Tricky vs Gamzee (Madness Combat vs Homestuck) VS Prediction Blog

 

“I believe whatever doesn't kill you simply makes you... stranger.” - The Joker

Tricky the Clown, the psychotic undead jester from Nevada
Gamzee Makara, the purple blooded juggalo from Alternia 

While clowns are originally meant as merely a source of fun entertainment, many children have ended up frightened of them, which has naturally led to many stories of clowns with less than savory intentions. And no one knows unsavory like these two, as they love nothing more than committing as much violent carnage as possible, leaving many bodies in their wake. And even to the people who managed to fight back, they found that these clowns simply refused to stay dead, ensuring their endless cycles of madness would never end. But what happens when two immovable forces of chaos crash against each other? Will Tricky expunge this juggalo from reality for good, or will Gamzee send him straight to the Dark Carnival? 

Before We Begin

Right off the bat, content warning. Both of these guys are from series that are pretty bloody violent and tackle mature subject matter, so viewer discretion is advised. Also, both series do make plentiful use of flashing lights which will be shown in relevant gifs and clips, so if you’re particularly sensitive to that be careful. 

For this match, in order to get a complete view of both of their full potential, this will be discussing all official material for both characters. For Gamzee, this includes the original comic, Paradox Space, the Epilogues, and Beyond Canon, as well as the spin-off games Hiveswap, Friendsim, and Pesterquest. For Tricky, this includes the original animation series, the Incidents, and any other official animations done by Krinkels, along with the Project Nexus games and the FNF VS Tricky mod, as it had some direct involvement from Krinkels, with him even directly stating he considers it part of the canon and with their being nods to it within other official material. Both will also be given details from Word of God statements and other relevant side material, with the exception of crossovers that are more questionably canon, so there will be no funny business like the officially licensed Namco dating simulator made by Andrew Hussie which also features Homestuck characters (yes this is real). With all that out of the way, let's get into things. 

Also, be sure to check out Corps prediction Blogs’ own coverage of this match when it comes out if you’re interested in seeing another look at it.

Background

Tricky

“HE DOESN'T BELONG. BUT THEN AGAIN, NEITHER DO YOU. WE CAN SURVIVE TOGETHER. THINGS WILL BE DIFFERENT. JUST GET HIM OUT OF HERE. YOU CANNOT KILL CLOWN. THIS IS WHY. HE'S RUINING THIS PLACE LIKE HE RUINED NEVADA. JUST GET HIM OUT OF HERE. REMOVE HIM.”

Somewhere in Nevada, an endless cycle of madness had taken over everything. At the center of this combat was a man known as Hank J. Wimbleton, who had been performing a one man assault on the agency which had caused the world to end in such a place. He’d be assisted by others wishing to end it, and they’d tear a bloody path through Nevada on their journey against their enemies. But there was one foe who had been trying to kill Hank for reasons all his own, initially for the sake of revenge, but now to the point of pure bloodlust. This one clown was known as Tricky.

But he wasn’t always a violent murder clown. Originally known as Dr. Hofnarr, he was once a man who had been working with a mysterious organization known as the Nexus Core. He and some of his fellow scientists would end up rebelling against their organization after it came to light that their director intended to use their research to destroy the world. However ,while they did manage to stop his plot, the resulting release of Dissonance Energy caused a zombie apocalypse and transformed Hofnarr and his colleagues into monsters. Hofnarr would end up snapping from this and, Inspired by his love of entertainment shows, he would take a new name and go to work as a mercenary clown, during which he ended up having a fateful crossing of paths with a man named Hank.

Tricky would die from this battle, but he wouldn’t stay dead for long, quickly becoming a powerful enemy of Hank’s efforts thanks to his unrelenting persistence. This was even more so after he was given an improbability drive that allowed him to further deny death and make him even more powerful, making him a dangerous wild card to deal with to all the factions of Nevada. He was even able to hijack control of the Auditor, one of the Higher Powers, for a time, though this did end with Hank once again killing him. While this death has so far stuck, it’s hard to claim this clown is truly gone for good, as he’s shown many times that if he has anything to say about it, he will never die. As such, perhaps no other being in Nevada is a better representation of the pure unadulterated madness of combat than him. 

Gamzee

“I AM GOING TO MOTHERFUCKING KILL ALL YOU MOTHERFUCKERS. and paint the wicked pictures with your motherfuckin blood. FROM YOUR VEINS WILL DRIP MY MIRACLES. your crushed bones will make my special stardust. WELCOME TO THE DARK CARNIVAL, BROTHER. honk. HONK. honk. HOOOOOOOOOOONK.”

Welcome to the alien world of Alternia. Populated by the grey skinned trolls, this world is one of dark and brutal conditions, from both the brutal environment and animals, as well as the brutal blood color caste system everything runs on, which means simply surviving for long is a feat in and of itself. From this planet, 12 young members of it eventually ended up playing a mysterious game known as Sburb, which transported them into another reality to win the chance to create a new universe. These troll’s destinies were varied, as some became legendary warriors who helped create a new universe, while others were destined to die on the journey. But of them, one’s destiny instead seemed to be creating as much chaos and problems for the party, ultimately playing a part in the rise of the biggest villain in all of Paradox Space. This was the purple blooded troll of the group, a deadly clown by the name of Gamzee Makara.

While the purple bloods of Alternia are a brutal caste that regularly commits clown themed murder, originally Gamzee wasn’t too bad, just being a fairly passive guy who was content to eat sopor slime and be chill. But during the game of Sburb, something did seem to be building in him, an odd sort of Rage that led to him being inexplicably strong when pushed. But this would come to head when, after the end of their game was interrupted by a deadly being from the reality they were supposed to create, they ended up trapped in hiding on a meteor where they had to guide some humans in this dimension to try and solve these issues. While on the meteor, something changed in Gamzee after he ran out of his sopor. Whether it be recognising himself as a joke who was failing his bloodline, exposure to a cursed puppet, seeing the absolute terror represented by the Insane Clown Posse, or some combination of the above and other factors, he’d end up snapping. 

He’d be sent into a rage, killing several of his friends and turning the others into paranoid messes by preying on their fears. While he did seem to be placated after this, in reality he was working from the shadows to bring a rise to who he saw as his religion’s messiah, Lord English.. He’d later end up journeying to a doomed timeline where Caliborn, the person who would become Lord English, hailed from, and ended up assisting his rise to power, between creating the puppets that would hold his essence and corrupt the original human’s timeline, lead a rise to another deadly being in another timeline, and in the future, half his soul would end up trapped and transformed into eventually becoming Lord English. And even in alternate timelines, he still kept up his murder, bringing death and destruction even in worlds with no point to them. But no matter where he ended up, his madness would not cease. After all, you just can't keep down the clown. 

