#icebergposting

HAPPY 4/13!! Here's a partial Alpha Troll Lore Iceberg to celebrate, as asked for by fans and followers!!

Early Homestuck has quite flippant usage of the R-Slur. It’s treated as basically just a synonym for “stupid”, and just about every character drops it at least once, even if it honestly makes no sense for the character to be using that kind of edgy language.

You don’t quite notice it getting phased out of Hussie’s vocabulary in later Acts, until it returns again in Cronus almost using it a few times as a genuine slur against a disabled man, and the whole time he’s being framed as the biggest fucking asshole to ever live about it. He is, in text, “The Worst Character in Homestuck”, and one of the reasons why is that he’s using words that Hussie used to use casually as a weapon against someone.

Oh, sure! I absolutely can do that! Easy-peasy!

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On Horuss Being a System...

Horuss's Plurality is quite an easy one. He references it multiple times! It verges on interesting, but every time the bait is taken, we get hit with the switch of it being a really cruel punchline against an extremely vulnerable group of people.

Yikes!

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On Cronus's Disillusionment...

We mostly get this one from Aranea's infodump on Cronus. Here it is, verbatim, with the relevant portion in bold:

The 8ard of Hope may seem a little jaded these days, 8ut once he had a deeply abiding faith in magic, and dedicated himself to 8ecoming a great wizard. He 8ecame convinced he was hatched to defeat an extraordinarily evil magician, one he swore the angels foretold of. Though when pressed for the name of the man, he would not say it, claiming it was too dangerous to even enunciate. Part of his self-aggrandizing mythos was that this magician once somehow from afar tried to strike him down at a young age, so he would never have to face him. But the evil spell was deflected, sealing the magician's spirit away in a series of unassuming vessels until he could find some other cunning way to enter our universe. The attack supposedly left him with his distinctive scar. 8ut at some point he became disillusioned with magic. Any truth to his far fetched vision, the legacy of defeating the evil magician would have to 8e passed on to his descendant, or if his descendant proved to be as much of a failure as he did, then perhaps on some other Hero of Hope. I'm unsure why he suffered this crisis of faith, aside from the obvious reasons having to do with an overall lack of character, or any other redeeming qualities. Perhaps someone talked him out of his 8eliefs. Maybe a friend close to him. Or, if one is to 8elieve his fantasy held any water, perhaps someone who was in league with the evil magician.

Yep! It's just fucking Harry Potter, with a twist! But it's implied that Kurloz did that. He is pretty well known for colluding with the "Evil Wizard" in question, being Lord English, as well as mysteriously being there at every major event, ever... And Cronus is terrified of him, so. I think the only reasonable assumption is that Once Again, Kurloz Did It.

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On Cronus's Ableism...

And finally... Wait. Wait, hold on a minute...

Did you just ask me for evidence that Cronus is Ableist?

The other two things are understandable, but... Really? You need a source on Cronus Ampora being Ableist? Are you... New here? Have you ever actually read anything Cronus has ever said? Brother, Cronus being Ableist is just about the most obvious trait he has. This is one of the key takeaways most people get from the Openbounds. His ableism is so fucking bad it's what made most people stop reading the Openbounds. His ableism is so bad it's genuinely triggered people before. It's so bad it's made people physically nauseous.

Well... You asked for it. I appreciate you seeking out knowledge, even if I'm a little confused by it. Here's a compilation of SOME - stressing, SOME, not ALL - of the vile things he's said to Mituna, who's mentally disabled due to a Traumatic Brain Injury.

Presented without further comment. Do I really need to make one?

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When did kurloz sexually assault meulin?I cannot find the source for it on my own.

I’m also a little skeptical since:

1.kurloz feels some form of guilt for deafening meulin.Not as much guilt as he shows,considering how he technically breaks his oath of silence by using his purpleblood magic

2.he isn’t openly sexual other than getting the codpiece,which I view as him following any orders from gamzee and/or lord English.And also his game sprite may have a bulge to it?im not sure about my second point

3.i don’t know why he would do that because he doesn’t abuse meulin that way.In openbound 2,he treats meulin more as an easy pawn to assist him in his malicious plans to help lord english & gamzee rather than sexually assaulting her to ruin her and then manipulating her.

I’m really curious to know when this happened,since it would reframe his already atrocious actions as even worse

Also I have a bias since I have a weird attachment to kurloz for no canon compliant reason.

Hopefully this isn’t too long…it probably is but I hope 8]

I applaud the thoroughness, actually, and thank you for reaching out. I love when people ask me to Cite My Sources, so to speak.

It's in one of the Signing portions of their interactions, so I do not necessarily blame you for missing it.

