

Cosmic threats such as Gl’bgolyb, Emissary to the Horrorterrors are present in the trolls’ lives from birth, in ways they’re just not for the kids. The kids are exposed to human-created problems of Earth, including suburban architecture and absolute parental control, but they don’t have a horrorterror in their midst, a First Guardian manipulating them into acting as pawns of destiny, a server for summoning Lord English present on their computer, a ghost among their party or prophesized responsibilities for ensuring the future of their species. Jade’s exposure to Prospit and Bec is largely positive, and her dreams still keep her insulated from much of what’s to come. Conversely, the everpresent threat of the Vast Glub and pieces in place for Lord English’s summoning make Alternia feel like a dying land. Homestuck readers generally live on Earth, so even though humans besides the kids and guardians don’t appear in the comic, it’s easy for us to fill in the gaps of a larger, unseen world. That’s not the case with Alternia. The fact that we never see trolls besides the Sgrub players, rarely hear of their existence or see signs of offline troll communities, makes the place feel quiet, lonely and diminished compared to the ancestors’ fuller and more exciting world (see p.3747-50).

Feferi being the future ruler of a kingdom on the brink of death is a tragedy that foreshadows her creation of a kingdom for the dead. She’s shown underwater as a dark silhouette, interacting with an emissary to those who guard the dead, and is the first troll who we see dead after first meeting her alive (p.2994). Her death is revealed to us several hundred pages before it actually happens, leaving it surrounded by anticipation and inevitability. She’s the Witch of Life and the first to resurrect someone, but only fulfills her prophecies of uniting the races and assuming a diplomatic, political role after death. She spends her whole life under threat of assassination, only protected from this by her own complicity in killing others, and she works to delay an extinction she knows will soon arrive despite her actions. All of this ties into the idea of Feferi as Alternia’s final ruler, guarding the boundary between life and death for the planet itself.

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3. […] if not forewarned of your race's extinction by the whispers of that lusus, you would have BIG PLANS FOR THE THRONE.

You would redefine what it means to be CULLED in troll society. Under your rule it would mean caring for the unfit and infirm rather than exterminating them […]

It’s notable that Feferi wants to redefine culling, and not eliminate the practice entirely. Her choice of who to ‘cull’ in her roleplay scenario is partially based on which creatures are ‘funny and colorful’, and these cuttlefish ‘often swim through the bars of their cages’ (p.2441). While her actions during roleplay don’t necessarily reflect how she would act as an empress – after all, Terezi found it more difficult to stab a troll than to hang a stuffed animal – these choices may still suggest that Feferi would show bias as an empress, creating policies based more on ideals than effective implementation. It’s hard to hold that against her when she acts alone, has nobody to teach her leadership skills, and when opposition to the empress is suppressed. She’s inventing a new political system from first principles.

Feferi’s friend group includes Karkat, who aspires to leadership, Equius, who has robotic talents and could build a cage that keeps a cuttlefish protected and contained, Tavros, who is at risk of culling due to his disability and may want the kind of care Feferi seeks to provide, and Terezi, who is also at risk of culling due to her disability and lack of a lusus but almost certainly wouldn’t want that care. If Feferi was actually going to be the empress, she has friends she could approach to implement her ideas more effectively, in a way that serves her people. In my mind, the reason she doesn’t do this is because she knows she’ll never actually take the throne, and feels distant from the reality of leadership, like a child playing princess dressup in her room. Because she’s been forewarned of the troll species’ extinction, Feferi fundamentally doesn’t believe that her actions have long term consequences. Her entire life is a roleplay of a future that won’t come to pass. To me, this is the great contradiction in her character: she’s a crucial part of the cosmic order handed weighty burdens and responsibilities, but she knows that her role as the heir apparent is essentially meaningless, defined only by ceremony, symbol and status instead of any real possibility of action.

Feferi’s statement that ‘you just do w)(at you t)(ink is rig)(t and even if you were wrong t)(e worst t)(at )(appened was you )(elped somebody and )(elped t)(e w)(ole world too!’ (p.2328) leans into this, too. Living in roleplay, insulated from the consequences of her actions, Feferi struggles to see other people as dangerous either. This quote refers to Kanaya’s moirallegiance with Vriska and her own with Eridan, and both Vriska and Eridan present a real and genuine danger to the trolls – both are proven killers, and the actual worst that could happen if their moirallegiances fail is large-scale destruction. Feferi offers to help Karkat look for Gamzee when Karkat worries about him disappearing, but again can’t envisage that anything serious may have happened to him, condescendingly considering Karkat’s concern ‘sweet’ and Gamzee as someone easily ‘frig)(tened […] off into t)(e lab’ (p.3321). She stands back when Eridan and Sollux duel on the same page, suggesting that she doesn’t actually believe Eridan will seriously hurt her matesprit Sollux.

I do believe Feferi’s desire to care for others is genuine even if it’s often theoretical, and that as the empress she’d use her power for helping others preferentially over hurting them. She simply doesn’t have the capacity to do this yet, because she never had anybody to demonstrate effective protection besides Gl’bgolyb’s protecting her from the current empress by being an even greater threat. Failed protection is an ongoing theme for Feferi – Gl’bgolyb protects her from assassination by the troll empress, but Feferi is killed by Eridan at six sweeps old anyway. Feferi protects Alternia from Gl’bgolyb for a time, but the Vast Glub happens anyway. Feferi tries to protect cuttlefish and aquatic hoofbeasts through her definition of ‘culling’, but they escape their cages anyway. Feferi tries to pacify Eridan and protect other trolls from his genocidal aims, but he ends up destroying the Matriorb and their species’ future anyway. Feferi’s dream bubbles offer protection to the kids and trolls after death, protecting them from oblivion or from whatever is massacring the horrorterrors, and it’s possible that this too is doomed to fail. Being the Witch of Life in a session where half the players are doomed to die is, in itself, the sign of a failed protector.

Knowledge of the trolls’ upcoming extinction which prevents Feferi from ever becoming the empress constantly hangs over her theoretical ‘big plans for the throne’, leaving her with no real motivation to consider how her plans would work in reality. She doesn’t even try to assume a smaller scale leadership role within Sgrub, instead acknowledging Karkat as their leader (p.2850), showing that she actively prefers the theoretical to the actual role. At the same time, Feferi has genuine protective instincts and cares for others outside herself, which isn’t encouraged on Alternia especially among highbloods, and she’s willing to be kind without receiving long term rewards. She believes she knows what’s best for other trolls and humans, and is willing to make big decisions such as creating the dream bubbles without consulting them. Her instincts being to protect instead of to support or uplift reinforce this. However, if she believed she’d actually become the empress, it’s possible she’d behave very differently.

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4. You run your whole palace as a sort of WILDLIFE ADOPTION FACILITY, even if the wildlife's need for care is dubious at best, and the practice really just amounts to an elaborate ROLE PLAYING SCENARIO.

Like many other characters, Feferi views her elaborate roleplaying scenarios as serious business, and like other Alternian games, her roleplay has an actual effect on the world around her. This roleplay defines her as a character – Feferi’s chumhandle, cuttlefishCuller, directly references this practice and her target of choice, and culling a cuttlefish is her first on-screen action (p.2180-1).

Though Feferi using cuttlefish to practice for a future career can be compared to Terezi’s scalemate roleplay, it’s relevant that cuttlefish are living creatures who feel pain, fear and distress. Another analogy could be Sollux’s technology, built from grubs and bees, although this at least has utility. Feferi creates a hostile environment for cuttlefish purely for roleplay purposes, removing them from their natural habitat where they’re in no danger beyond their natural ecosystem, and putting them in a high stress, alien situation where they’re more likely to feed on each other due to lack of options. Feferi’s failure to think about the cuttlefish’s needs and role in the general aquatic ecosystem again shows her insular, bubbled perspective. She has pretty cuttlefish to play with, and that’s the end of her thought process.

Maintaining her personal cuttlefish paradise is Feferi’s only listed interest. We never see her engage in other hobbies, read an underwater book or watch an underwater movie on her underwater tablet. The sum total of her identity is tied to this roleplay about a future that will never come to pass, and though I believe she’s not intentionally being cruel to these cuttlefish, that’s still the overall effect. Feferi has real responsibilities taking care of Gl’bgolyb and Eridan, but if she has time to cull these cuttlefish, she has time to explore other interests and find meaning outside of her empty future. Even Equius, whose blood status is core to his identity, has managed to do this – and there’s surely some activities which are possible underwater, such as chat-based roleplay or digital art or seaweed gardening.