Intelligence & Skill

Tricky

Originally Dr. Hofnarr was a brilliant scientist, as he was able to create an engine that was able to contain the corruptive Dissonant Reality energy, and has been stated to be the smartest person in the Madness universe, with the one exception of the guy who made the machine that made the whole universe. How much of this still holds true for him after becoming the crazy clown we all know is hard to gauge, but we do know he is a very skilled fighter. He’s been able to keep up with and even kill Hank and Jebus, who are both skilled enough to casually take down armies of grunts without breaking a sweat, and he’s been able to take on 4 different groups of foes at once. He’s also shown the skill to use whatever he can get his hands on as a weapon, most notably with his most famous weapon of a stop sign.

Gamzee

Gamzee’s intellect is a bit hard to nail down, but he was able to survive on the death world of Alternia for most of his life, as well as surviving the deadly game of Sburb, though much of that was spent being passive and high. Once going murder mode, however, he was shown to be fairly deadly. He was able to kill Equius and Nepeta, the former being a genius smart enough to create multiple robots whom he regularly spars with, and the latter having grown up surviving alone in the woods for much of her life. He’s also been able to take on Terezi, who has also shown to be fairly skilled. Beyond that, he does have enough intelligence to go along with Caliborn’s complicated plan to become Lord English, though the plan didn’t require him to get into many fights.

Equipment

Tricky

Street Sign

Tricky’s main and most infamous weapon is this, which was initially used by Hank to impale him on, before trying to use it on Hank for what I assume is the sake of irony. He tends to use it to smack foes around, as well as impale on its pole. 

M16

Tricky was first seen wielding this machine gun, which was shown to have a single shot grenade launcher attachment. He was later seen wielding a similar gun in one of the Incidents.

M60

He was also seen wielding this larger machine gun. Yep that sure is a gun.

MP5

He was also shown to wield this smaller machine gun, which was used to make a birthday party their last birthday. Rude.

Sword

He was also seen wielding this, though he did get impaled before he had the chance to use it.

Hunting Machete

In this weird animation, Tricky used this blade to cut off Jebus’s jaw and slice up a random guy who he proceeded to, uh, eat the entrails of and then puke up his blood. He then used it to cut up Jeebus after he tried to vore him. Yeah I don’t know either.

Chainsaw

He was also seen using a chainsaw in the aforementioned animation to tear apart another random guy and then kill Jebus. 

Jetpack

He was also seen using this to fly around with. 

Mask

He also wears this, which can help protect his face from attacks.

Funhouse

In Project Nexus, he’s shown to have a fun arena to fight in. It’s equipped with a variety of fun obstacles including platforms that drop you into the void, flame jets, exploding gift boxes, barriers to hinder movement, electric towers, and a laser grid. He also can bring out various enemies to have fun with people caught in it, including exploding zombies, nurses equipped with needle guns, and larger guys who can toss people around. And he can even hop in for fun himself, with the arena’s funny traps still seemingly controlled by him. Book your trip today! 

Portable Improbability Drive

Used by many throughout Nevada, the Improbability Drives are devices which can harness Dissonance energy to manipulate the chances and probability of the universe to get desired results, which Tricky has a portable version of within his head. This and other devices like at are shown to have a variety of effects on the world, including breaking the laws of physics and gravity, making random stuff rain from the sky, turning the sun into a grunt, shifting around buildings, making a grunt bleed profusely, summoning buildings full of goons, destroying rooms, telekinetically lifting objects, reviving others, and transforming himself into a massive skeletal monster. And though it is a physical device which can temporarily depower Tricky in the case it’s destroyed, his body still contained all the energies from the drive, meaning he should potentially have these abilities to an extent normally. 

Gamzee

Deuce Clubs

Gamzee’s normal weapon of choice is a set of clubs, which are normally used for juggling and similar comical actions, but can be just as proficient at smacking people. Ordinarily the players of Sburb can only pick one Strife Specibus, which shows which weapon types they can utilize and allows them to pull out their weapons free of their Modus systems (more on that later). While these cards can contain more than one weapon as long as it’s of the same type, Gamzee actually made it through his Sburb journey without upgrading these once, as he instead managed to befriend most of the monsters he was supposed to fight due to being high. 

Jokerkind Weapons

After Gamzee snapped later, he was shown to now possess the Jokerkind specibus. The exact mechanics of it are unknown, but it does seem to allow the wielder to possess any kind of weapon they want, similar to a joker playing card being able to turn into any kind of card. Some weapons he was shown to possess include a crab claw based sickle called the Clawsickle, a plushie based lance called the Fiduspear, a whip used by Aradia, and a bow and arrow which he used to kill Erdian, though it is potentially far more.

Warhammer of Zillyhoo

The most notable weapon Gamzee was shown to have in his arsenal was this legendary warhammer. Originally seen being used by some problematic detectives of some sort during a Halloween special, this hammer is one of the legendary weapons of Cherub mythology which was forged in fire by the smiths of Pipplemop. This warhammer is so majestic that those who see it are put into a state of awe, crying from its sheer majesticness. Though that element is a bit inconsistent, given John was shown wielding it against foes without them reacting as strongly. So how strong is the hammer? Well, that’s gonna be gone over Before the Verdict, since it’s a bit of a complicated and weird case. For now, just keep it in your mind as something that’s arguably very strong, but not something he should scale to without wielding it. 

Well at least there’s no other part of his arsenal that has weirdly convoluted and vague stuff I have to explain at length-  

Lil’ Cal

Oh for fuck’s sake-

That fucking puppet that I hate originally seemed to be a just a standard, if weird and creepy background doll. But he is, in actuality, the most important character in all of Homestuck, because he is the central artifact that gave rise to Lord English becoming the ultimate threat of the story. He’s had a long and convoluted history, but to keep it short, he was originally spawned within the nightmares of Dave by Gamzee manifesting his fear of his Bro’s puppet, before ending up split in time due to time shenanigans, including becoming the puppet which inspired Dave’s fears that got amplified by Gamzee, which makes him a juju, or an object whose existence is a paradox. Gamzee would eventually get his hands on it, keeping it around through his adventures in the Alpha timeline and later uncovering it in Caliborn’s time. And once Caliborn got his hands on it, he’d curse it with his essence. This is because it would later go on to contain the souls of the components who would merge to become Lord English, which would later be unleashed through complicated shenanigans which I'm not breaking down here because it is completely irrelevant to the debate at hand. 

A more relevant point to bring up is that, because of its cursed existence, it has been shown to have an odd effect on people who are exposed to it. By looking into its eyes, you will be cursed and end up getting turned to an insane puppet of it’s master. The most notable case of this was with the Alpha universe’s Jack Noir, who after looking at it, ended up stabbing out his fucking eyes before replacing them with that of the puppet, transforming him into the dangerous Lord Jack. Though it’s also been shown to have a generally weird effect on others, given it’s able to passively creep out others or make itself irresistible to those who possess it, and there are implications it was able to contribute to Gamzee’s fall into madness. Bro and Dirk are also shown to be able to use it as a weapon, and since Gamzee has the Jokerkind specibus, he could potentially do the same.

