I’m very excited about this one! I’ve been excited for a week, this ask helped me finally work up the nerve to analyze Gamzee’s wand so I could get to yours in order. I love Karkat very much. I mean that in the least-hype, most gentle, “this character is close to my heart” way one can.

Karkat: holly and kneazle whisker, twelve inches, rigid.

There wasn’t any wood that struck me as perfect for Karkat, and I think he could have just as easily been chosen by a willow, pear, or hazel wand, maybe even red oak. But holly has two things: a protective tendency and ability to help people overcome “anger or impetuosity” (I tie those two together because Karkat’s anger is his Knight-ly way of protecting himself, and not a well-advised one), and an ability to choose those who are engaged in some kind of “dangerous and often spiritual quest.” Karkat has been a chosen one since the beginning, he’s the second signless, he pushed himself into leadership whether anyone wanted him there or not- but he’s not a “chosen one” character. He doesn’t really want to be, by the time Act 6 or so rolls around.

So this wand here isn’t drawn to him because he’s going to be some big action hero or do Generic Great Things. But Karkat is important, the next universe needs him, this universe needs him, and Echidna knows that, Kanaya knows that, this wand knows that. I feel a little bad for having given him kneazle whisker, because I was going to give him dragon heartstring, but his weapons are so shitty. His strifing is, just, so shitty. He’s not very strong. Kneazle whisker is relatively ineffective, not very popular as a wand core, and has that convenient little cat pun. I’m probably the only person who likes any of these facts. Ah well.

Dragon heartstring was a bad choice for him, anyway, flamboyant spells, loud and forceful power, but consider thunderbird tail feather if you prefer: unusual, difficult to master, can sense danger and cast protective spells on its own. There’s a persistent fanon that Karkat has some yet-to-be-uncovered powers either by virtue of his mutation or of his classpect, and I’m not totally sure I share that idea, but I kind of like it. Another alternative (because I’m terrible, and giving you several alternatives on this one) to head in that direction would be willow as his wand wood: drawn toward those who have the farthest to go and most to learn.

Twelve inches because he’s never going to be able to be unobtrusive or not loved (he has, just, so many more adoring fans on Earth C than he’s comfortable with, it feels weird, okay), rigid because. Uh. He’s really stubborn and will tell you to pull your head out of your ass and will usually be right.

Absolutely! I’ve only seen up through Season 4, with snippets of later seasons, so I’ll have to ask you to bear with me, but gosh I love Kai. I love Kai so much. He’s an important and good person.

Kai: ash and dragon heartstring, twelve inches, unyielding.

Kai’s wand doesn’t suit him, and it isn’t supposed to, but it looks an awful lot like it does. Dragon heartstring users are supposed to be quick learners, and Kai, as we all know, is not- the worst blacksmith in his family, the last to reach his True Potential. But Kai, like his wand core, is impatient and temperamental. In Seasons 1 and 2, he needs to be the best, and he needs that now.

Dragon heartstring wands are fiercely loyal, and Kai is the definition of fiercely loyal - Sensei said, Sensei said, this isn’t what Zane would want, you’re wrong about my parents, why should I give Garmadon a chance, Sensei said- He latches onto people hard. He holds grudges hard. His wand demands more of him - it suits his loyalty, and his temper, but needs him to be willing to learn and change with it if he ever wants to master it. Dragon heartstring wands are, incidentally, “wands with the most power, and which are capable of the most flamboyant spells,” and one would expect them to be the wand of the Green Ninja.

I will take this moment to address the blatant fire theme in “ash” and “dragon heartstring.”

“Rowan gossips, chestnut drones, ash is stubborn, hazel moans.” So they say, and stubbornness is absolutely at the core of Kai’s character. It helps and hurts him, it protects the people he loves, it means my sister cannot be gone, not again, and if I am not the Green Ninja then I am destined to protect him, and just keep going, just keep climbing, you’re going to make it to the battle, Lloyd, that’s all that matters. 

