Eridan Ampora

[Sahxyel]

My b, Sahxyel. It's all kind of a blur for me.

I do still like his character a lot.

It's all good SD, it gave me an opportunity to whip out [s] Kanaya: Return to the Core lore which lets me drop an E D U C A T E

Please be mindful that while I defend Eridan a lot him killing Feferi was still Bad with a capital B, the same with Kanaya and the Matriorb. He was punished appropriately for what he did, and I have eh...SOME gratification of his offered apology to Fefetasprite as Erisolsprite in A6. It's about as much closure as you really can hope for and at least it wasn't as much of a mega joke that ARquius and Davepeta were later on for their reconciliation.

[sacreligiousDelphi]

Totally. I think I came off as a little sarcastic when I didn't mean to be—I do find Eridan's hopelessness during Return to the Core very compelling, He's just a scared little boy.

[seerofheart]

I generally accept that Eridan killed Feferi and attempted to kill Sollux in self-defense given that they attacked him first. (They may have seen it as self-defense themselves trying to stop Eridan from bringing Jack to them.) It was all a stir-crazy, terrifying event committed by scared children raised by a society spurred on by an omniscient, omnicidal madman.

The one action Eridan commits that I think is the least forgivable is his destruction of the Matriorb and his killing Kanaya. He didn't have to do that. Kanaya had always been a very patient and caring friend to Eridan through his hardest times, and even gave him his damn magic wand in the first place! It's telling that Eridan is forgiven to some extent by Feferi and Sollux (Erisol, the Erisol apology, Terezi: Remember where they're seen together with Aradia) but Kanaya murders Eridan and never forgives him.

Which is a completely fair decision on her part if you ask me.

I love the stupid fish boy so much, he's a child and he grew up on a savage planet but he Definitely Did Wrong Things!!!

[calamityCons]

I honestly think the plot just took Eridan’s hands and made him destroy the matriorb out of nowhere, but outside of that Eridan is probably the most compellingly written and accurate portrayal of a teenage boy with superpowers that I could ever hope to read, you know?

[Nep]

Somehow it seems both princes, Dirk and Eridan, seem to be endearing to me in a way and they both have tried to help their peeps in a way. But they also both have done their fair share of shitty things.

Also I wonder if Hope did kind of affect him like how it happened to Jake when he was shouting those expressions during his hope powered rampage. Like if he was on some kind of autopilot and his mind wasn't in clear conscience.

[Sahxyel]

Somehow it seems both princes, Dirk and Eridan, seem to be endearing to me in a way and they both have tried to help their peeps in a way. But they also both have done their fair share of shitty things.

Princes are wonderfully layered characters and not really as simple as they're made out to be. They're assholes and socially kind of fucked due to their own personal issues which makes their friendships suffer or die, but they personally don't WANT that. They don't want to be alone, they don't want everyone to hate them (in Eridan's case platonically, I'm very sure he'd have flourished if someone hated him in a way he wanted), but somehow that ends up happening because of fundamental personality issues they can't overcome, they can only try to manage it and put forth an active effort in NOT being the shitty people they could be.

Dirk with his shards made it easier and easier to disassociate himself from the things that mattered to him, leaving responsibility to upkeep his friendships to a sociopathic computer version of himself that held a fucked up funhouse mirror to himself while he focused on The Big Picture. He still does this and you've probably noticed if you follow HS^2 that all his former friends are either left in ruins (Jane/Jake) or just simply left fucking behind (Roxy, Calliope), and that's ignoring his bro Dave Strider who laid out how much a shitbag he was at the end of Homestuck as Bro. Honestly I kind of wonder if that was some kind of affirmation point for him that he really COULDN'T be good or even try to be but that's something for a Dirk topic and this is Eri's time to shine.

Eridan meanwhile is the arbiter of his own despair. His hopes placed into Feferi build up a relationship in his head he covets so closely, he puts value into his business arrangement with Vriska, he makes himself BELIEVE in things that aren't actually real! Like having to kill his angels! He believes he has to do this shit and it's fucking wrong but he quite literally cannot stop himself! It makes him out to be an asshole who isn't really listening to anyone's advice, but I think maybe that's a Hope player thing where they're big dumbasses who do dumbass things since they embody the Shonen Anime Hero aspect. Yes, I am calling Eridan a big dumbass like how Jake is a big dumbass.

Also I wonder if Hope did kind of affect him like how it happened to Jake when he was shouting those expressions during his hope powered rampage. Like if he was on some kind of autopilot and his mind was in clear conscience.

