The Mirthful Messiahs are figures featured in the religion of Gamzee Makara and Alternia's purple caste. They were recognized in prayers
, and foretold to “BRING THE HOLY RUCKUS” to a Dark Carnival in “a fuckin paradise to come”. Like the Dark Carnival and Paradise Planet they are associated with, the realness attribute of these Messiahs is questionable.
The Messiahs also seem to feature in some cherubim folklore, possibly having been introduced to Alternia by the influence of the cherub Lord English.
Identity[]
Owing to their dubious realness, the true identity - if any - of the Messiahs is disputed.
The ghostly image of the Insane Clown Posse during Gamzee's prayer suggests that the members of the rap duo may be the two Messiahs, a belief that Dave Strider seems to endorse, with the “rowdy and capricious minstrels” associated with them possibly being their juggalo following on Earth. The duo's establishment of a "Dark Carnival" in Washington D.C. in Earth's Alpha timeline lends some credence to this interpretation. Gamzee himself, however, after being faced with Dave's heresy, seems to come to the conclusion that the Messiahs were always both him and motherfucking him.
Andrew Hussie himself describes the identity of the Mirthful Messiahs as referring to “different "mirthful" pairs of people, depending on at what point in the story the idea is discussed”[1], “on context, and on whichever particular interpretation happens to be most convenient at any given moment, either to [Gamzee], or [himself]”.[2] Andrew also offers the possibility that Lord English and Doc Scratch are the true Mirthful Messiahs, and that in addition to being prophesied to appear in the future, English's time travel enabled him to retroactively influence the purple caste's religion into being more "mirthful".[3] Given the presence of Gamzee's soul inside Lil Cal, whose DNA makes up part of both Scratch and English, this interpretation lends credence to Gamzee's idea that he himself is both of the Messiahs; however, if it was indeed English who cultivated the clown cult in the first place, this is also a classic example of one of Homestuck's ideological bootstrap paradoxes.
Some baloneyscholars argued that the Mirthful Messiahs of cherub lore were in fact the vaudevillian comedy duo Abbott and Costello.
References[]
- ↑ Andrew Hussie. "The Ultimate Riddle is one of those things the exact definition of which is kind of a moving target throughout the story, due to its mysterious—you could say, riddle-like—nature. Kind of like the way the Mirthful Messiahs can refer to different "mirthful" pairs of people, depending on at what point in the story the idea is discussed." Homestuck: Book 3: Act 4, p.387.
- ↑ Andrew Hussie. "With all that talk of Gamzee in the previous note, there was no space to give a shout-out to how he kept talking about his horns earlier on in the story. Asking Karkat to give them a squeeze, how he scared himself with them... Before seeing him, we had no idea he was referring to literal clown horns. So that was a pretty good quick-setup-and-deliver gag. Just saying! If I don't honk my own fucking horn, who will? Also, the end of this conversation establishes that his whole juggalo shtick is a religious thing, which is a very important detail. He's not a juggalo just because I thought it would be funny (which is still a major factor, to be fair). He promulgates this nonsense as an expression of a certain profoundly idiotic piety to the Mirthful Messiahs, whose specific identities morph over the course of the story depending on context, and on whichever particular interpretation happens to be most convenient at any given moment, either to him, or me." Homestuck: Book 4: Act 5 Act 1, p.49.
- ↑ LE factoids (archive).