Also it’s just really creepy. I hate it.

Timetables

Originally possessed by his ghastly friend (and best troll) Aradia, these are a set of music boxes which allow the user to travel forward and backwards through time. Gamzee was shown to have utilized them to go to the Beta Kid’s session, and may have used them to go forward to Caliborn’s time, though that’s unconfirmed.

Fake God Tier Outfit

He’s got this outfit which gives the appearance of him being a God Tier. Only the appearance though, he is not actually a God Tier. It does however have a massive codpiece which might help protect from attacks to his groin?

Husktop

He’s got this, which acts as his personal computer and does what that implies.

Guitar

He was also seen having a guitar during this page, which he was never seen using elsewhere despite literally being a bard. He also was never shown to have knowledge of bard spells or anything like that, but It might hurt a bit if he smacked you with it I guess.

“Magic Potions”

These are actually containers for the blood of his dead friends. I don’t know if this is just disturbing behavior or if it’s some twisted way of remembering them, though I’m assuming it’s probably the former. 

Sopor Slime Pie

Sopor Slime is a substance which is found in a troll’s recuperacoon, which is their equivalent of a bed. When submerged in it, it helps them relax and not feel like their world was a death world for a bit. The slime does seem to act as a minor healing substance to trolls, though it’s more deadly to other species. Gamzee ended up cooking it into pies due to not learning otherwise, and as such he’s become addicted to it, as it’s basically the equivalent of weed to a troll. This does normally keep him in a sedated and non-violent state, with him running out of it and going into withdrawal contributing to his rapid descent into homicidal madness.

Clown Buggy

In one ending of Pesterquest, it was shown Gamzee had access to this monstrosity in order to drive around places. 

Unicycle

He also has this similarly fitting method of transport, though he’s not the best at riding it.

Horns

He also has access to a pile of horns, which are used to add to the clowning ambiance and to block stairs. Surely this will be the key to the #GamzeeSweep. 

Abilities

Tricky

Nevadean Physiology

The odd appearance of the characters within the series is more than just an art style thing, as Nevadeans are not exactly human. They’re biologically genderless, have floating arms and legs, and seem to lack many specific differences in appearances biologically, though their use of stuff like glasses and masks imply they still have standard biological needs to an extent. Tricky is also a Zed, which are zombies that are a lot tougher than normal Nevadeans who normally lack the brainpower for detailed thoughts, but Tricky is obviously an exception.

Also if you ever wondered what would happen if Rayman’s hands ended up trapped in a box while the rest of him was out of it, the answer is, uh, bad things. 

Dissonance Energy

Due to his work on this energy as a scientist, Tricky ended up absorbing Dissonance Energy into his body, which is responsible for some of his more illogical abilities. Also referred to as Dissonant Reality, this energy can broadly be used to warp logic, distort the minds of others, produce radiation, deconstruct matter on an atomic level, and nullify defenses. Given his body contains it and others he scales to have taken hits from foes able to actively weaponize it, it’s likely Tricky can resist the energies of it himself.

Burrowing

A weird ability Tricky has shown is ability to burrow through the ground with only his sign sticking up. It’s been shown to be pretty quick, even able to quickly catch up to a helicopter.

Tac-Bar

Project Nexus characters have been shown to possess these, which are meters that fill up and allow them to instinctively dodge attacks, turning near fatal attacks into grazed attacks or even misses. However, this can only defend against ranged attacks, not melee attackers, and any melee strikes or strikes from behind will cause it to decrease.

Teleporting

He’s also shown the ability to just teleport away in a cloud of confetti. 

Immortality

The biggest asset to Tricky is his ability to come back to death. For starters, most characters in the series can come back from death thanks to the Higher Power of the Employers, who watch over the universe. When Nevadeans die, they’ll end up coming back from death thanks to the interference of them, who wish to see the madness continue. While most standard mooks tend not to catch their eye, Tricky is of course an exception, as his tendency to kill creatively has made them wish to see him keep going indefinitely by turning him to an undying Zed.

But that’s not his only method, as by abusing the Improbability Drive, he’s able to declare his death invalid, as well as revive other characters from death manually. This is clearly tied to the use of the Improbability Drive, as after it was destroyed he did not seem to be able to revive himself freely. This has been shown to take effect nigh-instantly, and can presumably take effect as long as both the Drive and Tricky’s body are somewhat intact. 

Another more weird instance was seen during the Madness Combat 9.5, while his soul was within Hell. During this, he showed the ability to summon a new body for himself after the old one was killed, which he was able to use to keep himself in the battle indefinitely. The question of whether or not this is something Tricky could do normally is a bit questionable, but given these Hell forms are generally comparable to their real bodies, it is potentially something he could do. 

Other Abilities

• Acausality - It’s been implied that temporal changes wouldn’t affect anyone in the Madness universe

• Corruption - As a Zed, he’s able to spread his condition to others

• 4th Wall Awareness - After killing Hank, he was able to look to the camera and smile, which he also did in an Incident. In the FNF Mod, he was able to make fake notes, cover up the UI, and directly interact with your health bar. 

• Longevity - Becoming a Zed means you can naturally live forever

• Non-Physical Interaction - Other Nevadeans have been shown to be able to easily kill ghosts which are seen phasing through walls

• Technology Manipulation - He was able to passively infect a computer with a virus

Resistances

• Absorption - When the Auditor absorbed his dead body, he was able to hijack control of him in turn

• Empathy - Concepts like humanity and romantic relationships are practically unheard of to Nevadeans, to the point where they’ve been described as a race of only monsters

• Fear - Fear is not a powerful motivator to the average Nevadean

• Pain - Regularly shown to be unbothered with all sorts of brutal injuries. In Project: Nexus, he has an ability which allows him to ignore the stunning effects of damage. 

• Reality Warping / Matter / Mind / Radiation / Power Nullification - See section on Dissonance Energy

Gamzee

Troll Physiology

The trolls are an alien race inhabiting the planet Alternia, recognizable by their grey skin and candy corn colored horns. While they do have their own names for a lot of stuff, their bodies are overall fairly comparable to that of a human. Their reproductive and romantic methods are very weird, though thankfully that stuff is completely irrelevant to this discussion so I don’t have to mention it further. 

The most notable thing to bring up about troll biology is their blood, which can come in a wide variety of colors. This forms a caste system based around the power of each color, with hotter hues being near the bottom while cooler hues are near the top. Gamzee is a purple blood, which is one of the highest blood castes, making them physical powerhouses to many other trolls below them, who typically require other means besides brute force to take them down. This lets them act as a ruling class in a weird clown based cult which often causes mass death for the sake of their insane worship. Along with other stuff which I will simply leave for anyone foolish enough to look. 