“Those witches and wizards best suited to ash wands are not, in [Ollivander’s] experience, lightly swayed from their beliefs or purposes. However, the brash or over-confident witch or wizard, who often insists on trying wands of this prestigious wood, will be disappointed by its effects. The ideal owner may be stubborn, and will certainly be courageous, but never crass or arrogant.” Initially, Kai’s stubbornness manifests as an individuality and an arrogance that absolutely doesn’t work for him. He grows. He’s driven by good, he’s got an incredible sense of righteousness, and he exists for his family, both by blood and found. When Kai is training to be the Green Ninja, he can’t do anything. When Kai is training to teach Lloyd, he becomes the ninja he was always supposed to be.

In the past when I’ve answered for Pearl’s wand (no passive-aggression intended! you and I both love her, I’m glad you asked 😊 ) I came up with:

Pearl: elm and unicorn hair, twelve inches, pleasantly springy.

It used to be believed that elm would only produce reliable magic for a pureblood. This isn’t true, and Pearl, probably a muggleborn, would quickly unlock its potential anyway, at which point elm wands can produce some of “the fewest accidents, the least foolish errors, and the most elegant charms and spells” - which her style would really only compound. Unicorn hair is fairly standard-issue, unexceptional, but it’s unclouded, loyal, and precise, and that’s enough. Twelve inches is pushing the longer end of standard wands, because she’s a little bit showy, and it’s pleasantly springy because her fighting style is incredibly flexible and she’s open enough to change to become a revolutionary. Pearl’s wand isn’t built for fighting, but she’s very closely in tune with it and produces some absolutely incredible spellwork; she’s probably an Auror.

Kankri: ebony and unicorn hair, thirteen inches, unyielding.

“Ebony is happiest in the hand of those with the courage to be themselves. Frequently non-conformist, highly individual or comfortable with the status of outsider, ebony wand owners have been found both among the ranks of the Order of the Phoenix and among the Death Eaters. In my experience the ebony wand’s perfect match is one who will hold fast to his or her beliefs, no matter what the external pressure, and will not be swayed lightly from their purpose.”

Unicorn hair produces consistent magic, and look, I know you don’t have to like Kankri, but you have to give him this: he is just absolutely, utterly unswayable. That’s the biggest theme here: unyielding.

(I considered dragon heartstring because of his canon outburst (I say, for lack of a less-disparaging word) when talking to Porrim and because of his temper and changeability from person to person in general, and it must have been worse when he was a kid, but I genuinely cannot make up my mind and can’t remember why I went with unicorn hair. In the spirit of not editing this post, I’m not changing it. But I am completely and utterly torn, because both say true things about him and both miss part of the picture - which is, like, normal, because a wand isn’t a total character analysis.)

He’s not just comfortable with the status of outsider, he is loud about it, and he believes his beliefs so hard he will tell you to your face “hey, you’re triggered right now” and you will go “?????? not really?? I’m reading a Harry Potter post that mildly interests me??” and he’ll go “see. totally triggered. we’re going to need to seriously re-examine this blog’s content” and then doxx me personally

That’s a joke. He doesn’t doxx people. He’ll just send me a very, very long series asks off anon.

[Images: asks from @witchofshade and @ilovebees420​, respectively. The first reads: “How bout Vriska?” The second reads: “if you’re still doing the wand asks, how about vriska??” End image description.]

I’m really excited about this one and at the same time, really daunted. Vriska’s a hard character for me to pin down.

Vriska: fir and Basilisk horn, 8 inches, slightly springy.

Eight inches is very short for a wand. Unfortunately, Vriska’s theme is so prevalent that it would be factually wrong to give her anything else. Should be 14 or 15 for her personality, but a wand under 9 inches can indicate something lacking in character, too, so maybe that’s okay.