This, to me, is a huge part of why Feferi never discards her tiara. She knows she’ll never actually be the empress, but she’s never taken that next logical step of asking ‘what do I do instead?’ She only ever asks ‘but what if I was the empress, isn’t that nice to think about?’ She insulates herself from reality, because the eternal, responsibility-free roleplay of having power and being a kind ruler is easier and more fun than considering real and tangible alternatives. And while many of the trolls live partially in fantasy, Feferi is the only one who appears to have very little outside of it.

Feferi’s weapon of choice is a legendary golden double culling fork ‘reserved for royalty, and generally only used for ceremonial purposes’ (p.2455). The act of culling is almost certainly outsourced to drones and not carried out by the empress herself, but the idea of culling is represented by the weapon – and any royal ceremony is essentially an elaborate roleplay with great effect on the actual world. Or, on Alternia, a roleplay. There’s no suggestion Feferi has any kind of combat training, meaning a roleplay weapon is all she needs. She outsources killing lusi to Eridan, which could be because she’s too scared to take action that meaningfully impacts the world, or could be because she doesn’t know how to fight anything bigger than a cuttlefish or brain (p.2515) – and though she’s physically strong, she’s only developed those skills underwater. In Hivebent, every troll besides Feferi and Gamzee is seen using a weapon effectively, planning a career that involves combat might, and/or is part of the FLARP team. Even when she’s alchemized a combat-ready weapon, Feferi looks scared while fighting and allows Sollux to take the lead (p.2578). It’s a huge sign of privilege that Feferi can live on violent Alternia and survive Sgrub without being prepared for combat, and her weapon being exclusively ceremonial is another example of her absorption in roleplay being more absolute than other trolls’.

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5. You would also look forward to using your reign to UNITE THE TWO RACES. You were told you would do this one day by your lusus, even if it does contradict her message of extinction.

Feferi’s lusus gives her two conflicting prophecies – first, that the troll species will soon face extinction, and second, that she’ll be the one to unite the two races. At this point, the only ‘two races’ Feferi is aware of are the land and sea dwellers. Feferi, a character known for externally-presented optimism and excitement, believes the more negative prophecy. This calls into question the truth behind this optimistic exterior, and is the choice that, once again, lets her dream about being the empress without facing the reality of the work needed to unite the races.

Feferi does feel an immediate affiliation with the human kids. She’s there alongside Terezi and Sollux at the first moment any troll glimpses a human (p.2760-1), and the first thing she says is that ‘t)(ey look interesting’ and she ‘really [doesn’t] t)(ink t)(is is all t)(eir fault’ (p.2629). Arguably, her immediate positive feelings towards humans, seeing them as ‘new friends’ and ‘t)(e answer’ to the trolls’ problems (p.2792) is a stronger connection than she’s ever had with the land dwellers – she also played no part in the Mobius Double Reacharound that united the trolls’ Sgrub teams, which could have been good practice for uniting the troll subspecies.

When Feferi makes contact with Jade, after Sgrub has ended, Alternia has been destroyed, and she has personally died, it’s her one unexpected opportunity to actually turn her empress roleplay into reality. Gl’bgolyb’s title is the Emissary to the Horrorterrors, but the title also suits Feferi herself. She’s a representative from Alternia who travels to the horrorterrors in their Furthest Ring, communing with them to request they build a shared meeting space for trolls and humans. She travels to a dream bubble to greet Jade, and it’s right around the moment of the first troll-human contact that the bubble around Jade grows glitchy and strange, Feferi bringing the horrorterror influence to Jade and allowing her to see outside of the bubble as well as within (p.2848).

When Feferi first contacts Jade, she makes a genuine attempt at interspecies diplomacy, saying she’s ‘not [t])(ere to give [Jade] a )(ard time’ like the other trolls and that ‘none of t)(is is really [Jade’s] fault’ (p.2991). She approaches Jade in advance, asserts her authority as the empress, gives Jade a summary of what’s to come, and introduces herself in a low stakes situation while Jade is still comfortably living on Earth. As such, there’s existing familiarity between the two of them when Feferi messages again while Jade is frightened from her first dream bubble experience.

Here, Feferi makes some interpersonal blunders – she frames her understanding of the horrorterrors as common knowledge and fails to see how they’d be unsettling to somebody meeting them for the first time, she makes sweeping statements like ‘)(umans are so M-ELODRAMATIC’ based on contact with just one (p.2850), she calls Jade a slur before following up with ‘I'm joking, of course’ (p.2991), and she gets frustrated when Jade asks her to suspend her typing quirk and doesn’t immediately defer to her authority. She’s deeply imperfect and doesn’t naturally fall into the diplomat role – but as a first sincere attempt with a role she never expected to become reality, her good intentions are clear.

Furthermore, her diplomatic mission is ultimately successful! Later on her timeline, Jade says she ‘should really thank feferi again for setting [the dream bubbles] up’ (p.3593), and becomes an expert at using them for information gathering (see p.3872). Against Feferi’s expectations and despite her own imperfections, the prophecy she didn’t expect to be fulfilled comes true. And contrary to her constant retreat into roleplay, Feferi accomplishes something of genuine importance, allowing Jade to learn how to create the scratch and develop a plan to save the kids. Both Feferi and the audience get a glimpse of what things might be like if she did become the empress, what she might be capable of as a ruler – a singular moment of success that could have been a first attempt and a learning opportunity for a lengthy and productive reign. If she wasn’t dead before getting to do this.

Overall, it’s for the best that something as brutal as the Alternian empire no longer exists. Even if Feferi had the opportunity to learn from her mistakes, become the empress and attempt to turn Alternia into a kinder place, so much needs fixing that accomplishing this goal would be hugely challenging. But it’s still sad to see somebody given a single chance to explore their potential, and to know that’s all they’ll ever get. As the empress, there’s no guarantee Feferi would overcome the self-centered isolation of her upbringing or develop the interpersonal skills needed for leadership, but also no specific evidence that she wouldn’t. And Feferi getting a single chance to show her potential ultimately feels more tragic than if she’d never gotten that chance at all.

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6. Your trolltag is cuttlefishCuller and you )(ave a )(ard time not getting R-EALLY -EXCIT-ED ABOUT PRACTICALLY -EV-------ERYT)(ING!

Why is Feferi always so excited? And, is that excitement genuine, or is it another form of roleplay? Possibly, the stress of feeding her lusus and keeping tabs on Eridan have caused her to seek joy anywhere she can so that the pressure doesn’t overwhelm her. It’s easier for her to handle her responsibilities if she convinces herself they’re actually positive, that she ‘love[s] t)(em’ and ‘wouldnt )(ave it any ot)(er way’ (p.2328). She’s better able to see these positives because she struggles to believe that she’s capable of causing harm through her actions, meaning she’s not living in fear of making mistakes. It’s also part of her role as a theoretical Good Empress to be excited and to spark that same excitement in others – the society she dreams of ruling is conflict-free, one where ‘everyone is friendly and happy, and the [empire] runs like clockwork’, one that’s ‘built on having a really great [empress] that everyone loves who is totally amazing’ (p.686).

Excitement is Feferi’s primary mode of engagement with the world, shown when she tells Vriska ‘life is dull and uninteresting’, claiming to be ‘just a little depressed’ as a prank (p.2792). This only works as a prank because it’s so out of character for her. She often uses humor to lighten the mood when her conversation partner starts getting too serious, being playfully mean to Eridan by saying ‘O)( S)(IT, you are angling for SO MUC)( TROUBL-E NOW’ and ‘Your stupid fis)(y face is w)(at's odd!’ (p.2448). When Karkat writes a memo warning the other trolls about Gamzee’s sudden turn, Feferi doesn’t take it seriously, or perhaps chooses not to take it seriously because that’s preferable to believing her team could face such a fate (p.3360).