Chucklevoodoos

The most odd ability of the purple bloods are their psychic abilities. Most trolls can become psychic on some level thanks to mutations in their brain, but unlike more direct abilities utilized by lesser castes like telekinesis or brainwashing, purple bloods are able to amplify fear in others, which they use to keep the lower castes in line. Gamzee himself was able to use this to spawn dolls in the dreams of others that inadvertently led to the universe fucking up. Hussie also suggested he may have used it to subtly manipulate the other Hivebent players into acting irrationally. Karako, a fellow purple blood, showed this fear inducement could be potent enough to send even the superior-caste-wise violet blooded trolls running away in fear. And although Gamzee hasn’t personally demonstrated this, other purple bloods like the Soleil twins have also shown the ability to use their chucklevoodoos to create illusions, so he may hypothetically be able to do it as well. Especially so given both of these instances are from base trolls that were not able to upgrade themselves in Sburb like he did.

Miracle Modus

Characters in Homestuck all have access to a Modus, which basically acts as a hammerspace with specific gimmicks depending on the person. Gamzee’s Modus, fittingly, is really weird, to the point where even he doesn’t fully understand how it works. It basically can let him hold what he wants, but then the objects end up randomly shuffling between each of the cards seen above. Because of this, actually getting items out of this can be difficult, as they can just be randomly launched if he’s not careful, though he can seemingly just pull them out physically if he needs them quickly.

4th Wall / Cosmic Awareness

(Top 10 haunting photos taken seconds before disaster)

Characters in Homestuck have a generally decent grasp over the 4th wall, being able to recognise narration, interact with dialogue boxes and other UI elements, and even resist attempts to pull the plot away from their scenes. It’s also been suggested that part of why Gamzee went mad was because he recognised he was a joke character narratively and snapped from the realization. Though this is all not quite a straight example of 4th Wall awareness, as given the rather meta story Homestuck is, many of these cases of characters recognising narration are from other characters within the story of Homestuck, up to and including the author himself. So these are also meant to be on some level to be aware of beings higher than them that they can resist the influence of. It’s weird.

(also to the jokers, no this does not translate to him being able to transcend fiction or anything, given that explicitly is something only possible by the highest tier threats of his world)

Immortality

(For your listening pleasure)

Perhaps the most dangerous part of Gamzee is the fact he is not easy to kill, due to 2 different factors. First off, as he is destined to play a part in the rise of Lord English in the future, he has a literal form of plot armor, being unable to die while his destiny is unfulfilled. This allowed him to survive a variety of  deadly circumstances, most notably being on a planet as it was exploded by Lord Jack hard enough to create a black hole, but it does seem to not apply to alternate versions of him that will never end up in the position of being part of Caliborn’s masterpiece, such as when he got sliced in half in the alternate GAME OVER timeline. 

However, even that might not be enough, because Gamzee simply being a clown also makes him hard to kill. As a more literal form of Joker Immunity, Gamzee is really hard to kill for unknown reasons, lingering despite any attempts to get rid of them. This is to the point where Andrew Hussie, the author of the series himself, has stated he’s unaware of any timeline where Gamzee is actually dead. This suggests even cases like the aforementioned slicing in half isn’t enough to end him for good, given he’s the one character who was fatally wounded in that timeline which we never get any kind of confirmation of death. 

Currently the one definitive case of this clown dying for good is courtesy of a choking out from Vriska in the Epilogues, as this has been shown to have stuck within the Beyond Canon comics as of the making of this blog. However, in my research, it’s not actually been explained by the story how exactly she was actually able to bypass his immortality in this instance. One popular interpretation I’ve seen is that his meta immortality did not apply here because the Epilogues take place outside of the narrative rules of the original comic, which therefore meant the story quite literally wasn’t playing by his rules anymore, but again, that this is just fan guesswork.

Other Abilities

• Acausality - Sburb players are paradox clones who are created by copying their own future selves’ DNA

• Accelerated Development - Sburb players have access to the Echeladder, which allows them to grow in strength and durability by slaying enemies or doing random shit

• Elasticity - Was able to squeeze into a small car, though his bones did crack from the effort. Was also able to have his head be knocked around like a spring

• Longevity - All trolls of a caste higher than green are able to live for hundreds of years

• Non-Physical Interaction - Other Sburb players can interact with ghosts, which are normally incorporeal 

Resistances

• Precognition - He is a massive blind spot to the future vision of Terezi, who can see all the results of a person’s choices across infinite timelines

• Mind - Trolls of a blood caste higher than teal are normally immune to mind control from blue bloods like Vriska

• Sound - Higher blood colors can resist Gl'bgolyb's voice, which can instantly kill lower castes, as long as it is not raised to the level of scream

• Acid - Stelsa, a troll of a lower blood caste than him, was able to casually run through acid rain

• Heat - Superior to Karkat, who considered the sun outside Dave’s apartment to be pathetic despite it being hot enough to instantly give the MSPA Reader heat exhaustion. Every Sburb player also ends up on a flaming meteor as a literal baby due to the aforementioned  paradox clone stuff.

• Plot Manipulation - See section on 4th Wall / Cosmic Awareness

Forms

Tricky

Demon

By using the power of the Improbability Drive, Tricky is able to transform into this massive demonic form. This form is a lot stronger, and beyond the same abilities the Drive grants him, it also gives him access to several other notable abilities:

• Fire Manipulation - His body is completely on fire. He was also able to breathe fire and create it with his strikes

• Teleportation / Size Manipulation - Was able to teleport with fire around him and shrink himself into a smaller form

• Deconstruction - Was able to disintegrate several corpses

• Energy Manipulation - Was able to fire a blast of energy upon transforming

Hell

While his and Hank’s soul were confined to Hell in MC 9.5, his body took the form of this monstrosity. It is admittedly a bit unclear how exactly he could access this form normally, but given other characters have been shown to be comparably strong to their mortal forms while in Hell, it’s likely his standard stats can scale to this form. This form also had a variety of abilities which were demonstrated:

• Electricity Manipulation - Summoned electricity while teleporting and to blast apart the ground

• Duplication - Instantly summoned a new body for himself, and was able to summon a larger skeletal form to his side

• Possible Regeneration - Was seemingly able to quickly recover from attacks, though it could also be a case of him cloning a new body

• Telekinesis - Was able to float around and toss some bodies and rocks

Plushie

Horrifying.

Gamzee

Bard of Rage

Sburb Players also are given specific class titles, which are split between a class indicating their destined role in the narrative and the aspect lining up as their element, with both combining to form their title. As a representative of the Rage aspect, Gamzee is able to enter a state when particularly pissed off which causes his physical strength to get much higher, allowing him access to strength far greater than that of other characters on par with him. Those of the Rage aspect are bringers of chaos willing to tear apart the world if they view it as false to send it into anarchy, and will doggedly stick to their ideals above all else. Bards, meanwhile, are characterized by their ability to cause destruction through their element, which is represented by his rage being subdued for most of his life through his pies, but also in his relationship with Terezi, whom he was able to take advantage of the rage of to manipulate her into her fateful meeting with Vriska, as well as inspiring an abusive relationship with her that ended with him destroying her rage at him. These titles also reflect the God Tier form that their user can gain if they end up ascending to it, though Gamzee never got that form in canon, only able to get a costume of it to fake having it. 