I dunno if I'd absolve him of that but I do think SOMETHING happened in this panel here. The coloring is fairly reminiscent of Rose Grimdarking, a thing she does after discovering her Mother died and whatever 'truth' the Horrorterrors spoke to her corrupting her at the very same moment. The pitch rendering of Eridan doesn't disappear until after he's killed Feferi. Granted, Rose remained Grimdark until Bec Noir killed her, but Bec Noir was effectively a point of furious contention from Rose. Who knows if afterwards she would have started to calm down and looked normal again?

This same kind of color indicating a change of mentality happens with Jade much later on when she's Grimbarked, which is more or less the same concept of a character gripped in some kind of evil or negative mentality.

Edit time since I forgot one more thing: the saddest thing about Princes is they have to do or be their worst to have impact on the story and Become The Villain for Alpha Timeline (Canon) shit to work. I always wonder how fucking depressing it is for Dreambubble Eridans to know that fate drove him like a shiny car to kill Feferi and Kanaya as well as destroy the Matriorb and THAT is the timeline that is the 'Right' one. Maybe that's why Godtier dead Eridan accompanying the Godtier Feferi looks lowkey pissed when he's on screen.

[calamityCons]

Oh damn, if all Princes are fated to become villainous forces in their sessions for it to be the successful timeline (from the perspective of Sburb at least), this would feed so good into a narrative of Screw Destiny and kicking canon railroading in the nuts. Eridan has ssooo much potential sdfasdfadfs

[Prime]

Oh damn, if all Princes are fated to become villainous forces in their sessions for it to be the successful timeline (from the perspective of Sburb at least), this would feed so good into a narrative of Screw Destiny and kicking canon railroading in the nuts. Eridan has ssooo much potential sdfasdfadfs

Maybe not. Remember the alpha troll's session would have been successful if it wasn't ensnared in the plot of homestuck at large, a wheel within wheels. If Bec Noir hadn't happened and they got their reward, would Eridan have bickered and fought with Sollux and Feferi? Maybe. Maybe he wouldn't have taken it as far as he did in murderstuck. Maybe without the looming threat of Bec Noir, Eridan might have found some other reason to lose hope or destroy it.
Maybe he could have overcome his doucheness.
We just don't know.
But it would be a little counter productive of the will of skaia to make it so that one specific class will always become a villain for the sake of a narrative. It wants a frog to perpetuate it's existance after all.

[livingNingyo]

What about Kurloz, who is also the Prince of Rage?

[Sahxyel]

Maybe not. Remember the alpha troll's session would have been successful if it wasn't ensnared in the plot of homestuck at large, a wheel within wheels.

(...)

But it would be a little counter productive of the will of skaia to make it so that one specific class will always become a villain for the sake of a narrative. It wants a frog to perpetuate it's existance after all.

What about Kurloz, who is also the Prince of Rage?

We all know he hypnotizes Meulin and had something to do with Mituna becoming handicapped. But consider this: Heart players deal in matter of the souls, yes, but with Nepeta you can also see she threads relationships and keeps an eye on them. What is the thing that destroys the capability of the Beforus session? The dysfunction of the players and the really stupid romantic entanglements and drama. Now, who could benefit from this string of events, who has the power to manipulate someone without her knowledge to subtly use her classpect in a manner that toys and destroys what group unity there was?

Skaia works in mysterious ways and Karkat even points out that 'successful' sessions don't seem to choose the best for the individual but what's best for the session. It seems like a Prince class would be useful as a class to directly sabotage the players, much like Bards. Is it unfair? Extremely! These are still all kids, and for Princes like Dirk and Eridan you can see that maybe in some circumstance they could have been better people. But hey, Skaia willed Feferi to die and stay dead. Dirk meanwhile doesn't want to stop existing, this is an existential dread he's running from, and while Skaia may not be guiding him it's still the same kind of idea this looming terrible fate he feels he has to prevent, even if it means being the bad guy.

[Darth_Energon]

I just wanted to mention how I found it interesting that Eridan misunderstanding his title as "an authority on Hope" leads to him actually fulfilling his classpect description.

[VASKA]

I think Eridan's whole deal revolves around entitlement. I mean, he's at the top of the system, so he thinks he just deserves everything in the world, and he lashes out when he doesn't get it. His unhappiness stems from the fact that he doesn't have a romantic partner and he can't seem to understand why that's the case. He complains that no one visited him in the Land of Wrath and Angels, but he also didn't make any effort to go out and meet others. His whole deal is he thinks he deserves things for zero effort.

