A shrine dedicated to Gamzee Makara

An HTML Practice Project :o)

Gamzee Makara is a fictional character from the webcomic Homestuck, written by Andrew Hussie.

(Due to the death of Adobe Flash, the original iteration of the comic has become essentially unreadable--the best way to access the comic as it was intended is through the Unofficial Homestuck Collection. This collection also has many useful extras like information on all of the official music of Homestuck, toggable mods, the semi-canonical comic collection Paradox Space, and tons more. Runs entirely offline once downloaded. Well worth it, in my opinion!)

Why do I care about Gamzee?

I've always had a tendency to attach myself to characters that you're told NOT to feel sympathy for--which often includes villians and antagonists. Generally, in that case, I have no issue acknowledging them for villains, but in Gamzee's case I go full "apologist mode". Gamzee was right to kill his friends and I'm only half joking. He plays the role of a villain in the latter half of Homestuck but he is still just playing a role.

Gamzee is a puppet on the stage of Homestuck, a character driven to serve the narrative more blatantly than any other. When something nonsensical needs to happen to move the plot forward, he's there. He adopts and drops behaviors and dynamics easily to serve the narrative needs. He is essentially a commedia dell'arte stock character and, however facetiously meant at the time, is indeed the most important character in Homestuck. Despite this, he is not given the screentime nor dialogue a character of that importance is typically owed (here's a fun interactive graph made by fennric on the relative word count of dialogue in Homestuck; Gamzee ranked in below Rufioh).

He is aware of the fourth wall, he is aware of the timelines, and he's locked into a tragedy so bleak that it becomes comedic when it isn't busy being so fucking sad.

He is my darling, my meow meow, my cinnamon apple--my silly rabbit, even. He's earnest, whimsical, longs for family and friendship, gets scared by the squeaking of his own bike horns, and has depths of rage and darkness I'd love to see explored with further care and nuance than 'he's evil because [he's a gay, black, schizophrenic] clown'.

His character has a huge amount of wasted potential. Fandom, to me, is all about playing with wasted potential and exploring what canon couldn't--or wouldn't.

So, who is Gamzee Makara?

A highly controversial character, Gamzee is the source of much contention both within the fandom and within the text itself. He inspires a lot of mixed feelings, even among his fans, due in part to the racial coding of his character (which is further influenced by Hussie's history of anti-black racist imagery in both Homestuck and pre-Homestuck works), his narrative turnabout in 'Murderstuck' and beyond, handling of his canonical drug addiction, derisive author's notes, and ultimate fridging at the hands of other notable discourse powerhouse character, Vriska.

I could continue on into how his character is handled within the quote unquote Dubiously Canon epilogues and Homestuck^2 but I 1) have not read them and 2) will cling to the 'dubious' label of their canocity as long as I can and don't really want to acknowledge them.

If you'd prefer a video essay on What Makes A Character A Gamzee, follow this link to one made by Blend it Media. I'm not affiliated with them I just like the video and think it breaks down his character nicely. I'm also not a video essay type (no judgement on enjoying them. I'm just a freak about mouth sounds), so if you're equally not, rest assured it is a short fifteen minutes and has a transcript linked in the video description.

If you want a more in-depth write up of Gamzee made by myself, read on...

[Decided to hide this WIP until I'm happier with where it stands!]

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