#sov!cronus.pdf

Not at all, really. He kind of writes himself. You just physically cannot deny him his role in the story. Most difficulty writing Cronus would probably come from trying to soften him, but if you don’t do that then you’re set.

The biggest changes are enhancing the mythological ties, making his actions more direct, but also making him somewhat tolerable to read on a long term basis.

Is him being more tolerable defanging him? Not in this instance. We just made him a little more sneaky about how he goes about things. The level of flagrancy to his actions in the Openbounds gets recontextualized as him being bold because, due to the consistency of who is stuck with him and how long they have been stuck with him, he knows he can be. What are the other Alpha Trolls gonna do? Leave? What is anyone else that comes in his path gonna do? Get him arrested? By who? To where?

Cronus is smart. Cronus is self aware. He knows exactly what he is doing. I’m giving Sov!Cronus those traits, too. After all, they’re important to his characterization, aren’t they? This isn’t a dimwitted tool just stumbling his way into accidentally traumatizing people. These are choices made deliberately, with full knowledge that it’s hurting people- he knows, he understands, he just doesn’t care. This isn’t an accident, he is smart.

Do you mean how bony he is? If so, then... Nothing happened to him, really. His lusus is a seahorse. They're just built like that. Here's an example, since apparently a lot of people don't actually know that seahorses are basically just skin and bone.

Ehh... That's hard to quantify on a numerical scale. I'd generally argue that they're substantially better/more tolerable, due to the fact that they don't have a billion years worth of postmortem brain rot, and aren't written by Hussie at a mental nadir. Some of their actions are worse, though, comparatively speaking, though they may be easier to stomach considering it won't be an incessant bullet hell-esque barrage as it is in canon. I say this with (somewhat unrecommended) love- we see the Alpha Trolls in such extremes because they had little to no screentime, and Hussie tends to introduce characters in exaggerated forms.

I can work with the Cronus example here. One could argue that Cronus is easier to stomach in Sovereignstuck than he is in canon, due to the facts that:

He's given significantly more screentime, which means more buffers between distasteful actions and more characterization, and...

He's smarter about how he goes about being, as Hussie puts it, The Worst, and is a lot more underhanded about it because he knows he won't get away with doing things full force and in public. His behavior in canon is brazen, unapologetic, and unhinged, and while he still has sprinklings of that in his character, it's nowhere near to the same extent- there's no reason why he would be as immediately severe as he is in canon.

We go all in on the mythological parallels. I find that oftentimes, when people have symbolism or parallels to chew on, things get a little easier to stomach. The ability to analyze why and how a character is the way they are, and why they're written the way they are really works wonders for the ability to withstand the things on screen. It stops being abuse porn, and starts being genuine story with some real drive behind it. Needless suffering is always hard to digest... But suffering with intention? That becomes intrigue. That is called conflict.

You could also argue that he's harder to stomach, because...

He's given significantly more screentime, which means more time to let the genuine gravity of his presence and actions sink in, and...

He's smarter about how he goes about being The Worst. For a lot of people, the ability to be conniving- or even just plain old stealthy- makes things scarier and more indefensible. It speaks to intention, and to knowing that the actions committed are wrong- or at least worthy of hiding. This is notably a canon feature- Cronus of Homestuck proper knows what he is doing, he knows it is wrong, and he does it anyways. We decided to keep this trait, because it is a remarkably unusual one for a person to have. And...

We go all in on the mythological parallels. If you're aware of the concept of Mituna's Myth of Cassandra and the role Cronus plays in it, you know what that means. We happen to handle it significantly more directly and with significantly more tact. Handling that kind of topic with care means stripping it of any levity. We also delve into how he ties into his namesake, because absolutely nobody else is doing that, and it makes me so angry. The missed potential... That's a rant for another day, though.

Yes, these are copy pasted on purpose. It really depends on your own personal perspective. It's a double edged sword in that way.

We try not to make him totally miserable to read, and especially not miserable to write- that would be self defeating. He serves more as a case study in the effects of extreme entitlement and toxic masculinity commingling, than Hussie's approach of... Creating a psyop, essentially. He's still going to provide ample discomfort no matter what. That's just the kind of conflict he brings to the story, mechanically speaking- there's no way to avoid that. Avoiding it would be cowardice.

Cronus canonically identifies as humankin purely for the sake of attention, which is very much so in line with his character. With that in mind, I would not count it as representation. It reads less as an attempt at representing a group, and more like a method of showing how Cronus will falsely adopt forms of Minority Identity, despite his own flagrant hatred of them, purely because he thinks it’ll get him Pity Points and Pussy.