However, Feferi gets tired of emotional theatrics and sometimes struggles to remind herself that she’s excited, the roleplay mask slipping when she’s alone (see p.2455). She struggles to express any actual negative emotions that she feels – for example, when breaking up with Eridan, Feferi frames it as a positive change by saying ‘this shouldn't be as bad as it sounds […] I am still your friend’ (p.2467). Her use of fish puns also increases when stressed, allowing her to vent negative feelings without even realizing she’s doing so. During this same breakup, she gets frustrated with Eridan, who is ‘always carping and carping’, ‘always looking to reel in drama’ and ‘needs to clam up’ to the point that she ‘just can't salmon the strength anemonemore’ (p.2467). It’s only when Eridan calls her out on the fish puns that she collects herself and returns to a feigned lightweight positivity. As a reader, it can be hard to tell when Feferi’s excitement is genuine and when she’s acting, and that’s probably the point. She’s become so accustomed to expressing this excitement that even she can no longer tell when she’s roleplaying.

In Hivebent, Feferi is only seen talking to Kanaya and Eridan in chatlogs and Sollux face to face. Later, she also talks to Karkat, Terezi, Vriska and Jade. She doesn’t feature on what we see of Nepeta’s shipping wall, but has two sequential relationships – a moirallegiance with Eridan, then a matespritship with Sollux.

Feferi and Eridan are introduced as two trolls who ‘seem to have been hatched for each other’ (p.2402), with the phrase ‘seem to’ carrying a lot of weight. Their relationship quickly deteriorates from a shared ‘Do something ridiculous’ command where they mess around together on their aquatic mounts (p.2443-7) to a clear inability to meet the other’s needs, both of them upset and drained by their relationship. Externally, they seem like destined moirails, but internally, something’s not right. Feferi does put effort into their relationship, her playfully mean comments potentially trying calm Eridan’s negative emotions as a moirail should in addition to avoiding her own, and may have genuinely enjoyed his company when they first met. But by the time they enter the story, their relationship feels hollow, every glub an attempt to recapture something that’s already over. Feferi ends their moirallegiance immediately upon entering the Medium, as though she’s long wanted to do this but couldn’t admit it to herself, and now can’t wait a second longer.

Feferi’s conversations with Eridan primarily focus on him, an unequal dynamic that they both lean into. She’s excited to talk about Eridan’s romantic feelings, but when Eridan returns the question and asks if she has caliginous feelings for anyone, she quickly dismisses this and shifts the discussion back to him (p.2448). Not only does Feferi have no hobbies outside of cuttlefish care roleplay, she also doesn’t have any interiority beyond her self-enforced permanent excitement. She later says that she’s been so busy with Eridan as a moirail that she never had a chance to consider flushed feelings either (p.2467), essentially leaving her as an empty shell of assigned roles and responsibilities which loom so large that she can’t understand herself outside of them. There’s no space for romantic feelings, interests, or even personality – there’s only acting.

Feferi becomes matesprits with Sollux immediately after her breakup with Eridan, literally leaving their conversation to fly to Sollux’s house and kiss him, despite her lack of flushed feelings before this moment. Because of Feferi’s general emptiness and lack of internal identity, I think she needs somebody in her life to fill the space that her previous responsibilities have left. She’s not drawn to Sollux as an individual, but happens to meet him at the right moment and clings to him in the absence of anything else. He fills a need for companionship and for physical protection during Sgrub, but they don’t appear well suited. Feferi buries her head in the same regarding Sollux’s previous matespritship with Aradia, calling her Sollux’s ‘very close friend’ (p.3321) and keeps inviting other people to join their feelings jam, failing to recognize when he wants to keep his feelings private between them. She reads his obvious sarcasm as sincerity, and dismisses his sadness about Aradia by claiming to ‘)(ave it on good aut)(ority t)(at s)(e is fine!’ (p.3321). She teases Sollux about his grouchiness but follows this up by calling him ‘cute’ or adding a ‘<3’, but like with her other roles, Feferi seems to be playing the part of a matesprit more than forming a deep connection.

In the dream bubbles, Feferi has a chance to live out other people’s childhoods after being denied her own. I can only hope this will allow Feferi to develop a deeper understanding of herself outside of her roles, burdens and partners. As regressive as they are, the dream bubbles offer a glimmer of hope that otherwise wouldn’t exist. But right now, Feferi feels like an idea instead of a person. She’s the idea of an empress and a moirail and a matesprit and a carer, never anything more, taking the idea of a political figurehead to its absolute extreme. Thinking about her too much leaves me feeling empty, too, in a way that feels appropriate for someone whose power is exclusively symbolic. I want to find something within her to connect to, a spark at her core that tells me who she is beyond her status, but unlike every other character, I don’t think one exists. Externally, she’s the trolliest troll representing the absolute extremes of Alternia, but it’s all for show.

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Final thoughts

In Homestuck, there are several characters who are royalty, but not quite. The kids’ White Queen abdicates and wanders a wasteland alone, while the Peregrine Mendicant is crowned queen with nothing to rule. The trolls’ Black Queen removes her ring and remains in hiding, neutralizing her own power, and is exiled for it. Feferi fits well with these exiles, knowing that she’s first in line to be the Alternian empress, but that she’ll never ascend to the role.

She lives her whole life preparing for the role that she’ll never fill, making her just as much of a roleplayer as Vriska, Tavros, Nepeta and so many others, though she’s playing a different game. Her game doesn’t have a title or mechanics and her character doesn’t have a name, but she’s even more distanced from reality. Though she has real burdens and genuine reasons to need this fantasy escape, her status on Alternia allows her to get away with not training in combat and outsourcing undesirable tasks, while also keeping her isolated. Although she hears whispers in advance about the Sgrub game she’ll play and is excited to begin, she’s not equipped for what the game will bring, and certainly not for its aftermath.

1. Flowing through your veins is nearly the richest blood the hemospectrum has to offer, penultimate on the scale. As such, you are a SEA DWELLER […]

The hemospectrum is of primary importance to Eridan, and he takes a great deal of pride in his high-caste blood – something that differentiated him from other trolls randomly and from birth. Hivebent provides only a handful of clues to the biological and social differences between land and sea dwellers. Sea dwellers differ by ‘mutation and habitat’ (p.2439) and are pictured with gills – land dwellers lack these and presumably can’t breathe underwater. As Eridan spends most of his time on land, it’s possible that his gills are vestigial or partly functional, and that while he’s a sea dweller by blood, his body isn’t well adapted to the environment. This could explain his and Feferi’s arrangement that he’ll kill a lusus above water, but once it lands in the ocean, the responsibility passes to her.

Skin texture, circulatory system, fat distribution, or other physical features not visible in sprite or hero mode art could potentially differ between troll subspecies. However, the only other visible differences are in clothes and accessories. Eridan and Feferi mark their status with ostentatious jewelry, and sea dwellers may have a social or actual monopoly on wearing gold (for example, if it is only found in the ocean’s depths, or found offworld and delivered only to sea dwellers). Wearing elaborate and colorful clothes may be an obligation for sea dwellers, who must externalize their internal differences, even and especially when they spend time on land. Eridan’s scarf, rings and cape would then show that he embraces his status and follows these traditions.

Sea dwellers are considered royalty, ruling over all trolls, though the two groups also have a ‘feud […] codified in tradition’ (p.3431). As such, land dwellers may recognize a sea dweller’s status – Vriska thinks of Eridan as ‘an especially powerful and influential member of the nautical aristocracy’ (p.2206) – but may not entirely defer to sea dwellers even if they otherwise adhere to the caste system. As sea dwellers do not have the consent of the masses to rule, it’s challenging to identify the source of sea dwellers’ material power. Though the Empress is a sea dweller, she lives offworld and cannot enforce her authority, and her heir does not appear to have or exert any real influence.

Sea dwellers have a large territory which land dwellers are biologically incapable of entering for any length of time, while sea dwellers can survive in a varied environment. However, living in the sea appears to be a status symbol or source of protection more than a desirable state. Alternian technology and society have mostly not been designed with sea dwellers in mind, with everyday items from computers to drink cans functioning best on land. The bulk of Alternian culture happens on the surface, with no sign of any sea dweller community equivalent to the neighborhoods and communal hivestems visible on land. Eridan’s choice to live on an island is an effective compromise – he doesn’t face the physical challenges of opening a Tab underwater and lives closer to his land dwelling friends, but he remains distant from any dangers that land dwellers face. For example, sea dwellers may be rarely if ever at risk of culling. There is some evidence that on Earth, land-based insects are constrained by enemies, in Homestuck represented by culling, while aquatic insects are constrained by food supplies, represented by the struggle to feed Gl’bgolyb (Lancaster & Downes, 2018).