Interestingly: “Salazar Slytherin owned a wand of his own making, made of snakewood and with a Basilisk horn core. The wand had the distinction of being able to 'sleep' when so instructed, an ability taught to it by Slytherin himself.” Basilisk horn is not a conventional wand core, and would not be given to a character who wasn’t influenced by clear outside circumstances like blatant author favoritism. Vriska is the most Slytherin Homestuck character.

Basilisk venom is a Horcrux destroyer; it can kill the unkillable.

This is the wand of someone who makes her own fate. Or who, perhaps, inherits it; someone who seeks a destiny that they shouldn’t and who is destined to succeed.

Fir demands focus, surety, and compete unwillingness to be swayed. Change is intolerable. Self-doubt is intolerable. This wand would exacerbate an already troubled Vriska, and push her the same way she tries to push Tavros and the rest of her team. It would be the kind of forceful, unwillingness to bend that makes it impossible for her to stop and consider others or question her methods until her death, and that means two things: 1) it takes until she is (Vriska) for her to learn emotional health and temperance, and 2) she will win.

Editing in 2022 to say this isn’t how I’d write this now, but I haven’t changed anything aside from a couple moments that felt absolutely necessary. Back to the post!

You should know, I have an exceptionally poor grasp on Gamzee’s character. For a long time I hated him, now my opinion is more sympathetic, but he’s still the least relatable character in the entire series to me - least relatable to me, specifically, that’s not a criticism.

I can do my best!

The disclaimer: people talk about “sober Gamzee” like it’s being sober that made him terrifying, and then the backlash is “no he needed to be sober and it was the cocktail of neglect, cult indoctrination, damage from having ingested sopor consistently for so long, and total lack of mental health support on Alternia that drove him to kill people” and personally, I think the latter is probably true. I don’t relate to him as a character, but just- before I go off saying “so remember how sober Gamzee is terrifying?” I want to clarify that that isn’t how I mean it.

No, we don’t know how long he was under Aranea’s control. This is, yet again, why Gamzee is so hard to analyze, but just…. trust me when I say I’m stepping around everything that I think falls to Aranea.

Gamzee: black walnut and kelpie hair, fifteen inches, flimsy

Black walnut sounds like an odd choice for Gamzee. I went with it because of this: “It has one pronounced quirk, which is that it is abnormally attuned to inner conflict, and loses power dramatically if its possessor practises any form of self-deception. If the witch or wizard is unable or unwilling to be honest with themselves or others, the wand often fails to perform adequately and must be matched with a new owner if it is to regain its former prowess.” Now, that sounds ridiculous for Gamzee, because he’s certainly not an enlightened, self-aware person. He spends most of his early character moments stoned, probably deliberately to drown out both an absent lusus and the untreated Undefined Purpleblood Mental Illness (yikes) and whatever discomfort it brings with it. 

But, but, the moment when Gamzee becomes terrifying is when he 1) goes off the sopor, and 2) makes what is at least to him a deep personal revelation (that they were always both me, and also motherfucking me). That’s…. actually, within the context of Gamzee’s religion, almost a moment of clarity, and within the context of SGRUB, close to accurate (as he’s actually going to raise Calliope and Caliborn, whom I’ve long presumed are his religion’s “messiahs”).  It’s after that moment and through his work with Caliborn that Gamzee becomes paradoxically unkillable, generally cagey, and actually a force to be reckoned with.

To him, after spending a long time generally disconnected from and not committed to anything, that moment manages to be his… clarity? What he perceives as purpose? And wrong or right, he stops deluding himself intentionally.

Remember that wands are separate from the character and, while they will provide insight, aren’t character analysis!

Now to the less-interesting stuff I’ve got lined up for Gamzee: Kelpie hair for an unabashed Goatdad reference. It’s not a particularly potent core and to be honest, aside from being unkillable, Gamzee never struck me as particularly powerful either (Equius could have killed him, his “rage” didn’t last long against Karkat’s Basic Thirteen-Year-Old Shooshing Ability).