Personally, my theory is that he saw that Horuss, a therian, had a romantic partner while he did not, and thought that maybe adopting a similar identity would work. I think the concept of him adopting fragments of other, allegedly happier people’s legitimate identities as a method of gaining the attention he believes he deserves would speak volumes to his psyche, and is something worth potentially exploring. It’s simultaneously pitiable and unpitiable behavior.

As far as Sovereignstuck goes, Cronus hasn’t quite reached that stage yet. His false Humankin identity was, in Homestuck, actually a very recent thing. He seems to be rapidly shifting from attention-seeking method to attention-seeking method. Sometimes it’s new identities, sometimes it’s faking or threatening suicide, sometimes it’s simply taking the attention for himself. His identification of being Humankin just happened to be what method he was on when we got to see him in action.

Thank you very much, I’m glad you enjoyed the essay! And don’t worry! There’s no connection between Ajax Barrett and Mituna’s status of being a Cassandra parallel!! See, there’s actually two men named Ajax in Greek mythology- Ajax the Great, and Ajax the Lesser.

Cronus Ampora, in relation to Mituna’s myth of Cassandra, is simultaneously playing the role of Apollo, by most likely being the person who destroyed people’s belief in Mituna in the first place, and Ajax the Lesser specifically, for, well… You know what Ajax the Lesser’s relevance to Cassandra’s story is.

His.* There is no "her" in this equation.

Elaborating further is entering spoiler territory, since we delve into their dynamic quite a bit... But what I can say is that he's still a pretty meek person, in his own regard. Though he's known for being loud, abrasive, and at times overly defensive/aggressive in response to oftentimes seemingly innocuous things, these traits don't typically extend to things that are legitimately hurting him. He has an awful habit of just taking things sitting down... Especially if he's scared of you. It sucks. Fear in particular is a great way of forcing him into a form of submission- he finds articulating and defending himself much more difficult when under stress. There are severe limits to his capabilities in that department. It's a trauma response. You know how it is. This is taken advantage of, unfortunately.

Yeah, totally get that. People who hate Cronus but are ultimately invested in his real actual canon character are welcome here. Hence why in a recent post, I did mention that you can like Cronus, you just have to acknowledge the fact that he’s awful and not, as you said, make an OC and put them in Cronus’s skin, for whatever reason. Apologists get blocked on sight. “Simps” also get blocked on sight. I’ve had far too many negative experiences with Cronus Enjoyers to not have severe, severe trust issues with regards to his character.

Hating Cronus is the correct response to his character. That was entirely the intention of his character. You are supposed to hate him, and Hussie honestly did a very good job of making a character who is genuinely evil without making it offensive. I’ve noticed a lot of writers will default onto stereotypical minority traits to show how much of a villain a character is- but Cronus is the opposite of this. He’s as hateable as he is because he does nothing but punch down and act like the victim of an oppressive system he’s actively upholding and benefitting from, and wants said system to be even more oppressive.

I suppose I could also be considered somewhat of an “anti-fan” of his character- I’m incredibly passionate about the idea of portraying him accurately, and I’m actually by choice one of the writers for his character in Sovereignstuck. I’m very much so passionate about Cronus’s character. It just so happens that that passion goes hand in hand with unending rage. Lol.

That said, Sov!Cronus is decently similar to canon Cronus. He’s still a vile person. In some ways, he’s even worse, but not in a way that breaks character. The framework for his behavior canonically started when he was incredibly young, and the reason why he’s as terrible as he is is because he had his hopes of being a prophetic Hero of Hope shattered. He’s jaded, bitter, and violently entitled, and he’s making it everyone else’s problem.

A key difference is that, in contrast to Cronus canonically having a millennia to “get over” the emotional injury of not being a prophetic hero, he’s only had one year to do so in Sovereignstuck. Which means he isn’t over it at all. It’s an incredibly fresh wound, and he’s still actively very upset about it. The fact that one of our key players is a Rogue of Hope- who is the prophetic Hero of Hope- does not at all bode well for his mental state. His rudimentary understanding of what classpects actually mean is not helping.

On top of that, he’s much more afraid of getting caught and revealed as the person he is, because getting suddenly hit with that information will absolutely lead to total rejection, which is his worst fear. There’s nothing he hates more than rejection. Due to this, he tends to put up more of a façade around the new guys. He’s not an idiot in that regard- he knows you have to start small and work your way up.

A big reason why he was able to get so far in the first place was because his biggest target, Mituna, is a Cassandra parallel- in which Cronus is the Apollo of that equation, as well as Ajax the Lesser. If you know, you know. The Cassandra effect has not had any time to set into the Player session- and actually won’t really set in at all. It’s very frustrating for him.