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I think this is a kickass essay! I just wanted to address one point there re: Eridan planning to help Kanaya with the Matriorb after dealing with Jack. According to Hussie, Eridan specifically came into the lab with the intent to blow up the Matriorb. I'll just c+p part of the answer here in case OP finds it helpful (especially the last line):

Ultimately his dreams of genocide were realized by being the one to destroy the orb, which appeared to always be his intent for "helping her" with it, making his preceding conversation with Kanaya much more detestably villainous than it seemed. In doing so, he destroyed hope for the species. This is his final interpretation of his role as the Prince of Hope. Not as one who fights for hope, but destroys it. He's certainly the worst kind of bastard this story has to offer.

Hussie why. Oh my god Hussie why. Th-thank you for posting this, anon, I'll just be over here crying uncontrollably.

Fuck. I read your essay and was getting all kinds of hope back, that maybe peoples' depictions of Eridan would change. And then anon strolled in and showed us how Hussie, too, seeks to destroy our hope.

Can I join you in the crying corner?

Yes -- yes you may anon. I personally have a very sympathetic reconstruction of the events of Return to the Core as follows:

- Eridan wins his duel with Sollux with the help of his wand, and ends up KOing him. This is the first time he has ever used the weapon on another troll.
- Feferi, upon seeing Sollux unresponsive, leaps up with the intent to kill Eridan. (This is not interpretative. The spiky aura shown around her before she leaps with the culling fork in her hands is clear artistic code for murderous intent.)
- Eridan retaliates by doing the same thing he did to Sollux, but this time Feferi ends up dead. It is entirely plausible to read this as not his intended result. Doesn't KOing her and dragging her wit him to Noir make much more sense as a plan?
- Her falling on the horn pile causes a chorus of honks. It seems likely that Kanaya did not notice whatever was going on here until this time, as the next panel shows her looking over in shock.
- Kanaya is angered. At first it is only established that she and Eridan are going to fight.
- Then she looks down at the matriorb, then he follows her gaze, then he destroys it.
- It is this act that spurs Kanaya to murderous intent. She leaps at him with her chainsaw with the intent to kill him.
- As Vriska's dialog demonstrates, in troll society when someone, especially of lower blood, tries to kill you, fighting fire with fire is the only response. Eridan does this. He does not try to kill her until she tries to kill him.
- And then he absconds with the presumable motivation of finding Jack Noir to at least save himself.

Buuuuuut a lot of the more sympathetic aspects of that interpretation fall out of the bottom in light of that quote. (God damn, I would like a source. ;_;)

To be honest, though, I'd rather see people playing Eridan with that quote in mind than the quadrantsap we've come to know so well. At least he's genocidal.

Ah, I really should have included the source in my original comment. Sorry about that! It's right here, along with a lot of other very very useful information. And a lot of...well, Hussie being Hussie, hah. You're probably better off ctrl+f'ing a name for info rather than trying to read through the whole thing, because it is long as hell:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/40585720/Combined_Formspring_Web_Aug-28-2011.htm

I think you're projecting, because I have no idea where you got any of that, minus Feferi intending to kill Eridan. Even ignoring Hussie's quote, Eridan NEVER showed any sort of regret for what he did. Even if it was an accident, I doubt he cared that it went down the way it did.

P.S. you don't think Eridan murdering one of Kanaya's friends in cold blood and blinding another one spurred her to murderous intent?

Well, no, there's a very clear artistic code for murderous intent in that arc: The spiky aura. It's seen on Feferi right before she tries to kill Eridan. And then on Kanaya right before she tries to kill Eridan. (This line fell out of the bottom.) And then on Kanaya right before she does kill Eridan. And then on Terezi right before she backstabs Vriska. Look at Kanaya's expressions: Before she just shows confusion and anger. It is only the hopesplosion that gets her screaming with rage and leaping at him. I mean, maybe the previous incidents helped, but she's doing nothing but standing there glaring at him until the hopesplosion.