Feats

Tricky

Overall

• One of the deadliest characters in Nevada

• Killed Hank on three different occasions

• Hijacked the power of the Auditor 

• Had a rap battle with some blue haired guy

• Is the Unstoppable Nevadean Champion

Power

• Burst from the ground (0.078 - 2.297 Tons)

• Smacked Hank out of a canyon

• Easily decapitated Hank

• Bounced around a room hard enough to crack the walls of it

• Smacked Deimos hard enough to make him smash through a wall (1.021 Megajoules)

• Ripped apart Jebus’s skin and skull

• Burst through a window

• Can send people flying with his strikes

• The Improbability Drive was able to transmute the sun into an enemy (See Before the Verdict)

• In Demon Form:

• Broke through a metal door and walked through concrete

• Smashed open a door and dented the top of an elevator

• Gave Hank a beating before throwing him through a wall

• In Hell Form:

• Burst through stone walls

• Ripped apart a Retainer which had no selled bullets

• Blew up a floor

Speed

• Fast enough to blitz around as a blur

• Jumped over gunfire

• Flipped through gunfire, before catching up to and jumping to the height of a helicopter

• Able to directly block gunfire

• Can jump several meters

• His exact speed is difficult to calculate and can fluctuate wildly

• In Demon Form:

• Beat up Hank faster than he could react

Durability

• Fine after getting shot a couple times

• Survived getting shot in the head

• Getting half his head sliced off only pissed him off

• Survived being on his train as it crashed and blew up (0.0007 Tons of TNT)

• In Hell Form:

• Got impaled by multiple spikes and was still able to charge through a wall

Gamzee

Overall

• Dealt the most damage to the Black King in a single blow over any of the other Trolls

• Killed Equius and Nepeta

• Went on to become a third of Lord English

• In part responsible for the entire plot of Homestuck

• In an alternate timeline in Pesterquest, was implied to have killed pre-Sburb Karkat, Kanaya, and Vriska, as well as the MSPA Reader

Power

• Snapped a bow in half

• Choked Equius to death

• Stopped Nepeta’s pounce with one hand while snapping her wrist

• Threw Vriska and Tavros's bodies into the air

• Briefly overpowered Crockertier Jane

• Gave Terezi a brutal beatdown, before using the Atomic Double Juggalo Backbreaker to suplex her hard enough to break apart a stone platform

Speed

• Can blitz around as a blur

• Was able to blitz around a room as a blur fast enough that Terezi didn’t realize he was there

• Dodged a spell from Rose

• Intercepted and stabbed Karkat to death in midair

Durability

• Got blasted back by an angel

• Can casually exit a car which was so small his bones cracked from the effort needed to contort in 

• No selled a shockwave strong enough to almost knock over the MSPA Reader

• Survived getting kicked in the groin hard enough to be sent flying off a cliff by Kanaya

• Survived being launched by this explosion

• Survived being repeatedly stabbed by Terezi

• Survived being ventilated by a gun from Caliborn

• Repeatedly

• Like jesus christ

• It went on for a while

• Ok now that’s it

• Survived getting smacked a bunch by Caliborn on top of the aforementioned bullets

• Survived getting punched between panels by Cans while stuck in a fridge

• Cans is strong enough to punch people through time (See Before the Verdict)

• Survived being on LOTAK as it was destroyed by Lord Jack (9.036 - 403.949 Petatons)

• Took a beating from Vriska and was only turned on

• Thank you Epilogues very cool

Scaling

Tricky

The Protagonists

The main group of people who I would struggle to describe as “heroes” throughout the Madness Combat series. As Tricky has pretty consistently been shown to be a major threat to them, even managing to kill them on a few occasions, he should be able to scale to their notable feats.

• Hank was able to tip over a vending machine

• Hank was able to kill the sun after it was turned to a grunt (See Before the Verdict)

• MAG Hank was able to take on the Auditor (See Before the Verdict)

• Hank was able to block point blank gunfire (Mach 1.185 - 3.742)

• Hank was able to deflect a bullet (Mach 10.134)

• Hank at his fastest can react at the speed of causality (Light Speed)

• Sanford and Deimos survived getting crushed under a building (7.965 Tons)

• Sanford and Deimos survived their car exploding

• Deimos slammed a guy with a rock really fast (0.065 Tons)

• Deimos was able to blow up the back of a truck (10.529 Tons)

• Jebus survived getting blasted by a Fourpack, which are stated to be 4 times more powerful than these bombs (42.119 Tons)

• Jebus was able to smash open a roof (0.06 - 0.42 Tons)

• Jebus was able to dodge minigun fire and ram through a wall

• Jebus survived getting blasted with a rocket launcher

• The Arena Mode Player was able to fight and defeat The Grand Steward, who is an avatar of The Machine (See Before the Verdict)

The Victims

As both Tricky and the other protagonists are able to kill the many foes they have to take on en masse, they should upscale to all the various goons you see them kill throughout the series, as well as the more notable bosses.

• Grunts are able to rip off the heads off of other Grunts

• A Mag Bandit was able to smash open a steel gate (0.265 Tons)

• Project Gestalt was able to hold back a compression press (0.101 Tons)

• Project Gestalt survived this big explosion (36.418 Tons)

• Enemies in Project Nexus can move in tandem with weapons that fire concentrated photons (0.255 c) 

Friday Night Funkin Cast 

As mentioned, the FNF mod involving Tricky has been said to be fully part of the MC canon, so like it or not I am talking about it. As the mod pretty blatantly shows Tricky to be superior to Boyfriend, he should scale to his feats and other people that are at his level. I am not insane enough to sift through all the FNF mods to try and find notable feats, especially since that would lead to potentially cross scaling with literally every series ever, so this will just be going over base game stuff and what the original and crossover characters within it have done. 

