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bramblepatch) wrote2019-01-03 04:24 pm
bramblepatch) wrote2019-01-03 04:24 pm
Snowflake Challenge: #3 - Favorite Canon
Geez ok I'm bad at playing favorites. But in terms of recent canon - and relevant to some of my recent fanwork - I'm gonna highlight Chahut's route from the Hiveswap Friendsim.
(Warning for blood, graphic violence, drug use, religious imagery, clowns, some mild suggestive language. One of the bad ends results in the violent ritual death of the player character.)
Alternia's circus religion has been one of my favorite bits of canon to play with for a long time - it's mostly hinted at in Homestuck, where the main clown we see is Gamzee, an isolated and neglected kid with drug problems, and then the world ends. I've spent quite a bit of time and effort spinning headcanons about it - my biggest, longest-running fanwork is a novel-length WIP which is, among other things, an extended character study of Gamzee - and honestly I've got enough ego wrapped up in that that I was a little nervous when I saw how many clowns there were in the friendsim lineup.
Chahut's route pretty much put those concerns to rest. There's some details that don't match up with my assumptions, but nothing so glaring that I can't handwave it as being of a slightly different time period and setting from what I've been playing with. Before I watched the Friendsim LPs, someone described Clown Church as portrayed in Friendsim to me as a "faygo bacchanalia," and while I see where they were coming from... that's not quite it. Chahut's last name of Maenad certainly invites the bacchanal comparison, but what we're actually shown is very much along the lines of revival camp meeting.
And I love Chahut herself - she's huge and dangerous and literally walking around spattered in blood, she's used to being an authority both among others of her faith and the general populace, and she's genuinely caring and affectionate in a way that somehow does not in any way negate how frightening she is. And on the other hand, she's got an uncertainty and vulnerability that hooked me. She's facing entrance into adult society in the very near future, and she's worried about what she's heard about the state of the church among adults. Among the adolescents that make up her current community, she's very much a church leader, but she seems less worried about losing her ability to call the shots and more worried that there won't be religious authorities who are able or inclined to give her the support she needs to continue to grow in her faith.
(And yes, Miracle Child readers, Chahut Maenad is the Chaplain Wildvine who showed up in the most recent chapter.)
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