I believe that sea dweller status becomes extremely important when trolls leave Alternia and join the imperial forces, where trolls of Eridan’s caste hold leadership positions by birthright instead of fighting on the front lines. Before adult trolls left the homeworld, sea dweller status had greater relevance, but with culture determined by the young there are far fewer structural systems to enforce sea dweller supremacy or pass down history and tradition. There are some parallels between Eridan and real people who are attracted to far-right movements, as perceived injustice and victimization is a risk factor for radicalization regardless of a person’s actual situation. This allows the person to see their ingroup as simultaneously victimized and superior (Robinson, 2026). Young white men may be told that they are in privileged positions but be unaware of or unable to acknowledge the ways in which privilege benefits them, particularly if they are marginalized or struggling in other ways, for example due to child abuse, academic failure or neurodivergence (see Marwick et al., 2022, Boatman, 2019). Initiatives to uplift women and people of color may appear ‘louder’, while the reality of white male privilege is invisible, resulting in a warped perspective. Eridan similarly has been told that sea dwellers are superior to land dwellers, but from his perspective, he doesn’t receive any benefits, instead finding himself isolated physically and socially while working tirelessly to feed somebody else’s lusus. Benefits he does receive, such as protection from culling and access to imperial leadership, are passive or will not apply until the future. In this situation, Eridan sees sea dweller supremacy as something he needs to personally fight for and restore from a ‘better’ past, instead of something that already exists socially for trolls and always has.

In the narrative, sea dwellers are marked as different and mysterious, but not as primary. Eridan and Feferi’s introductions being saved until last could represent their status – the most important guest at a function enters last, with all eyes on them – but deprives them of any significant role in the first two thirds of Hivebent. By the time they’re introduced, their land dwelling peers have depth, backstories, and complex relationships, and fans already have their favorite trolls which the new arrivals must compete with. Major twists, such as Aradia being dead all along and the Mobius Double Reacharound that brings the competing red and blue teams into a single session, have been and gone without the sea dwellers’ influence. Even after their introduction, Eridan and Feferi have no relevance to the final and biggest twist of Hivebent, the trolls’ creation of the kids’ universe. In another story, royalty would almost certainly play a role in this.

Interestingly, Eridan does achieve narrative significance and fandom prominence (particularly on Tumblr) in Act 5 Act 2, where he embodies the ideals of a sea dweller and of his ancestors and heroes – selfish behavior, disrespect for others, military victory, extreme emotions and elaborate aesthetics (see March Eridan). Feferi never embraces these ideals to the same extent, and never achieves that same significance, though in the case of fandom her gender is another possible factor behind this. This suggests that Eridan embracing his assigned role allows him to succeed somewhat on the meta-level, though his late introduction still puts him on the back foot. Because of this and because of modern Alternia being structured around land dwellers, Eridan’s sense of injustice may not entirely be warped perception. He may be both privileged and disenfranchised on the basis of the same trait, further complicating his understanding of his situation. Eridan’s beliefs in injustice against him having some basis in reality where actual world ones would not corresponds with the Alternian hemospectrum having a biological basis where actual world race and caste systems do not – at best, this weakens them as meaningful parallels or lines of analysis, and at worst, this could legitimize a reader’s actual, harmful views.

To Eridan, blood could mean several things. Mindfang’s journal suggests that higher-caste trolls are longer-lived (see p.3758), so purple blood represents health, longevity, a lack of genetic ‘defects’, and possible resistance to diseases that may shorten a troll’s lifespan, all reasons that human royal families have perceived their bloodlines as superior. If Eridan believes in a higher power, he may also believe that he was personally chosen to have this powerful blood. Adhering to his blood caste provides Eridan with a sense of identity that he can accept without question, saving him the trouble of self-reflection and personally deciding who he wants to be. But overall, I think the strongest reason for Eridan’s fixation on blood is that his blood color cannot be taken from him. Eridan struggles with low self esteem in a social context particularly when he is unable to fill his quadrants, saying ‘youre right im not better than anybody / im worse than anybody’ after Feferi ends their moirallegiance (p.2467). Later, his love for blood and status trumps his personal feelings, when he says that he and Feferi ‘belong together as the rulin class if nothin else’ (p.3321). A relationship provides him with tenuous and conditional self-esteem, but blood color is something he can always fall back on. He can attribute a land dweller’s dislike of him to the historic feud between their groups instead of due to his individual failings, and he isn’t required to become somebody who is socially adept or treats others well because he can subscribe to the ‘historic truth’ that he is entitled to respect and admiration. Eridan’s blood color is one of the first things he knew about himself, and the only thing he can always be certain of.

Sgrub in its design upholds Eridan’s royal status by giving him the title ‘Prince’, which in game lore is not superior to other roles, but which Eridan likely perceives as such. The game allows Eridan and Feferi’s dream selves to keep the aesthetic trappings of royalty but does not give the same allowances to Nepeta’s claws and tail (p.2505), suggesting that the game factors in players’ status on their homeworlds. The game gives Eridan no reason to question his aristocratic status or blood supremacy, instead placing him in the Land of Wrath and Angels, where he can continue to believe himself persecuted after angering the angels to attack him, fueling his existing self-beliefs. At this point, troll society no longer exists and the hemospectrum has no large scale relevance, but Sgrub allows Eridan to continue living as though it does.

When Eridan dies, it’s bloody. He’s bisected, drenched and drowning in his rich sea dweller blood, which coats both his corpse and his murderer. He dies with the sign of his own perceived superiority all over him, but he dies anyway. Eridan does not get to be long lived, to be a leader or a military victor or have his supposed supremacy acknowledged. Sgrub may not be willing to tell Eridan that his blood can no longer protect him, but other trolls – particularly Kanaya, but also Sollux and Feferi – will happily take this job.

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2. You have an overpowering GENOCIDE COMPLEX, and have made it your sworn duty to KILL ALL LAND DWELLERS.

You have amassed resources and deadly weaponry from around the world for this ambition through many sweeps of EXTREME ROLE PLAYING, while pursuing a working DOOMSDAY DEVICE which will bring armageddon to all those on the surface.

Eridan is not content to declare his superiority over land dwellers; he will not rest until he sees them eliminated entirely. It is unclear whether these ambitions are common for sea dwellers or whether Eridan is radical even among his caste, and it’s likely that Eridan’s genocidal views come from his belief that sea dweller supremacy isn’t upheld or enforced – if land dwellers ‘knew their place’ he wouldn’t feel the need to kill them. Even so, it’s an extremely short sighted view, and one that appears motivated by the act itself. Eridan believes that ‘ruling […] is not enough’ (p.2439), but never considers the aftermath of killing the land dwellers, has no specific goal he aims to achieve with genocide, and will receive no personal benefit. An argument could be made that Eridan wants to claim the land for himself and his people as he sees it as a better place to live, but there’s no direct evidence for this.

Instead, I believe killing all sea dwellers is one of Eridan’s ‘sacred values’, which are self-evident ‘moral imperatives that seem to drive behavior independently of any concrete material goal’ (Atran & Axelrod, 2008, cited in Missier, 2022). Sacred values are not necessarily religious, but provide individual meaning and a defense system against anxiety and external threats to a person’s worldview. Under the right conditions, sacred values can lead to extreme behavior, and upholding sacred values is tied together with hatred towards outgroups who may threaten them (Missier, 2022). Consequently, Eridan’s desire to kill land dwellers is driven by emotion, anger, platonic hatred, a love of violence, and a need to assert his own beliefs in the face of others who reject them. However, Eridan may genuinely believe that genocide of land dwellers is a rational act to protect himself against their hatred of him, even while to an outsider his actions are highly irrational.

Notably, Eridan has made it his sworn duty to kill all land dwellers – he is not content with this happening passively without his influence. He wants to pull the trigger, to receive the credit and the glory for this action like the military victories he prizes. This to me is part of why Eridan isn’t content to lighten Gl’bgolyb’s feeding schedule to solve his ‘problem’ (p.2465). In addition to making Feferi sad, this would be a passive act, and one that would be attributed to his incompetence and failure to feed Gl’bgolyb instead of to his tactical genius. It also assumes Feferi would be incapable of feeding Gl’bgolyb without him, which may itself be a belief Eridan is scared to test, due to potential impact on his self-esteem if he’s wrong. Eridan also considers his plot to be more important than victory in the trolls’ Sgrub game. At a time when he is not yet aware that Sgrub will kill most trolls, his primary concern is using the game to have Vriska deliver the doomsday device she and Equius have made for him (p.2343). This corresponds with Eridan’s general attitudes towards games, that they are means for him to obtain equipment, resources and combat practice to carry out his other plans, instead of gameplay being worthwhile in itself (see section 3).