• Boyfriend was able to toss a game controller hard enough to break a window (3.571 - 12.643 Kilojoules)

• Boyfriend can throw Girlfriend pretty far into a bed to get freaky on a friday night with her (128.487 - 433.845 Kilojoules)

• Boyfriend was able to catch Girlfriend after she was sent flying from a speaker pretty fast by Pico (2.131 - 7.197 Megajoules)

• Boyfriend survived a voodoo doll induced beating from Daddy Dearest

• Pico was able to physically smash through a Tankman soldier’s helmet

• Pico was able to defeat Cassandra, who survived being next to an explosion that blew up a wall (0.09 Tons)

• Pico survived an explosion that blew up a house

• Pico survived an explosion which blew a hole through the Earth (2.667 Zettatons - 12.965 Ronnatons)

• Nene can throw her knives fast enough to intercept uzi bullets (Mach 0.95) 

• Pump was able to jump over houses (3.634 Kilojoules)

• Skid was able to toss his phone hard enough to dent a wall (19.673 Kilojoules)

• Skid and Pump were able to make a hole in a wooden floor (686.017 Kilojoules)

• Private Skittles was able to smash wooden beams (4.282 & 2.936 kilojoules)

• Steve was able to stab through a man’s skull

• Steve was able to react to cannon fire (Mach 1.629 - 2.567)

Gamzee

The Hivebent Trolls

The other trolls who Gamzee journeyed with during Sburb, at least until everything went pear shaped in convoluted fashion. All of them were shown to be fairly on par with each other in terms of combat, but as a purple blood, Gamzee should naturally be above most of the other Trolls, as all but two of them were of lower blood castes. Even beyond that, during their fight with the game’s intended final boss, the Black King, Gamzee alone was able to cause more damage to the boss than any of the others once he ended up channeling his rage powers, which gives a more solid indication that he should be above the other base Trolls physically. 

• Karkat survived getting suplexed into a table

• Aradia shattered the top of a temple (0.009 - 0.037 Tons)

• Aradia was able to break off the head of a large statue

• Aradiabot was able to give Vriska a beating that left her in critical condition, which included smashing her hard enough to create a big blast

• Tavros survived crashing through a wall

• Sollux was able to make a blast that blew up his own hive

• Sollux was able to blow up the Courtyard Droll's station

• Sollux was able to wreck Erdian’s ship by throwing a mall at it (1.697 - 3.39 Tons)

• Sollux survived being blasted by Erdian’s wand, though he was knocked out and blinded

• This wand was strong enough to kill Feferi, who was the strongest of the trolls caste-wise

• Feferi does not do anything worth mentioning here because she is the biggest fraud of the Trolls

• Sollux and Aradiabot were able to redirect meteors summoned by the Black King during the Reckoning

• A meteor from another Reckoning blew up John’s neighborhood (8.431 Megatons)

• A meteor from another Reckoning created the cove on Jade’s island (857.026 Megatons)

• A meteor from another Reckoning would have destroyed Austin (6.501 Megatons - 9.951 Teratons)

• A meteor from another Reckoning was going to blow up Jade’s island (319.27 - 762.56 Teratons - 1.113 Petatons) 

• Sollux and God Tier Aradia were able to toss a meteor at nearly the speed of light (4.248 Exatons altogether)

• Sollux had moved this same meteor on his own, though the effort did half kill him

• Nepeta is able to slash apart large monsters easily

• Terezi was able to kick a door off its hinges

• Terezi was able to break out a large monster that was frozen in it’s own sweat

• (context does not make this better)

• Terezi got beaten up by Gamzee, stabbed through the chest and thrown to the ground, flew away to another planet before crash landing, and was still able to have a long conversation with John and use her powers to make a plan to save the timeline before dying

• Vriska survived an explosion that blew up her arm and eye, and was able to casually run to Equius's hive with both still bleeding after the fact

• Equius punched a monster so hard he caused a mushroom explosion (0.069 tons) 

• Equius punched a robot hard enough to send it flying through a wall before exploding

• Equius was able to jump a far distance and punch the head off a large monster

• Eridan survived a ship sinking

• Eridan survived getting drop kicked through a solid steel cannon by Sollux

• Erdian claimed he could have survived being directly hit by Sollux's mall toss

The Humans

Generally the Sburb players are treated as equivalents in power, with them being able to take on fairly similar foes in each session. As a more direct scaling chain, Dirk in his session was able to take on imperial drones from the Condense, which were the same type that regularly kills most normal trolls en masse. As such, it should be pretty fair to assume Gamzee can also compare to the kids, though obviously this is only accounting for before they ended up going to God Tier, which is explicitly a level beyond Gamzee. 

• As babies, all of them were able to survive being on various meteors as they impacted the earth

• John’s blew up a strip mall

• Rose’s blew up a large factory (519.431 Tons - 692.346 Kilotons)

• Dave’s made a big crater in Texas (507.405 Tons)

• John was able to beat up building sized ogres

• John’s Dad was able to punch an imp through a wall

• John’s Dad was able to send a safe flying out of a building

• John’s Dad was able to overpower Hegemonic Brute, who can casually carry vault doors

• Rose was able to make a large explosion

• Rose was able to lift and rip apart an island

• Rose’s Mom was able to knock over and defeat a large monster

• Dave was able to break the chain holding the moon to Derse (1.902 - 18.595 Gigatons) 

• Dave can move fast enough to leave after images

• He could do it even as a baby

• Bro was able to slice the meteor that would have destroyed Austin in half 

• Bro was able to evenly duel 3x Prototyped Jack Noir for a bit

• He was able to cause destruction all around Prospit

• He was able to sever the chain to its moon (1.902 - 18.595 Gigatons), which caused it to turn to a meteor that blew up part of Skaia (23.724 - 231.953 Gigatons)

• Bro was able to hold a paper in position, then let go of it, move backwards, and throw a batarang at it before the note could fall a single nanometer (16.68 c)

• Jade’s bullets are able to travel across her island in a couple seconds (Mach 1.454)

• Jade was able to grab a package while a bullet was moving in slow motion

• Jade survived an explosion that blew up part of her house

• Jane survived an explosion that blew her out of her house

• Jane’s Dad was able to punch through a wall

• Jane’s Dad was able to seemingly cause a tower to break apart

• Roxy survived this large fall

• Dirk was able to take hits from and and take out Imperial Drones, who are able to kill trolls

• Dirk regularly spars with Brobot while he’s in Kill mode, who can slice apart and catch bullets

• Dirk can move fast enough to make a puppet look like it’s dancing while fist bumping it

• Jake survived an explosion and a long fall, though he was knocked out by the impact

• Joey survived being outside a cafe exploding, though she was knocked out

The Hiveswap Trolls

Other trolls of Alternia, who ended up getting caught up in stories about a random weirdo that crashed from space to befriend them and some random human girl getting teleported to them. While the cast of Homestuck haven’t personally interacted with the cast of Hiveswap due to the time gap between these narratives, Gamzee being a purple blood makes him superior to much of the cast of these stories for the same general reason as him being superior to the Hivebent Trolls, as well as the fact none of them were able to get access to an echeladder to grow in strength like him and the other Sburb players. As such, he should scale above them as well.