But if he could get over himself? I have no doubt Eridan could be a good person. He does care about others, he is capable of talking about his emotions, and he is generally capable. You can't even pin his badness on some innate trait of highbloods, because out of the murderous highbloods, Eridan is easily the most collected and stable when compared to Vriska and Gamzee.

[Leddy]

Right.

Eridan. He has always been my least favorite troll of the bunch, since Murderstuck, including Gamzee and Vriska. Frankly I despise his actions, his way of thinking, and his entitlted nature. He frankly gets too much slack from people. I realize and recognize he had things and expectations pushed on him due to society, and his age didn't help him think majorly clearly, but he did at least clearly make those thoughts and intentions his own with time. Had Feferi not been around he very well could've actually gone on a huge killing spree and no one would've stopped him, he's a Violet for god's sake he can do a lot of what he wants without reprecussion.

People say he's got a tough situation, what with having to feed Feferi's lusus, the only reason that's a tough situation to him is because it'd upset Feferi to not do it, the girl he's hoping to swoon in a red relationship. He accepts those genoicdal thoughts and makes them his own with time, even if they're pushed on him to begin with. I like to think of MSPAR in Friendship Simulator oddly enough. Doc Scratch provided them the groundwork to make friends, but they're the ones who actually were there and made choices that allowed them to become friends, I wouldn't say a lot of MSPAR's friendships were fake or not real, even if Scratch set him up with the perfect cards, and I think similar logic is applicable with Eridan if that makes sense. Compared to someone like Vriska, his situation is absurdly luxurious despite his actions being just as reprehensible if not worse in a lot of instances.

I don't think Eridan is totally evil or something, but he is far from redeemable in my eyes at the moment. I think it's especially Murderstuck that puts me off on the scale of disliking him so much. Not even think, I'm a hundred percent sure of it. Eridan's actions in Murderstuck are unredeemable. He intends to flee to Bec Noir's side because he's think they've lost hope, the villain trying to kill all of the trolls and all, he comes to Feferi as one last ditch, because he cares about her, again that not totally evil thing, and they react reasonably and want to stop him, because if he left for Bec than he'd more than likely be able to find the meteor and wreck the rest of the trolls. Feferi at least wasn't likely intending to full on kill him, but just stop him, I can't say the same for Sollux though. He in response KO's Sollux in a move that very well could've killed him, kills Feferi, and than turns around. Without actual provocation, Eridan willingly destroys the actual last hope for the trolls at the time, the Matriorb (In that instance, that was as bad as genocide of the entire troll race, as he eliminated any chance of their reproduction, which was as good as that). He willingly destroys the last hope, even though he's already said all hope was lost, and than kills Kanaya too for attacking him after killing the Matriorb.

Do I think Eridan is a victim of an unfortunate situation? Yes
Do I think Eridan is totally evil and there's no way he can be good? No
Do I think Eridan is responsible for his actions? Definitely

People say that Eridan's head was unclear, but I say the contrary, his head and actions were very clear and decided. He disregarded the hope because it wouldn't be easy, than actually killed that last bit of hope and likely intended to leave the Meteor and actually join Bec had Kanaya not sliced him in half for his actions. His head was clear enough to kill Feferi, someone he cared for, before she could knock him out to stop him. His head was clear enough to willingly destroy the actual last hope of the trolls.

I think he's an interesting character, but one that's too far gone down the hole of unredeemable for me at this point. I think that he got himself to where he ended up majorly by his own decisions and overbearing nature, and I haven't even mentioned the absolute entitlement he shows, and that he should be held accountable for his actions, which are some of the absolute worst pre-epilouge that aren't directly tied in to things like Lord English and Bec Noir.

[furrylatula]

realized something earlier today. has eridan ever done anything good in canon that wasnt motivated by selfishness of some sort?

he feeds feferi's lusus..............to keep up his flarp-exclusive relationship with vriska and prevent feferi from getting SUPER BITCHY about his "accidental" genocide

he thanks kanaya for creating his wand............and then deliberately kills her and destroys the matriorb with it

he gives jade the code for ahab's crosshairs...........to try and get revenge at rose for rejecting him by having jade duel her

like damn i always viewed the dude in a vaguely sympathetic light (hey man its hard being a shitty 13 year old) but i genuinely cannot think of a single good selfless thing hes done? what a sad strange little man

[Sahxyel]

he thanks kanaya for creating his wand............and then deliberately kills her and destroys the matriorb with it

like damn i always viewed the dude in a vaguely sympathetic light (hey man its hard being a shitty 13 year old) but i genuinely cannot think of a single good selfless thing hes done? what a sad strange little man

Regarding the Kanaya bit, he does offer her a sincere thank you and she turns it on him by saying she was insincere and sarcastic, which is pretty shitty to do. He does brush it off after the fact but I feel that's worth mentioning, as well as Kanaya poised to attack even before Eridan destroyed the Matriorb, she literally only hesitated because of it and not because she was trying to de-escalate what was going on.

