Is Kanaya (Mostly) Useless?

[Sahxyel]

I'm afraid I'll get lynched for this but it's a genuine question I want to field so here I go.

Outside of making the Genesis Frog is there any successful significant thing that Kanaya does in Homestuck that nobody else could have done? It feels like she's outstandingly erroneous, especially after Murderstuck, and I've joked several times that if she stayed dead nothing would really change. She wasn't even necessary to establish trollkind with the Epilogues, they made due with the ectobiology machines for presumably thousands of years, and Roxy made the Matriorb anyway.

[Daz]

To be fair, she's one of the three(?) trolls who made it to the end who isn't god tier, so there's the obvious gap in powerlevel and she still did more than Karkat.

[sigmatic]

I mean, someone else could've stopped/killed Eridan too but Kanaya is the one who ended up stopping his rampage during Murderstuck (aside from the question if killing him was a good idea or not). Does it really matter if someone else could've done the actions she did?

[Generalrabogolfo]

yeah, yeah I think she mostly is.

[bathtimebird]

Yeah she's pretty useless. All she did was rip Eri in half and kick Gamzee in the balls.

[Sahxyel]

To be fair, she's one of the three(?) trolls who made it to the end who isn't god tier, so there's the obvious gap in powerlevel and she still did more than Karkat.

You're right that Karkat is pretty useless as well, out of the three that make it through the door only Terezi does anything incredibly meaningful and it's her GO self that was the one to do it.

I mean, someone else could've stopped/killed Eridan too but Kanaya is the one who ended up stopping his rampage during Murderstuck (aside from the question if killing him was a good idea or not). Does it really matter if someone else could've done the actions she did?

I think it does to a degree. 'Things Only Kanaya Can Do' pop up and we get a gander at it. She's in a relationship with Rose who is spiraling after Cascade into a drunken stupor. The fate of her species propagation rests with her and ended up with a destroyed Matriorb ironically created by her own hand passing Eridan a presumably fake wand. She does a very big moment by crashing the x3 combo with killing Eridan as well as incapacitating Gamzee and Vriska and proves her martial superiority in a fight.

But we're talking the x3 showdown here with one of the combatants being Gamzee the Broken as Fuck. Vriska and Gamzee are potentially the two strongest of the trolls and were even noted to lay both the final fatal blow and the most grievous blow on their Black King. Eridan's claim to fame is still only overpowering Sollux's eye beams and killing Feferi with his wand! It's pretty unbelievable that Eridan would have survived this showdown regardless of Kanaya's intervention, and Gamzee definitely would have lived because it's Gamzee. Jury's out on how Vriska would have fared I suppose, but I don't think that was a moment Only Kanaya Could Do honestly. Kanaya really has no other moment where her being herself does any favors, as the moment where she cuts Gamzee in half during GO is interrupted by her getting incinerated and then never seen again along with GO Karkat.

Kanaya has really no effect on Rose's stability solo and GO attests to that, it's only when Vriska is around that Rose and her just 'work out' and she's not a drunk useless sack in the new timeline. Her whole thing about ensuring the future of her species is bunk because the big joke is she never really was important for any of it at all. She doesn't even give Roxy a speech or plea convincing her to let her species continue to live despite Roxy being the victim of a troll genociding her people. She ostensibly shouldn't have much of an inkling to just let these murderous aliens propagate without a good reason. But it all works out, so yay I guess?

I'm not saying this to be mean, I really loved Early Kanaya and her moment in Murderstuck was incredibly badass. I just wish it felt like there was more of a reason for her to keep around because it doesn't feel like she really matters as a person or the feats she does, only who she has a romantic entanglement with.

[Generalrabogolfo]

could we say that Kanaya's important role is to make Roxy actually retrieve the matriorb and therefore help her develop her powers? Thats all I can think of right now.

[Sahxyel]

could we say that Kanaya's important role is to make Roxy actually retrieve the matriorb and therefore help her develop her powers? Thats all I can think of right now.

I know that Roxy learned finesse with her powers by focusing on the Matriorb but I thought she did that of her own accord to prove she could do it and not specifically because of Kanaya herself? I'll be honest I'm a bit fuzzy about finer details of A6 though so I could be diddly darn wrong here and Kanaya did do something Very Important that I very uncoolly forgot.

[Generalrabogolfo]

I dont remember it well enough but I think she decided to start to try again after meeting kanaya? I remember she gave up for a while there so...

[rookie1978]

Yeah she's pretty useless. All she did was rip Eri in half and kick Gamzee in the balls.

Thats more than a majority of the trolls accomplished, to be fair

[calamityCons]

I genuinely believe that Kanaya is the most boring and superfluous character that, unlike many of the other trolls (who had excellent opportunity to be stabilizing elements or have an interesting and engaging character arc), was never interesting to begin with and no amount of fancy vampire powers or TOLD narrative importance will change the fact that she’s just a normal, soft-spoken young woman without a particularly engaging trait to hang on to. She’s very much a Basic person, not stupid or slow, but generic. There is nothing about her that is particularly cute or funny or fun to analyze. She is flat as a piece of cardboard and I don’t like her very much.