Also, Eridan never showed any feeling about what he did, good or bad. His Return to the Core conversations are the last we've heard from him. His omnipresent scowl is ambiguous; Vriska was unambiguously grinning when she killed Tavros and she's later shown to have regretted it, so I don't think that thinking Eridan might is implausible.

let's also consider that prior to the hopesplosion, she and eridan were locked in a stand-off

she clearly intended to take him down then, and when kanaya takes someone down for something like that it isn't accomplished in any kind of neat or non-violent fashion. she had armed herself already, if you recall.

the destruction of the matriorb simply pushed her further over the edge so she wasn't even thinking about her method of attack, just flying in a murderous rage unsuccessfully

I'm sorry, I know it's Word of God and everything, but I just have a very difficult time taking those words seriously when we see Eridan for MAYBE ten pages of the entire comic prior to Return to the Core. Of course, I'm a firm believer that no matter what the medium, if you want the fans of your work to feel a certain way, you need to actually entrench the reasons for it in the work.

For instance, Hussie is saying that Eridan is essentially irredeemable. The worst sort of villain. Okay, cool, but I only read the comic. I have no idea where that was posted. Ergo, when I formed my interpretation of Eridan's character, that never made it in. (And I refuse to retcon months of RP just because Hussie says different.) And if you're not the intense fan who reads every word ever written about Homestuck by Hussie, then you probably didn't know that either. Since the casual fan only has the comic to go off of, as well as their own inherent biases and life experiences to shape their interpretation of canon events, it is extremely easy to never reach the conclusion of "Eridan is the most despicable villain," based off of what is shown in canon.

For one, there is simply not a lot of info. Now, I can get why Hussie never devoted much time to him in canon. He's meant to be evil, there are a lot of characters already and many of them are meant to be far more likeable, etc. etc. However, if you're trying to convince me that a thirteen year old kid (whoops, there goes my biases!) is pretty much irredeemable when you're showing the mass-murdering, big bad god wolf Archagent of the kids' session as actually having the capability to care about Jade's well being? You're going to need to give me more than a few pesterlogs. Part of the issue is how theatrical Eridan's character is supposed to be. I would definitely find him more serious as a villain if he weren't so emotionally all over the place. Generally speaking, in real life, the people we have more sympathy towards for doing bad things are the ones who are emotional and have experienced recent upheaval in their lives like the loss of a romantic relationship or a house or job or something major like that. After all, don't we, in a way, feel bad for the people who lose their jobs in this economy, can't find a new one, and get to the point of feeling so much despair that they kill themselves and sometimes even their family? Sure, we think it's wrong that they killed other people, but at the same time we don't consider them irredeemably evil for it.

Now, what do we know, just from the comic, of Eridan's character? Honestly, instead of me typing out everything that Essay!Kanaya up there said, just scroll back up and reread it because they cover a lot of the points that I would be making here. The point they don't quite cover to my satisfaction is that Eridan is more than capable of reining in his genocide complex. Note how even he knows all he'd have to do to succeed in his genocidal goals is not feed Gl'bgolyb. So why doesn't he just do that? It has to be easier than doomsday devices that (he has to know) don't work (because he is commissioning his rival to get them). Oh, but it would upset Feferi if he did things that way. If genocide were his entire goal, I am fairly certain that he wouldn't be too terribly concerned about her feelings on the matter, considering they would interfere with his plans. In fact, if I were serious about genocide and in his position, you know what I would do? I would get Feferi's trust, then kill her and stop feeding Gl'bgolyb for a bit.

Understandably, that doesn't work for how the story needed to go. Unfortunately for Hussie's insistance that Eridan is the worst sort of villain, the fact that Eridan's narrative position would have made it extremely easy for him to fulfill his genocidal goals and yet he (meaning Eridan) found reason(s) not to? Makes it that much harder for the casual fan to believe that there is nothing redeemable about Eridan at all.

Never mind that, okay, Vriska is shown to not be wholly irredeemable. Of course, she also has a shitload of canon showing her personality, motivations, and so forth. It's shown that while she does do a lot of villainous acts, she does have a nicer side. What does this have to do with Eridan, you ask? A lot. Their actions have certainly been compared to one another before, and I know on previous anoncomm posts there has been the debate of why do people think Vriska is redeemable based on her actions, yet flip tables at the idea of Eridan being redeemable based on his, so I will not go into it again here.