That said: depending on how you view his reaction to Gamzee brushing off Karkat's grief over Sollux dying it could be viewed selfless, because he was genuinely angry that Gamzee was going on about miracles and shit from his dumb clown religion when Karkat was mourning.

[furrylatula]

Regarding the Kanaya bit, he does offer her a sincere thank you and she turns it on him by saying she was insincere and sarcastic, which is pretty shitty to do. He does brush it off after the fact but I feel that's worth mentioning, as well as Kanaya poised to attack even before Eridan destroyed the Matriorb, she literally only hesitated because of it and not because she was trying to de-escalate what was going on.

hussie says that eridan already intended to destroy the matriorb when he had that conversation with kanaya:

Eridan was originally cast as someone dangerous and genocidal, but those qualities were never illustrated and became easily dismissed as a joke as his whole character seemed to revolve around failed romantic aspirations for so long. But they came back, reminding us they were driving forces behind his profile. (His name, caligulasAquarium, was also tied to his various romantic obsessions, particularly the need for a rival, which is bound to the caliginous quadrant, another word for dark.) 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.

That said: depending on how you view his reaction to Gamzee brushing off Karkat's grief over Sollux dying it could be viewed selfless, because he was genuinely angry that Gamzee was going on about miracles and shit from his dumb clown religion when Karkat was mourning.

i dunno looks to me more like hes just mad that karkat isnt there to babysit him over getting dumped. and even if it was sincere, i dont know if bitching someone out for giving bad advice counts as a good act

we got anything else? i am very much in favor of finding a single redeemable moment

[calamityCons]

He apologized to Fefetasprite as Erisolsprite, completely of his own volition and against the wishes of Sollux who wanted the conversation to stop entirely.

[Sahxyel]

Regarding the Kanaya bit, he does offer her a sincere thank you and she turns it on him by saying she was insincere and sarcastic, which is pretty shitty to do. He does brush it off after the fact but I feel that's worth mentioning, as well as Kanaya poised to attack even before Eridan destroyed the Matriorb, she literally only hesitated because of it and not because she was trying to de-escalate what was going on.

hussie says that eridan already intended to destroy the matriorb when he had that conversation with kanaya:

Eridan was originally cast as someone dangerous and genocidal, but those qualities were never illustrated and became easily dismissed as a joke as his whole character seemed to revolve around failed romantic aspirations for so long. But they came back, reminding us they were driving forces behind his profile. (His name, caligulasAquarium, was also tied to his various romantic obsessions, particularly the need for a rival, which is bound to the caliginous quadrant, another word for dark.) 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.

I think I'll respond to this quote with my own:

Gamzee is exposed in Murderstuck to be the recipient of a lack of faith in both his moirail and in his own method of religion which is really interesting, and then after he gets Cal and weird eye shit happens his individuality seems to vanish. I feel like after this point, when I read through, that he was possessed and even down the road I don't think I can believe that Gamzee prior to Murderstuck was entirely the edgy murder clown that he becomes, nor that he always was playing the people he knew and secretly planned this all while high as fuck to have everyone think he was harmless.

It just doesn't parse for me, the same as Hussie claiming that Eridan always intended to blow up the Matriorb. Claiming these however emboldens the argument that both characters are not particularly nuanced and are one-note bad guys which probably helps shut up arguments about how these characters are products of their situations and not inherently built to be evil. That would put them in the same zone as Vriska or the brainwashed Jane/Jade in A6 which I suppose is entirely unacceptable when we need the audience to hate them unconditionally like nastyboy Caliborn or Her Imperious Condescension.

Hussie says but there's a big difference between Show and Tell and frankly if he meant that he pulled it off very poorly. It still reads to me like a heat-of-the-moment move of spite on Eridan's part.

That said uhhh nope, can't think of anything that isn't really self interested on his part.

[furrylatula]

He apologized to Fefetasprite as Erisolsprite, completely of his own volition and against the wishes of Sollux who wanted the conversation to stop entirely.

EXCELLENT

possibly worth noting that erisolsprite's creation would have happened a few months after eridan's dreambubble date with cronus. maybe he took one good look at that trainwreck and went 'swweet goddamn wwhat havve i been doin my wwhole life'

[Notchine]

One of the best written characters introduced in act 5 imo. Also he has some real choice ass jewellery.