• Some unnamed trolls were able to rip apart Zebruh 

• An unnamed troll survived having his leg blown off

• Xefros survived being crushed under debris and being trapped there for a while

• Xefros survived being outside a cafe exploding, though he was knocked out

• Skylla was able to beat up some other trolls while exposed to the Alternian sun

• Vikare casually survived falling off a cliff

• Azdaja was able to blast a cliff hard enough to make it collapse

• Azdaja was able to blow apart a cave wall 

• Azdaja was able to blow a hole in a mechanical ticket booth

• Cirava survived gouging their own eye out

• Kuprum was able to toss Folykl and the MSPA Reader out of the way of a laser

• An olive blood wrestler survived attacks from and eventually getting her head crushed by a purple blood wrestler

• Polypa was able to kick a locked door open

• Konyyl was able to kick a bush hard enough to uproot it and send it flying

• Konyyl was able to murder a room of other trolls rather easily

• Remele was able to smash the skull of an unnamed purple blood with his own club

• Amisia is able to cut off the heads of other trolls

• Nihkee was able to smash a yellow blood’s face in

• Nihkee survived getting her foot crushed by something and getting hit by a train

• Marvus was able to survive a limo exploding, though it was implied to have fatally injured him (0.011 - 0.016 Tons)

• Plenty of them have generally shown themselves to be stronger than the MSPA Reader

• They survived crash landing on Alternia in a rocket

• They were able to fight a sewer current strong enough to knock people off their feet while carrying Diemen

• They dodged a projectile that was stated to be a laser

• They survived getting hit by a car hard enough to be sent flying

• They were able to kill a bear lusus by stabbing it with a sword

• They survived getting blasted by an explosion’s shockwave

• They survived getting stabbed by Nepeta’s lusus, though they did require medical attention afterwords

Weaknesses

Tricky

While he does have an impressive track record, Tricky is hardly flawless as a fighter. For one thing, he is completely insane in actions and doesn’t tend to pull complicated strategies in fights, and he has opted to toy with his enemies, willingly resurrecting foes whom he’s killed simply for the fun of killing them again. Additionally, while his methods of coming back to life are powerful, they aren’t reliable, as the higher Powers can potentially choose not to resurrect him and the Improbability Drive won't protect him from death if it's destroyed. Finally, the Improbability Drive being destroyed can also temporarily leave him vulnerable, though as mentioned his body still has access to the abilities of it to an extent. 

Gamzee

While Gamzee is a pretty notable combatant when serious, that’s the first issue, as while he’s high on sopor or otherwise pacified he’ll become far more passive, not being as willing to fight. His craziness is also something which can be a detriment, as his incredible bloodlust can lead to him dragging out fights to get as much suffering out of his opponent as possible. Finally, his immortality also seems to have killed his sense of self preservation, given he doesn’t tend to dodge attacks or otherwise get away from people who are physically above him, and while he is able to survive plenty, he still feels pain from more extreme attacks. 

Before the Verdict

That Time Hank Killed The Sun

A fairly infamous moment for Madness VS wise is from when the Improbability Drive ended up turning the sun into a grunt which Hank proceeded to kill. Whether or not this counts as a literal display of star level power is a bit of a sticking point for many, given, well, it’s a bit of a jump in numbers for most of the feats of the series. 

First off, there is the issue of this potentially being an outlier moment, as some have argued that this being a brief gag scene should make it inapplicable to the character’s stats. However, while it does seem like a throwaway gag just in the context of the episode on it’s own, it has gone on to be a major part of the series’s worldbuilding, as every later bit of media in the series has depicted the sky as permanently dark when it’s not red due to the side effects of the Improbability Drive. The sky being dark isn’t just an aesthetic thing either, as Krinkels has noted this was directly because of Hank’s stellarside, noted this as something that’s been accepted as a fact of life in Nevada, as well as noting the shattered bits in the sky in Project Nexus is what’s left of it and reinforcing the idea that the sun is very much dead from Hank’s actions. It’s also been shown that Improbability Drive working at this kind of scale in general isn’t that hard to believe, as seen with a weird red sun that was made by Tricky’s Improbability Drive after the original sun’s death. This was initially seen in MC5, grew in size by MC6, completely covered the sky in red by MC7, before slowly receding in brightness over the course of MC9 and MC10, which is the level it’s currently stayed at as of MC12. And it being Tricky’s doing isn’t just an assumption based on the timing, as this was directly confirmed to be a side effect of his use of the Improbability Drive, meaning it is consistent for the Drive to be able to affect things at a cosmic scale.

The real sticking point comes from how exactly this feat should be quantified. Affecting the sun in such a way is very impressive, but it’s a bit unclear if this should count as a full case of star busting power, given when Hank kills it, it’s visibly not the size of an actual sun. However, this can somewhat be explained as just because the Improbability Drive was causing a lot of general weirdness, which means you could potentially argue it’s a comparable case to similar feats done via toonforce. Additionally, given the above mentioned statements, the intent here is clearly that this is Hank literally killing a sun, logic be damned. And regardless of if you think this is a good feat for Hank, given Tricky directly absorbed the power of the Improbability Drive, he should likely still scale to this level himself. 

Madness Combat Cosmology

<me when I have to write a cosmology section>

While you may not think just looking at the animations, the cosmology of Nevada is deceptively complicated. For starters, there is Nevada itself, which is the “main universe” where much of the series takes place. Nevada itself is not just a state like in our reality, but is more like a layered sphere which has different distinct climates. And there is an outer space, but it’s not been explored too deeply, as leaving beyond it too far can lead to indecipherable circumstances. This means attempts to leave via space travel are unsuccessful, so all most Nevadeans know is their world, and anything besides Nevada is incomprehensibly strange. However, Nevada on it’s own is not a full multiverse. 

Next is the Other Place, which is where everyone in Nevada goes after dying, and which forms a membrane around Nevada separating it from the infinite dissonance beyond it. Important to note is that everyone who dies ends up getting their own personal hells, and as you can imagine, there are a lot of potential characters who have died. Just counting the deaths caused by the main prominent characters, there would be 1572 total universes, which can get up to 1931 when accounting for the non canon kills, and this isn’t even factoring in stuff like the kills you can do in the game’s arena modes or deaths done by less prominent characters. Though this has been implied to not be infinite in size, so it’s likely it’s still a finite amount of universes. 

There’s also a dividing space between Nevada and the Other Place in which MC12 takes place in, though this is something I’ve not seen too much discussion off at the moment given it is from a fairly recently released animation at the time of writing this. Finally, outside all of this is the Infinite Improbability, in which everything that could be but isn’t exists, and which is even more confusing and thankfully irrelevant to this discussion because nothing scales to it.

With that established, now the discussion of how anyone scales to this. First off, we need to go back to the concept of the Higher Powers, also known as the Employers. As mentioned, they oversee the entire universe and their true forms are incomprehensible. Each of them also have their own realms, which have been described as dimensions and which are within their own bodies. The most prominent of them, The Auditor, is someone who has directly confronted the denizens of Nevada, with MAG Hank taking him on both before and after Tricky hijacked his powers. And while that might give the impression that he’s not as strong as the other Employers, it has been noted he is not less powerful than them, just a bit more impulsive/stupid, as directly fighting Hank in the first place was a mistake the others wouldn’t have done. 