This is clearly non-consensual touching that is being framed as Upsetting on Meulin's end and Deliberately Creepy on Kurloz's.

I'm not really sure how I feel about it. Well, I feel bad about it, obviously, assault is literally always bad, but I really cannot decipher Kurloz as a character. Not fully, really, 'cuz he doesn't have much of one. To me, this reads as a pure, unadulterated Makara Moment, and I'm frankly just kind of tired of it. Kurloz's character is just a nebulous haze of Plot Instigation and Racism. Gamzee's character is also just a nebulous haze of Plot Instigation and Racism. These are both characters who are coded as Black, who are portrayed as being very dominating, abusive, and physically + sexually violent - especially Gamzee. Kurloz doing this is weird, but it's not... Shocking, I guess.

His relationship with Meulin is absolutely, uh... Troubled... To put it nicely... What, with him manipulating her into a cult and mind controlling her into doing his bidding all the time, on top of this assault, the Bullshit Clown Magic having the side effects of Confusion, Brain Fog, and Memory Loss, and her still seeming to have some kind of suppressed attraction to him... It's complicated. I think it could be genuinely very fascinating to explore, if one has the stomach for it. And a deft enough hand... And is capable of handling it all with maximum sensitivity. It's verging on something really good... But it falls kind of flat, and it's fucking exhausting that we're having this same damn conversation with another fucking Makara.

This could be done extremely well. There's some genuinely solid grounds here for exploring a very complex, very visceral abusive relationship, kind of like what was going on with Gamzee and Terezi, but... There was both just not enough time to set that up fully, and also I am so tired of Makaras being Like That.

1, where was it mentioned that cronus is a rapist? and 2, is kankri actually aroace? i know hes celibate but i always thought he had a crush on latula

i swear ive read the openbounds i just dont remember these parts HNGJDBGF

Hey, thanks a lot! Glad you like it!!

1.) It is not stated directly, but I feel as if saying otherwise is kind of stupid considering his behavior. It's just an obvious read. 1a.) Cronus assaulted Mituna on screen and in public, and a subtle detail about Mituna is that phrases he says a lot do not have typos in them. Him begging for Cronus to stop touching him was done with complete clarity. 1b.) He started grinding on his 13 year old relative in the middle of a crowd while pressuring him to go out with him, and wouldn't stop until he caved. 1c.) When Karkat turned down his advances, Cronus followed him home and tried to break into his house to keep at it. 1d.) In Mituna's Cassandra parallel, he is playing the role of both Apollo and Ajax the Lesser. The Rape of Cassandra is a key moment in Cassandra's myth, with Ajax the Lesser being the perpetrator. Rape isn't something that is directly featured in Homestuck itself - I reckon Hussie was just too uncomfortable with it to write it in - but I think Hussie's intention to have you read Cronus as a rapist without saying it out loud in the exact words of "Cronus is a rapist" is... Pretty clear, honestly.

2.) Kankri point blank says he's a part of the community, yes. While it was framed in a meanspirited way, it's best to just take it genuinely and go with him being AroAce. It's not good representation by any means, but it's still a facet of his character. 2a.) Him being a part of the AroAce community was actually made a separate detail from his celibacy, though the two are definitely features that are linked, kind of like Horuss's status of being both a Therian and a System. 2b.) I wouldn't call his feelings about Latula "a crush". He is creepily obsessed with her and framed as basically being her stalker. This is a different thing from having a crush, as much as fandoms will try to tell you otherwise, lol.

(I’m aroace and I’ve never seen anything other than him being allo and celibate in openbound so I’m curious)

I talk about it a little in this recent post. He’s been that way since the Openbounds, when he identified himself as a member of the community.

Kankri does use direct AroAspec language when describing his orientation, with his celibacy being a separate but linked trait. It’s portrayed as a joke in the same way Horuss’s Plurality is, but it’s better to not ignore it and just make him actually AroAce than it is to pretend that detail isn’t there- same goes for Horuss. Honestly, there’s a lot of similarities in the portrayal of Kankri’s Sexuality and Horuss’s Plurality, but… I’d honestly say that Horuss’s is handled way better, because at least Hussie puts some intrigue into it.

I’m sure others will disagree with me on this, but to me the answer to poor/joking representation is not to erase or ignore it, it’s to take it and make it better. Like, for example, making Gamzee or Meenah white doesn’t automatically erase the fact that they were written in an Anti-Black way, it just kinda makes you look… Dense. You know?

Literally has a fucking Burn Book à la Mean Girls, except it’s detailed and expansive chronicling of everyone that’s ever rejected him and why they’re the scum of the fucking earth for it. Just pathetic, lol.