Feferi believes Eridan intentionally stacks his doomsday plots against himself to fail (p.2448), which is somewhat consistent with reality, as only a small number of people who hold radical attitudes will actually engage in extremist behaviors (Wolfowicz et al., 2019). Eridan dismisses these ideas, stating a clear intention to carry out these actions, and Feferi’s statement that ‘every doomsday device [Eridan] get[s] [his] )(ands on turns out to be a piece of junk’ (p.2448) does suggest that Eridan has tried to activate multiple doomsday devices in the past and has made actual attempts at carrying out his plan beyond simply holding a desire to eliminate land dwellers. I personally believe that by Hivebent. Eridan has the willingness to follow through on his desires, but lacks access to a working doomsday device. He is unaware that one exists (p.2131), does not see Vriska as capable of making one though likes having a kismesis enough to overlook this (p.2457) and can’t find any allies who would be able to assist him, contributing to a feeling of impotence and powerlessness in the world.

Eridan is excellent at dehumanizing others and mentally depriving them of ‘person status’ either as individuals or as a group, even if he has previously granted them this status. Dehumanization is a psychological technique people can use to justify committing great violence against other groups (see Bruneau & Kteily, 2017) and even specific individuals who they are directly engaging with (see Oliver, 2017, p.15). The concept of who ‘counts’ as a person is narrowed to include the person committing violence and their associated group, and to omit those they wish to target. This ‘other’ may be framed as a threat that the ingroup needs to protect themselves against. Once an outgroup has been dehumanized, it is possible for individuals with unmet needs to take their internal distress and externalize it onto this group, as the new, simplified ‘us vs them’ binary legitimizes violence as a simple and justified solution to the problem (Robinson, 2026).

Eridan, on many occasions, frames himself as someone who cannot possibly be understood by others. He focuses on the differences and barriers between himself and others while making no genuine attempt to bridge them. When Feferi, a person he claims to love, states that she does not believe sea dwellers are better than land dwellers, he dismisses her entirely and makes no attempt to understand her perspective – not even to better argue against it. When Kanaya refuses to help Eridan with his plot to kill the land dwellers, he assumes that this is driven by her own self-preservation and refuses to consider other possibilities when she says this isn’t her reason. He is extremely good at maintaining walls between himself and others and framing even his friends as adversaries to his goals, which assists with this process of dehumanization. He’s comfortable using slurs and derogatory language against land dwellers, calling Vriska a ‘fickle dirtscrapin landhag’ in front of land dwelling Kanaya (p.2343). He assumes that a Faygo bottle that washes up near his hive is ‘rubbish from the LAND DWELLERS’, universalizing the entire group into the source of this problem instead of attributing it to an individual (p.2067). And he easily dehumanizes others when they personally hurt him, too, thinking of Nepeta as the ‘kittycat shipper cave girl’ (p.3321) after she rejects him romantically and doubling down when Karkat criticizes this.

Finally, Eridan has already displayed a willingness to commit violence against strangers – sea dwellers as well as land dwellers – by killing their lusi and allowing Vriska to lead the young trolls to their deaths, which he celebrates as ‘do[ing] something awesome’ (p.2409) instead of viewing purely as a necessity. In order to do this, he has already dehumanized these trolls, conceptualizing them exclusively as food for the people who, in his mind, actually ‘count’. There is no evidence that Eridan has any kind of social network or community besides his four confirmed friends – Feferi, Vriska, Kanaya and Karkat – which could make him reconsider a large-scale destructive plot due to personal ties. I don’t believe that Hivebent Eridan would directly and intentionally pull the trigger on those four specific people, but, I think his self-centeredness would allow him to dismiss them as collateral damage when they’re out of his line of sight and he’s taking an action that will kill all land dwellers and fulfill his primary ambition. And later on, all it takes is for Kanaya and Feferi to demonstrate that they’ll actively oppose Eridan, and he’s willing to immediately revoke their own person status and kill them individually. I don’t think that’s a sudden change; I think it’s a natural progression after years of comfort with personally carrying out violence against almost anyone.

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3. You hold a fascination for MILITARY HISTORY AND LEGENDARY CONQUERORS. You have dubiously modeled your profile and exploits after the most notorious figures and their stories […]

Eridan’s beliefs in sea dweller supremacy may not match modern Alternians’ beliefs, but he can ground them in Alternian history. He’s the character who introduces the concept of troll ancestors into Homestuck, and alongside Vriska, he feels the closest affinity to his ancestor of all the trolls. Unlike Vriska, he looks to history more generally for guidance, and has a broader interest in ancestry-based inheritance. Eridan’s respect for history and ancestry appears to override his specific prejudice towards humans – the importance of heirlooms and family lines in human society may be Eridan’s contribution to the universe he helped create, as the only way he’s able to find common ground with a human is through the idea of bequeathing a powerful possession to a descendant (p.3175-6).

Eridan’s love for military history is immediately apparent: in his introductory chatlog, he advises Kanaya to ‘read up on [her] history’ (p.2343), referring to blackrom pairings of legend, especially Dualscar and Mindfang. The first command given to Eridan is ‘Do something awesome’, which to him means emulating military heroes by committing an act of gun violence with an impressive ancestral weapon against a target physically bigger than him but tactically inferior – an unsuspecting creature who posed no threat to him. As his first major act in the story, it’s an introduction to his mindset and personal beliefs. The hive Eridan then returns to is a half-destroyed pirate ship, likely one from the legendary pirate battles of old Alternia (see p.3743), showing that he built his home in legacy and tradition. It appears that he modified this ship into a home, as it shares the window and room shapes of other hives, which parallels the likely content of his dubious history texts, which have roots in the actual past but have been crafted into something with a new purpose. His hive is filled with books, maps, harpoons and extensive piles of treasure, which may have monetary or trade value, may be a status symbol, or may be artifacts of historical significance.

Eridan’s legendary weapon, Ahab’s Crosshairs, exists in direct contrast to Feferi’s. Hers is described as ceremonial, unfit for culling anything larger than a cuttlefish, while Eridan’s is extremely powerful and intended for destruction to the point that he ‘almost feel[s] sorry for the adversaries’ in Sgrub (p.2456). Eridan enters the game actively seeking combat, and though it’s implied the angels on his land don’t attack unless provoked and could even potentially assist him with the game, his first instinct is to slaughter them and feel righteous for it (p.3321).

Eridan’s default response is to solve problems with violence, and he assumes violent intentions, even when none exist. With the angels, his beliefs are essentially validated when they do fight back after being attacked. In general, Sgrub as a game rewards and even requires violence, requiring players to fight the Black King to win, so it’s hard to consider Eridan’s instincts entirely baseless. When his beliefs are challenged, for example Jade pushing back against Eridan thinking it’s ‘natural to presume’ a ‘rivvalry’ between her and Rose (p.3175), Eridan recalibrates to assume a one-sided animosity from Rose towards Jade instead of considering a non-competitive relationship. Eridan is also seen dueling Sollux in a scene that receives no narrative buildup (p.2578). We never see them interact before this duel, suggesting that Eridan jumped from hearing about a relationship between Sollux and Feferi to physically attacking her new lowblood partner without an attempt at conversation. It’s impossible to say whether Eridan’s violent tendencies led to his interest in military history or vice versa, but it’s been theorized that intellectual interest in historical figures can lead to ‘identity fusion’ where an individual comes to see themself as increasingly similar to the object of study (Robinson, 2026).