@reallatula also requested both of these, so I’m tagging her here too!

As I said in that post, I’m gonna post the beta kids separately. Absolutely nothing personal if you see multiple wands in the same ask elsewhere, I promise, somehow with the beta kids it’s taking me much longer. I split them up at first because reallatula requested all four beta kids, but now I just also think it’ll be easier to post and more manageable to reblog that way!

Rose: hawthorn and thestral tail hair, nine and a half inches, startlingly flexible.

Rose ties herself up in some dark subjects, has an interest in the arcane, and seems the type to have a perverse sort of fascination with thestrals. She seems like the kind of person to have a perhaps unfortunate Simba-esque desire to see them, without really… thinking that through. But that’s a tangent!

Gregorovitch wrote that hawthorn makes for “a strange, contradictory wand, as full of paradoxes as the tree that gave it birth, whose leaves and blossoms heal, and yet whose cut branches smell of death.” They seek out witches and wizards in turmoil, people containing paradoxes. Hawthorn itself isn’t usually a bendy wood, so what’s with that? Is it rot, is it poorly-crafted, is it the same inexplicable magic I’ve been using to justify the rest of the wand flexibilities I’m assigning with little regard for the wood itself? Whatever it is, it matches Rose’s ability to be swayed toward darker things. It’s dangerous and unsteady, associated with both healing and curses, light and dark magic, and would draw Rose further away from the Light she struggles to embody. Her classpect is a challenge in one direction; her wand is a challenge in another, and a temptation.

Nine and a half inches because she’s got an incredibly big personality, but it’s subtle, she seems withdrawn and had a very inaccurate fanon for a while for a reason.

This one was a lot of fun! Fun fact: they’ve all got Ollivander-typical cores that you’d expect to see among students in the first few Harry Potter books. That’s in keeping with their role as the main cast, and maybe the most “plain” before Homestuck really started expanding.

John: dogwood and phoenix feather, twelve inches, swishy.

Dogwood wands are mischievous and playful, best suited to pranks and hijinks. I imagine one would fly off the shelf into the wandmaker’s face the moment John walked into the shop, and boost both their (the wand’s and John’s) gambits. They don’t wanna be bored! Use them for frivolous pranks and friendly surprises! Turn your friend’s shirt blue just ‘cause! Just keep them entertained and you’ll get along swimmingly :)

That said, dogwood wands are capable of some seriously powerful magic. “They have been known to perform outstanding spells under difficult conditions,” and are the perfect wand for a boy who needs to learn to do the windy thing in a day, or fix his universe with timey powers that were never supposed to be his and minimal instruction. Dogwood is the wand for the unwittingly powerful jokester, the goofy chosen one.

Phoenix feather is detached. That makes it Breath’s standard wand core, in my opinion, and is even more so called to someone who’s Unstuck, but that’s only part of it. John… develops a tendency toward self-isolation. It would be wrong not to acknowledge that. His wand doesn’t choose him for the notion that seven or so years down the line he’ll be depressed, that would be ridiculous, but he is destined to become an outsider. It sucks, sorry John. In the meantime, phoenix feather is also a bright and eager core and has what Ollivander calls “initiative” - strikingly similar to John’s powers and the way they move forward almost without him.

Swishy because wind!! Whoosh!! And because John has this incredible adaptability. He… he gets stuck in the past, now, and there are things holding him down, but geez, the boy just keeps going. Rose is talking eldrich gibberish and emitting strange black coils of smoke? Don’t worry Rose! We’ll fix it! His whole timeline implodes and Terezi dies in front of him? He becomes a part of the new one, and gosh darnit, it works.

Twelve inches because he’s def got a personality but he’s not obnoxious!

In the interest of fairness to other askers, these will be answered one at a time. Check the OP to see if there are links below; I’ll link the other posts once they’re completed.