Simply put, if both of them were to have the same amount of canon, it would go one of (many, narrowed down to) three ways (for sake of wrapping this up sometime before noon):
1./If Vriska were distilled down to Eridan's amount of canon, I doubt she would have as many fans, because she likely wouldn't be painted in the same light. After all, many of the aspects of hers that are important to the story aren't her nicest ones, so to have her fulfill the same role, you'd have to take out a lot of what paints her better side.
2./ Based on what Hussie says about Eridan: Bump Eridan's level of canon up to be the same as Vriska's, and we might actually see what's so despicable about him. For instance, he says Eridan meant to destroy the Matriorb and that was why he went up to the computer room? Cool. Have a scene showing that decision being made. (Admittedly, I think for this to be most believable, we would also need scenes showing why he ultimately did not do the logical genocide-y thing when even he is aware of what it is, etc. etc.)
3./ Based on what canon shows and my own inherent biases: Bump up Eridan's level of canon, and you'd probably end up with more of the same emotional theatrics, but it still wouldn't likely paint him as wholly irredeemable. Immature? Yes. Irrational? Hell yes. Stupid as fuck? Hell fucking yes. But still more of the thirteen year old kid who has made a lot of mistakes; some of them really big and really hard to forgive. Maybe still irredeemable depending how you look at it, but at least more sympathetic than just purely evil.

Having said all that, I dislike portrayals of Eridan where he is instantly redeemed, or a woobie. He's not a woobie. None of the trolls are woobies. Troll society would eat woobies for breakfast so stop woobifying the trolls. As far as players who have him suddenly apologetic and cognizant of his faults after being killed... also unlikely and something I find in poor taste. He's done a lot that is, at least by human standards, morally dubious at best. Consider the genocide complex and successful genocidal action and I have to question why anyone would have him insta-redeemed by virtue of being killed. Imagine any real life person who has succeeded in genocide, who has died/been killed, and is suddenly before you today saying they understand what they did wrong and is trying to be all nice and shit. If this is leaving you with a proverbial bad taste in your mouth... well, it should.

Never mind that it takes all the fun out of actually playing the redemption process. Now, I fully admit that when I play Eridan, I do pull him from an earlier canon point, because in general I'm rarely in a mood where I would find any enjoyment in playing him post hope-splosion. However, considering prior canon does still lead to that point, he still shouldn't be an instant good guy. He still has a lot of learning and growing to do if you want to play him as a good guy no matter what canon point you pick. It can be a tough balance, because I think if you're trying to redeem him you still need to keep the essence of who he is, and he is not a pleasant person by any stretch of the imagination.

Okay, I'm aware this was less a proper essay and more circuitous rambling, but I'm quite sick and perhaps slightly overdue for a bit of soup and a dose of medicine, so I'm going to leave this here.

You are a good anon and should feel good. Even if I'm kind of mad at you because after reading all this I want to pick up Eridan now. XP

Well, he can be an interesting character to play. You do have to put in a bit more work to make a believable interpretation, because there is not a lot of canon there, but it also means you have a bit more latitude with him from square one than with, say, John or Karkat. There are a lot of places you can go with his character no matter what canon point you choose and how you interpret canon. Really, in my opinion, the only portrayals I would go ¬_¬ at are: woobie and insta-redemption.

Ehem. Of course, I am always happy to enable. H8ers to the right.

I play Equius so I am cool on the little canon front, haha! And I've always side-eyed the woobification and the insta-redemption as well, but I've never really had any concrete understanding of him until this, and you helped me think of a lot of stuff regarding him. Anyway, I'd probably just dick around with him in memes and stuff since I can't join another game right now.

I'm glad I could be of help! I admit seeing some of the other responses below made me a bit nervous, because there are some vehement disagreements with my points, so... well, I'm happy someone got anything worthwhile from my rambling.

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This Essay!Anon is a wholly different person from Essay!Kan, for the record

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