Eridan’s continued insistence on killing angels despite them being extremely challenging adversaries who offer no rewards demonstrates his belief that military masterminds became great through ‘upright persevverance’ (p.2448), which he considers a virtue in itself. I believe he uses the books he’s read and the military generals he holds as heroes to cope with his many failed plots to kill land dwellers. He believes strongly in ‘tactics’, framing the time he spends on land as strategy and his befriending lowbloods before killing them as historically justified (p.2448). He may be replicating Dualscar’s tactics – Dualscar famously reported intelligence on Mindfang to the Grand Highblood, switching allegiances according to what most benefited him. This is similar to Eridan’s decision to join Jack Noir when he believes this will be a strategic victory. Eridan claims to be ‘uniquely qualified to recognize wwhen all hope is lost’ as the Prince of Hope (p.3321), but I don’t see this decision as relevant to his Sgrub aspect. It’s a decision of somebody who doesn’t have morals, beliefs or ideals, they just have tactics, and are willing to align with what they see as the winning side. I believe this is the same reason he pursued Feferi as a moirail and a matesprit, instead of any attraction towards her as an individual. If Eridan believed the trolls did not have the skills to beat the Black King, he would likely have aligned with the king, too.

Eridan lacks imagination and struggles to think past his own experience, and has a stronger interest in past military victories, which are fixed and definite, than in the trolls’ ongoing imperial conquest in the stars. He never considers his own career ambitions or his likely future as a military general for the trolls’ army, despite this seeming like something he’d be excited for, because it’s theoretical and not yet based in reality. Similarly, he has no interest in or respect for fiction. Eridan is dismissive of Kanaya’s vampire romance novels, which he describes as ‘godawwfull sunny rubbish’ (p.2343), even though his histories are every bit as emotionally driven and sensationalized. They’re ‘bristling with the GLORY OF VICTORY and the STING OF DEFEAT and POLITICAL MACHINATIONS and ROMANTIC INTRIGUE’ (p.2339), but to Eridan, the fact that they’re ostensibly based in truth lets him consider them worth taking seriously. Eridan is an actor and a roleplayer even when he’s alone, his desire to play the part of an aristocratic sea dweller influencing the beverages he drinks (p.2449) and the language he chooses (p.2450), and he outright acknowledges that there’s ‘a lot of showwmanship thats put into comin off as a diabolical sort’ (p.2805) – but again, it’s all grounded in his ideas of how sea dwellers have historically behaved. Acting, to him, is not a choice or a creative exercise, it’s a rigid expectation.

Eridan plays FLARP, but isn’t part of the friendly game between Team Charge and Team Scourge. Both Eridan and Vriska roleplay as historical figures – in fact, the audience’s first glimpse of Mindfang and Dualscar is through Eridan and Vriska’s roleplay (p.2459) – and both use FLARP instrumentally to feed a lusus. However, Vriska also plays for fun and is known to enjoy crafting game scenarios and clouding campaigns, which Eridan does not. He dismisses his and Vriska’s former kismesissitude as a ‘kiddie game’ (p.2792), and while she similarly believes their relationship is over, she never denigrates the game itself.

To Eridan, the only worthwhile function of FLARP, or any fiction, is its ability to meaningfully affect his reality. In Homestuck, a story which focuses greatly on the role of stories where characters’ interests include gaming, roleplaying and creative writing for pleasure, a character who disparages and avoids those things in favor of what he considers fact helps establish him as a villain. And where many characters are passionate about something they know to be fake, such as Tavros’ love for fairies, Eridan denies his love for supposedly fictional magic until he can reconceptualize it as real science (see section 5).

Sea dwellers historically being great military conquerors is a similarly undeniable fact to Eridan’s purple blood, something else that cannot be taken from him, making it a similarly ‘safe’ foundation for identity. Eridan is aware that many people around him don’t believe in the importance of history or of blood, so by consistently doubling down on his beliefs’ basis in fact, he’s able to hold his opinion as inherently superior without having to question himself or consider other perspectives. It allows him to consider his decisions rational and objective, instead of colored by the emotion that characterizes creativity.

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4. It is an image you are careful to craft through EXAGGERATED EMOTIONAL THEATRICS, and […] people tend to regard you as a BIT OF A TOOL.

Eridan’s introduction directly acknowledging how he’s seen by others suggests he cares deeply about these external perceptions. He’s right that these perceptions are generally negative. Vriska thinks of Eridan as ‘some guy [she was] in cahoots with’ (p.2206) who no longer matters, suggesting that her interest in him was mostly due to his utility in FLARP. Conversely, both Kanaya and Feferi view Eridan as a burden – Kanaya calls Eridan ‘Predictable’, ‘Indecent’ and ‘Vvery Ovverbearing’, saying he ‘Take[s] [Her] Help For Granted’ and threatening to block him (p.2343), while Feferi describes Eridan’s ‘nefarious escapades’ (p.2328) and says that their relationship ‘took all [her] energy’ (p.2467).

From an outsider’s perspective, it’s easy to identify Eridan’s flaws. His expectation that he can emotionally lean on these people without offering support in return, his stated goals to either kill their species or go against their personal wishes, and his inability to see past his own worldview make it completely understandable that Eridan’s friends take whatever they can get from the relationship, don’t offer to help him and actively pull away when he reaches out. But from Eridan’s own viewpoint, clouded by powerful feelings that he lacks the capacity to navigate, he has strong emotional needs that aren’t being met or acknowledged by others. I do not believe Eridan’s emotional theatrics are exaggerated, I believe they represent his actual experiences and that he considers himself more in control of the performance of his emotions than he actually is. Though he’d like to see himself as a rational person, for example claiming that he ‘knows his limits’ and accepts that he ‘stand[s] no chance in hell’ against Jack Noir (p.3321), he shouts and insults lowbloods throughout the same conversation, clearly struggling to contain his emotions. He also finds his conversation with Feferi ‘emotionally exhausting’ (p.2449), and subjectively experiences hardship and has this dismissed, leading him to feel that ‘nobody understands’ (p.2343) or that ‘nobody gets it’ (p.3321) and that they aren’t even trying. I’d guess that these genuine emotional struggles are part of why many fans find Eridan relatable or feel sympathy for him despite his actions.

When Eridan claims that ‘its hard / being a kid and growwing up / its hard and nobody understands’ (p.2343), he’s talking to somebody who is also a kid finding it hard to grow up – confirmed when the line is later repeated for her own emotional struggle. Eridan is unwilling to consider that other trolls have the same struggles as him, or the same level of interiority, or that their feelings are similarly important. He actively disparages others’ emotions, calling Sollux ‘fuckin pathetic’ for having strong feelings (p.2467), and when somebody else goes through an emotionally stressful event such as Feferi’s challenging entry into the Medium, Eridan shifts the conversation back to his own feelings during that experience (p.2467).

Eridan’s inward-focused emotions and adversarial beliefs make him incapable of a strong moirallegiance, a quadrant predicated on equality between partners and a troll’s willingness to recognize aspects of themselves that can be balanced out by others. It’s my opinion that Eridan and Feferi’s failed moirallegiance provides a contrast to Nepeta and Equius’ successful one. Eridan’s emotions are primarily negative, including anger, despair, frustration and loneliness, while Feferi externally presents as excited and optimistic. This could theoretically allow her to ‘balance and complement [his] emotional profile’ (p.2401), but in practice, Eridan ignores her requests to tone down his emotions, enters conversations with the assumption that she doesn’t understand him and doesn’t want to hear what he has to say, is sarcastic about their chosen quadrant, and appears to have given up on making their relationship work.

Eridan dislikes how he’s seen by others, but tends to similarly make assumptions about other people without a solid basis. He assumes Vriska has stopped responding to his messages because she’s ‘bored shitless’ with him and their relationship (p.2457), and the following page takes pains to remind us that Eridan is mistaken. Eridan also assumes that the only reason Kanaya would not want to auspisticize for him and Vriska is due to her own flushed feelings (p.2343). Eridan’s own motivations – concupiscent romance, as well as the violence and domination over others discussed above – form the basis for his assumptions surrounding others.

Eridan’s Sgrub land functions as a metaphor for his personality – it’s not the land’s very existence or any inherent property that prevents others from wanting to visit, it’s his intentional choices to carry out acts of violence that make it unpleasant. Once Eridan has acted with cruelty, closed off possibilities for mutual understanding and decided to define himself by his loneliness, that’s extremely difficult to return from, and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. In a game defined by predestination, there’s no suggestion that Eridan’s actions with his land’s angels affected the overall Sgrub session. The game offered him a choice over how to interact with these angels, and any inevitability in that outcome stems from Eridan’s inability to look past his personal worldview. Marwick et al. (2022) highlight that radicalization isn’t something done to passive targets, it’s a worldview that in large part is actively produced by people trying to make sense of their world, and it’s interesting to consider Sgrub giving Eridan this choice as a reflection of that idea.