[Darth_Energon]

I genuinely believe that Kanaya is the most boring and superfluous character that, unlike many of the other trolls (who had excellent opportunity to be stabilizing elements or have an interesting and engaging character arc), was never interesting to begin with and no amount of fancy vampire powers or TOLD narrative importance will change the fact that she’s just a normal, soft-spoken young woman without a particularly engaging trait to hang on to. She’s very much a Basic person, not stupid or slow, but generic. There is nothing about her that is particularly cute or funny or fun to analyze. She is flat as a piece of cardboard and I don’t like her very much.

I agree, she's always felt very "plot device" to me

[seerofheart]

I know you said "apart from the Genesis Frog" but...that's a pretty big deal? Without Kanaya, Earth C wouldn't exist. She's the only space player who isn't evil/asleep/dead at the end of Act 6, and therefore the only one who can commune with Echidna and have the frog released into Skaia. Without her, they wouldn't have won. The plot could be contrived to have Jade somehow be awake and not susceptible to the Condesce or for Callie to come back early and do it instead (which would actually be kind of interesting, since Callie is effectively the most useless character after her death and she knows it. At least Kanaya created Universe B! Callie didn't do shit except prepare the Alphas for the game.)

But it didn't. Kanaya was around, and she did a thing. She allowed for the creation of two universes.

And ignoring that, she's a great character. She's snarky, she's amusing, she and Rose have the healthiest relationship in the comic (which isn't saying much,) and she's a good friend. It would have been cool for her to use some of her Space Fraymotifs against the Condesce instead of just being dead weight, though.

[Drinosi]

She does have some importance, but yeah, I think she is mostly useless. Many other characters had a lot more usefulness to them and a more defined plot. She started off pretty cool, but then she sort of fizzled out. Whereas several other characters got stronger as time went on. Despite the fact that she made it to the end where others failed to do so, I think that's kind of because she got swept along and never really made any big and bold moves. Many of the characters that fell along the way, did so due to making big moves that inevitably got them killed. Of course some were in the wrong place at the wrong time (Nepeta), but characters like Vriska went all out and even Tavros, who I never cared a whole lot about did more than Kanaya did.

[Robot_Face]

She does play another major role - she ties the troll session together. As the only one who's friends with all eleven others to start with, she's how the other trolls all know each other.
Personally, I like her character. I don't think she's bland at all, and her interactions with Rose especially let her shine. I genuinely don't see how you all think she's boring, but to each their own I guess (shrug)

[calamityCons]

It's totally fair to have different takes on the same character. Different kinds of characters appeal to different people, and for me I suppose she just wasn't as engaging to read as other characters were.

[dualfallen]

I've always been upset that out of the few trolls who stayed relevant past Act 5, Kanaya was one of them. We could've had Feferi, or Nepeta, or Eridan be important but no that honor was given to Kanaya. She was never that spectacular and somehow managed to become even more useless after she became domesticated with Rose.
I previously had hopes that maybe Pesterquest would MAYBE give her an opportunity to shine but NOPE, it was just more relationship drama but this time with Vriska. She was never important, was never interesting, and yet became unjustifiably important.

[livingNingyo]

Not sure how would Eridan live long enough after destroying the Matriorb, besides him being mind controlled by Vriska in that Vriskagram thing.

Unless like maybe one of the Alpha Kids like Roxy hears that someone had destroyed the matriorb, found out it was Eridan, think of him like some hero because he could 'un'intentionally save Earth from being run by his awful alien race.

Or there is an in-war with the group that would be like, "Yeah, our race is kind of shit. Maybe we should not repopulate our species without certain regulations..."

Sad I wish Kanaya had done more. Even with just killing Gamzee, but Karkat said no and she shrugs and goes with Rose for the rest of the time.

[bakedpotatocat]

I think the main thing is that most of Kanaya's most important moments, along with a decent number of Karkat's, happen off-screen.

The two of them are the pair mostly responsible for everything that went right in the troll session, and are responsible for creating the universe that our true 'main characters' (the kids) inhabit.

Kanaya's narrative role is I think very much informed by the character in Problem Sleuth with the same weapon, the Hysterical Dame; a parallel counterpart to the main heroes who appears midway through the story and who is integral to the main character's success, but by working in her own subplot that ends itself in order to further the main character's story.

Kanaya is the mother of universes, and like most of the trolls aside from Vriska and Terezi, her most important moments happen off-screen or serve as thematic resonance for the rest of the comic.

Kanaya serves as an early representation of both positive queerness and feminine rage within Homestuck and while she may not be plot-important she is very important to a lot of the later themes of the comic.

Lastly, Kanaya is close to alt!Calliope in terms of how her mythological role acts within Homestuck; as a passive Space player, she sits in the background, waiting for her moment and striking decisively when needed.

[thorondraco]

Part of Kanaya's issue is that the narrative kinda pulled her away from developing her Sylph of Space powers. She should be, like, a crazy powreful healer but they had to fail to be their best in order for the whole timeline shit to work.

If she had gained her powers, i don't think there would be any casualties. She could have saved Feferi, equis, and Nepeta. So obviously she needed to not develop her sylph powers at all in order to keep her from saving them.