To me, the primary hallmark of Eridan’s emotional profile is his capacity to suddenly flip between wildly different emotional states, which appears outside his control and evidences the idea that Eridan isn’t intentionally exaggerating his emotions. When talking to Gamzee, Eridan flips from lashing out in his desperation to share his ‘serious feelins and problems’ to seeing his emotions as ‘petty and meaninless’ (p.2475). Talking to Vriska, he flips from telling her their rivalry was ‘epic’ and hard to surpass to suddenly considering himself ‘ovver it’ (p.2792). And when Feferi breaks up with him, Eridan goes from yelling at her one moment, to apologizing and sweet-talking her the next, and then quickly flips again to self-loathing (p.2467). He shares this trait with his ancestor Dualscar, who vacillated between caliginous and flushed feelings for Mindfang and then had her redrom lover assassinated in a fit of jealousy (p.3507-8). It’s a trait that makes it challenging for others to engage with Eridan, since his moods are unpredictable and his conversation partners must remain on guard for these sudden swings.

Beyond conversation, this trait manifests in Eridan’s capacity for cruelty. He claims that he ‘really do[es] care about [Feferi]’ (p.3321), and minutes later blasts a hole through her chest. He demands to be involved in helping Kanaya hatch the Matriorb to ensure the future of the troll species, and the narrative text confirms that he genuinely plans to ‘help Kanaya out’ (p.3321), which makes sense given his extensive focus on the ‘fate of the race and purity of the bloodline’ (p.2343) – but once again, he’s willing to kill her moments later. These two murders can be viewed as self defense, because both Feferi and Kanaya are raising weapons against him when he kills them. But, there’s no regret on Eridan’s face after this, just continued anger. The fact that Eridan is willing to not only express strong emotions but also act on them shows that they are not simply ‘theatrics’.

The ultimate proof of Eridan’s cruelty is his choice to destroy the Matriorb. He does this while Kanaya is threatening him, drawing a chainsaw and ready to fight, and he’s already decided to kill her. The Matriorb is functionally useless without her to hatch it, and while destroying it does achieve Eridan’s genocidal goals of killing all land dwellers, it comes with the tradeoff that the sea dwellers will also be wiped out. I don’t believe a calmer Eridan would make this compromise, as he does care deeply about the continuation of the sea dweller species. In my view, Eridan chooses to destroy the non-threatening Matriorb before Kanaya because he wants her to be distraught and upset as she dies, and to experience losing the thing that matters most to her. Instead of a passive recognition that ‘all hope is lost’ (p.3321), he makes the intentional choice to end her feelings of hope and make her suffer as much as possible in her final moments. There’s nothing exaggerated about this – it can only come from a place of genuine fury and hatred, of emotions so overpowering that he simply cannot contain them.

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5. You also like MAGIC, even though you know it to be FAKE. Like a made up friend, the way wizards are.

To Eridan, the term ‘fake’ – which he also applies to angels and luck – connotes a lack of respect. He contrasts his former moirail Feferi in his desperate need to only enjoy what he considers real. She finds enjoyment in what she knows and acknowledges to fake, such as being the empress someday, but when Eridan and Feferi together are commanded to ‘do something ridiculous’, Eridan waves a wand accompanied by a ‘FAKE FAKE’ sound effect (p.2446), unable to suspend disbelief even for a silly moment with his moirail.

Eridan decorates his hive with wizard statues, and has a fridge filled with ‘unbelievably shitty wands’ (p.2451) which he hides away – potentially remnants from an earlier time in his life when he was less driven by rationality. I’d guess that Eridan feels ashamed of any hope for or belief in magic, whether current or former. He yells at Gamzee for daring to believe in miracles, which he frames as equivalent to magic (p.2475), and grows extremely defensive when talking to Rose and insisting that her feats of power aren’t actually magic. By the time he has this conversation, Eridan is in the Veil, and has personally witnessed Skaian technology, trolls’ psychic abilities, transtemporal and transuniversal instant messaging, and legendary and mythological weapons. Still, he draws the line at magic, calling it ‘figmental storybook claptrap’ (p.2805). And despite having access to abilities and technology he knows is real, he desperately wants magic to be real too, even while insisting that it isn’t.

The fact that Eridan has exhausted all of these technologies and not found a solution to any of his problems, whether his desire to kill all land dwellers or to fill his own quadrants, means he’s drawn to the idea that an easy and perfect solution may exist. In Sgrub, magic functions as a kind of cheat code, allowing players to bypass challenges and affect the game in ways that are otherwise inaccessible. Alchemization allows creation of items for specific purposes, and some items are inaccessible, limited by grist type and quantity or lack of captcha codes. Rose’s initial wands are comparatively cheap and are available in the early game, and give her access to magic which is broadly applicable to any situation. Though the story primarily depicts destructive magic, it also serves other purposes – for example, when Rose uses a spell to transfer her GameFAQs from the Earth internet into a server in the Furthest Ring (p.1942). Though he redefines magic as science, Eridan’s wands similarly allows him to ‘cheat’ his way through any previous social insecurities, giving him confidence and ‘righteous hope that wwill incinerate delusion and the deluded alike’ (p.3175).

Eridan’s desire for magic to be real is shown in his momentary captivation by the idea that magic or miracles brought him a Faygo at the moment he needed one, causing Gamzee’s vocabulary to invade his thoughts as he ‘kick[s] back and motherfuckin' snap[s] into some rude elixir’ that he’d otherwise consider ‘disgusting shit’ (p.2475-6). Later, seeing Rose actively do magic makes it feel close enough and possible enough to Eridan that his desire escalates into obsession, and he begins ‘Harassing’ Kanaya to teach him Rose’s secrets (p.3047). Once Eridan has decided he wants something, he can’t let go of it. And once he has access to magic, he becomes dependent very quickly, discarding his previous ancestral destiny because he now has magic to literally blast through problems instead of addressing their cause. Kanaya snapping Eridan’s wand with the ‘DEBUNK’ sound effect (p.3532) is the most horrified he ever looks – he was a powerful combatant before owning this wand and could likely have held his own against a rainbow drinker, but his choice to turn away from his previous weapons and tactics and focus only on the raw power of magic means he no longer knows how to fight without it.

Ironically, magic’s success in Sgrub appears linked to whether or not the player believes in it. Rose immediately begins alchemizing with wizard statues upon entry because she believes the resulting items will have magical properties, and so they do. Eridan’s so-called ‘white science’ succeeds not because the wand itself is powerful, but because Kanaya’s decision to make Eridan a wand tells him that she believes it will work. Although she is doing this to laugh at him, he thinks she ‘[doesnt] really lie about stuff / unless its to [her]self’ (p.2343), and he later acknowledges her contribution by saying ‘i just needed for someone to showw a little faith in me so im sayin thanks i owwe ya’ (p.3321). This is both the only time he expresses genuine gratitude towards someone, and an implicit acknowledgment that his mental state and personal belief were relevant to his success. On some level, he knows that pure rationality is not enough, which is itself linked to his deep and long term desire for magic to be real.

With this in mind, why is it necessary for Eridan to reconceptualize magic as science in order to believe? Science is considered by many to be objectively correct, as a higher truth existing above opinions, arguments, and indeed debates over whether or not it is real – all the power of a god with none of the uncertainty. In truth, science is full of biases, mistakes and unanswered questions, but it’s common for people to believe that it transcends these. An understanding of science is linked to intelligence and knowledge about how the world works, which appeals to Eridan, somebody who has long considered his political views as more enlightened than those of his peers. But no matter how rational he may consider his politics, there will always be accusations of self-interest, which he considers science to be free of.

Eridan likes science because he thinks it can’t be questioned or doubted. Eridan was drawn to military history because he believed it was rooted in objective fact, but his peers still told him that his victory over angels in his Sgrub land achieved nothing. Now, his combat victories are now also advances in science, which can’t be argued. Furthermore, science allows Eridan to bypass his own emotionality, which he detests and downplays. Science is more robust than Eridan’s newly gained self-confidence, and a belief in science lets him transcend the fragility of any emotional state and, once again, retreat into the safety of something undeniable.

Additionally, receiving Rose’s wands and successfully casting magic is effective proof that Eridan was wrong: magic does exist. But after years of calling it ‘made up make believe FAKEY FAKEY FAKES’ (p.2439), Eridan can’t admit to being wrong, and has to mentally reconcile his newfound power with his lack of belief. Leaning on science accomplishes this. Eridan’s personal belief that he’s a persecuted underdog compounds this need, because he’s already working against others’ negative perceptions of him, and – in his mind – admitting to being wrong will only worsen their opinions. It’s a simultaneous feeling of superiority and inferiority that characterizes his mindset, just like his understanding of being a sea dweller.

Eridan’s use of magic ultimately becomes extremely dangerous. This is partly because he has access to more raw power, enabling him to transcend his previous capabilities, and partly because he casts off his focus on history and destiny. He’s no longer inhibited by a personal code of living up to the actions and strategies of his military conqueror role models; instead, he embraces science, which represents not history but futurity and progress. His actions become unpredictable, and he’s less concerned with the virtues of perseverance and more concerned with immediate results. His goals are the same, but he’s discarded any framework that keeps him on rails.

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6. Your trolltag is caligulasAquarium and you speak wwith a vvery wweird and sort of wwavvy soundin accent.

Eridan talks to Feferi, Kanaya and Gamzee on screen during Hivebent, and it’s confirmed he is or was close with Vriska and Karkat, both of whom he talks to in Act 5 Act 2 along with Terezi, Sollux, Rose and Jade. Eridan’s friendship with Karkat is particularly noteworthy. He thinks of Karkat as an ‘assblood’ (p.2343) though also ‘fill[s his] gossip quota wit)( [his] nubby )(orned bro’ (p.2448), which suggests that while they do share a genuine interest in the romantic lives of their friends and the psychology of troll romance, he’s unable to fully look past Karkat’s blood color. Eridan struggles enough socially that he feels he can’t afford to be picky, consenting to talk to those who he otherwise can’t stand just to have some company. Karkat hiding his blood color may also be significant – prior to Sgrub, Eridan doesn’t otherwise willingly talk to anyone lower on the hemospectrum than Kanaya, so he may have kept some plausible deniability about Karkat’s blood status.

An ongoing theme of Eridan’s interpersonal relationships is his desire to fill his quadrants, which is returned to often in increasingly extreme ways, and which guides a lot of fan reactions to the character (both for fans who want him to find a partner and those who enjoy seeing him forevver alone). Examples include Eridan attempting to make first Terezi and later Feferi auspisticize for him and Sollux (p.2792, 3321), to attract Karkat as a matesprit or kismesis (p.3361), to talk Rose into kismesissitude (p.2805) or Jade into matespritship (p.3175), and needing to clarify that he totally isn’t looking for ‘THAT KIND OF DATE’ with Jack Noir (p.3176). Eridan’s focus on his own quadrants contrasts Karkat and Nepeta, both of whom take a strong interest in romance but apply this outwardly to couples around them.

Prior to Hivebent, Eridan was moirails with Feferi and kismeses with Vriska, filling an impressive two simultaneous quadrants, a record that none of his co-players ever exceed. This suggests his interpersonal relationships were once more positive, though by Hivebent, they’ve already deteriorated to a point where everyone is done with him (see section 4). It could be that Eridan pretended to be a better partner in order to fill those quadrants, and over time began demanding more and more in his relationships while giving less and less. Though he’s lonely, Eridan sees his relationships as chances to exploit his partners. If someone reaches out to him, gives him the benefit of the doubt, acknowledges that he’s hurting and offers their help, Eridan genuinely appreciates that, but he’s also opportunistic enough to take advantage of that person’s display of weakness, using their help to facilitate his own gains due to his belief that he deserves unequal amounts of respect. He orders Kanaya around with phrases like ‘you got to’ and ‘make her talk to me’ (p.2343), outright laughing at her and trying to push her into a relationship role she does not want but that personally benefits him. And that’s how he treats his friends – if he doesn’t like somebody, he’ll be even ruder, for example calling Gamzee a ‘stupid fuck’ (p.2475).

As the heir to the Alternian throne, Feferi is the only person who Eridan may potentially listen to as an authority. At the same time, having the highest caste troll on Alternia as his moirail only inflates Eridan’s belief in his own importance. Even though his casteist ideals mean he should treat Feferi with respect, Eridan appears to view their relationship as a status symbol more than something he needs to continually put effort into. He dismisses anything she says that doesn’t fit with his existing views, and outright leaves a conversation with her when it isn’t going his way (p.2448). When Feferi ends their relationship, Eridan claims they’re ‘fated to be moirails’ (p.2467) in an attempt to change her mind, but then proposes a matespritship between them which would also go against fate. His own feelings are primary, his belief in fate only applies when it reinforces his existing desires, and Feferi’s opinions are a distant third. Fate is yet another thing that some trolls see as undeniable, something that Eridan uses to compensate for his lack of redeeming qualities as a partner, and something that – like magic – allows him to shortcut putting work into a relationship, seen also when he tries to convince Rose that their kismesissitude may be fated (p.2805).

Though I believe Feferi would genuinely like Eridan to turn away from his genocidal views and take a kinder approach to rulership, she’s one person, and she’s similarly young and lacking in emotional intelligence. Liguori & Spanierman (2023) spoke to women who had helped somebody close to them exit a white supremacist movement, and these women described significant psychological distress and loss of access to their own support systems as a result of this process, as well as struggles in finding external help to assist the people they were helping and feeling personally burdened as facilitators of this process. They were also able to identify self-hatred, trauma and abuse experienced by those they were trying to help, and used compassion and empathy to connect with them, often casting aside their own needs and personal opinions to help the other person. Being willing and able to do this is a rarity, and it’s no slight against Feferi that she isn’t capable of this, especially considering her age, culture and other personal responsibilities, and Eridan’s proven willingness to ignore anything she says. As much as I’m sympathetic to Eridan’s desperate need for social connection and his need for others to see him as something more than his political views, it seems like Kanaya and Feferi have both done their best to offer that to him, and he’s unable to do his part in accepting help.

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Final thoughts

It’s nearly impossible to sit here in 2026 and analyze Eridan from a 2011 perspective, because of the rise in far-right fascist groups during the intervening years. Eridan reads more like a prophecy for our actual world’s future than a character, and the fact that his archetype was culturally significant enough in 2011 for Hussie to write about is evidence for the fact that far-right radical attitudes have always been part of Western culture, and didn’t come from nowhere with the 2016 US election cycle.

Actual world politics as a whole feels bleak in 2026, and Eridan’s situation on brutal Alternia, in a Sgrub session constantly tempting him with violence, and in a time-bomb meteor lab which provides him no alternative pathways all prevent Eridan from becoming somebody better. However, in our world, individual young people like Eridan can be deradicalized, and can become people who contribute positively to the world. His story ends tragically in Homestuck, but I can’t help but wonder about his possible ‘good ending’.

What if Eridan was faced with a reason to doubt sea dweller supremacy, such as an order from the Empress that sea dwellers should integrate with land dwellers? What if he’d found conclusive proof that Dualscar, or another military victor he admired, changed later in life and joined the Summoner’s rebellion? What if he instead of Vriska had gotten close to John, somebody who genuinely listened and wasn’t put off by Eridan’s horrendous beliefs? Eridan’s existing worldview could certainly have been stronger than any individual challenge to it, and he could have adapted and contorted his own beliefs to work around these factors – but for people who leave extremist groups, the first step towards that is doubt, which can result from disillusionment with current beliefs, failure of extremist groups to achieve their goals, or exposure to alternate perspectives (Reid et al., 2026).

Studies around deradicalization pathways also find that while there is no one definitive method to turn a person away from extremist ideology, deradicalization is more likely to succeed through discussion environments where the radicalized person is free to ask questions and communicate honestly, opportunities to form new relationships built on trust, through gaining a new sense of belonging (for example, to a religious or cultural community, sports team or volunteer group), through allowing the person to explore their own interests, through building general life skills and developing agency and resilience against outside stress, and through self-reflection and recovery from trauma (Cherney et al., 2022). However, deradicalization is more challenging when a person’s current ideology is based on mainstream cultural narratives (Sciarone, 2026), as their beliefs are regularly validated and contrasting viewpoints aren’t widely accepted. Becoming deradicalized is not only about losing an existing community and ideology – for it to stick, it has to be about building something new, meaning the radicalized person needs to be able to access alternative options.