However, the big stumbling point is how to really scale Tricky to MAG Hank and the Auditor, as he was a bit busy being dead by the time they fought. Now Tricky was able to hijack the Auditor’s powers for himself after he inadvertently absorbed him, but that doesn’t really help with the idea of claiming he’s naturally that powerful, especially given that Krinkels has stated in a straight up fight Tricky would have no chance against Auditor. Also worth noting is that Tricky was able to kill MAG Hank in one of the Incidents, but given how the Incidents are meant to be treated as non-canon and this particular Incident is meant as a fun fanservice battle over some kind of official power ranking, it’s a little hard to use this as definitive proof Tricky can scale given it’s pretty inconsistent to put him at their level. You could potentially argue he can downscale on some level from MAG Hank, but the exact value is practically impossible to define given Tricky has never canonically met MAG Hank without the non-standard boost from hijacking the Auditor. 

Though Hank hasn’t just done impressive stuff in the MAG form, as seen in the Project Nexus games. Director Phobos, the main big bad of the games, was going to ascend to the power of the Employers, and you do fight him, so is that a good way to scale characters to that level? Well, the entire fight against him is specifically to stop him before he’s able to do that, and it’s implied he was only able to do it with the aid of his technology, not just innately of his own power, so they shouldn’t scale to him in that hypothetical state. You can also access the Prime Blade, which is a sword that is made from a fragment of the Machine itself, making it potentially universal in striking power. However, Tricky does not have access to it, and since it one shots every enemy in the game, it’s not really possible to scale anyone to its striking power. 

Finally, there is an even more impressive character you could scale to in The Machine, which alongside The Creator, views Nevada as fictional due to having created all of it. You can actually fight and defeat it in the final fight of the Arena Mode of Project Nexus, so you could arguably use this to scale Tricky to that level of power. However, there isn’t much reason to scale the Arena Player to the Machine’s full strength, as the fight against the Machine was explicitly against an avatar of the Machine known as the Grand Steward, which was also stated to be destined to lose the battle. As such, this clearly isn’t a case of them directly beating the thing that made the cosmology. And while the Creator and the Machine are far stronger than the Employers as they created them, the Grand Steward has been stated to not be an Employer, nor was he as powerful as them, so it’s a bit hard to lock down any kind of solid impressive numbers for him. 

Does Gamzee get God Tier Scaling?

Now Homestuck scaling can be as much of a convoluted mess as the story itself, but there is generally a pretty clear power gap between lower tiers and higher tiers thanks to the existence of the God Tiers, which upgrade the physical capabilities of each character well above their base capabilities. While most of the prominent characters eventually unlocked these and it’s where much of the more broken scaling for the series starts, Gamzee just blatantly is not on par with the God Tiers, as his own God Tier outfit was established as just an outfit, and he was narratively disregarded as a direct threat to them once most of the cast became God Tier. However, it’s not quite that simple, as there are a couple notable things to go over with this since they could give the argument he scales to them regardless.

First off, Gamzee wasn’t the only one of the major characters to have skipped out on being a God Tier, as Karkat, Kanaya, and Terezi all skipped this in the original narrative. Despite this, some of them are arguably shown to be on par with the god tiers in later fights, and Gamzee is still portrayed as a threat to these guys. As such, you could argue this could be a roundabout way to scale him to this tier, but that’s not quite true once you look closer. Karkat is the easiest one to disprove, since he simply was never shown to be on par with the God Tiers in terms of combat ability in the first place, which is something even he has pointed out. As for Kanaya, this is also easy to disprove, as while she wasn’t given the power of a God Tier specifically, her unique rainbow drinker physicality (which is basically the troll equivalent of a vampire) indicate she should still be scaling above Gamzee, which is backed up by her being able to easily dispose of him and being the one to take him down in the GAME OVER timeline, as well fighting on par with the God Tiers in the Collide fight. Some might also point out his implied killing of her in Pesterquest, but not only is it ultimately unclear if he actually killed her and she was clearly able to put up a good fight with him, you’d also need to remember Pesterquest is a prequel timeline where no one ended up in Sburb, and therefore no one ended up growing in power due to the Echeladder, so it’s flawed to use it as evidence he can scale to her full strength in the main timeline.

Finally, Terezi is the weirdest case here. In the GAME OVER timeline, Gamzee was shown to be able to take her on fairly easily, surviving a lot of stabbing from her before giving her a brutal beatdown in return. In the later revised timeline, she was shown to be able to keep up with god tier threats like Lord and Robo Jack. However, note the difference in timeline there. Terezi in the original timeline was very much not a God Tier threat, as shown with how her attempt to muck in during a fight with several god tier characters ended rather poorly for her. But in the updated timeline where she is on par with them, things were a bit different, as she was shown to have been able to restrain him fairly easily when she did realize he was there. While there isn’t anything directly correlating the idea she’s physically stronger in this timeline, the narrative is pretty clear on that being the case. As a sort of narrative explanation, one of the big changes in the timeline was her not ending up in an abusive relationship with Gamzee, so thematically the intent is clearly that this Terezi was stronger than that of the original timeline by not going down that path. Considering how meta the series can get, it’s not really that much of a stretch to assume the growth in character had something to do with her growth in power. As for a more literal explanation for this, some have pointed out that just before the final battle she ended up remembering everything about her past self, which I’ve seen cited as the reason that Terezi is stronger in this timeline. I wasn’t able to find anything directly confirming this represented a literal jump in power between timelines, but given the intent is clearly that the new timeline Terezi is not below Gamzee, it doesn’t really make sense to assume he scales to her feats in the new timeline just because he was above her in the old one.

Moving on from that discussion, another potential argument is based around the least controversial character in the series, Vriska. In the aforementioned Black King fight, Gamzee was indicated to have been stronger than all the Trolls. This does include Vriska, who was a god tier at the time, and the technique she used in that fight was also later shown to be able to fight evenly with Beck Noir, with the Omnipotent Doc Scratch saying she could potentially win against him. So should Gamzee scale to her full strength? Uh, probably not, no. First off, it’s worth noting that Karkat does directly single out Vriska as a potential exception to his statement of Gamzee being the MVP, as he points out it’s hard to guess how much Vriska was contributing to the fight due to her being the one to do the final blow. But beyond that, it’s also worth noting that Vriska was actively hiding the fact she was a God Tier at the time, so the argument that he should scale to her full effort from this instance is a bit odd. This is even more so when you consider the narrative implications, as not only did she treat him as not a threat during his meteor rampage, within the revised timeline where she lived, she was rather blatantly shown to be able to easily take him down physically, with her ultimately being the one to kill him for good in the Epilogues. As such, while Gamzee could potentially scale to Vriska’s original base strength, there’s no good reason to assume he’s scaling to her full God Tier strength from this statement. 

The last point to bring up would be the whole business with him restraining Crockertier Jane. And well, while this is somewhat impressive, he didn’t really directly overpower her. Not only did he only do it while she was distracted, she also treats him more with annoyance than anything, implying this isn’t overpowering in the sense of direct overpowering, but more her not being able to directly throw him off her in this case. He was also easily knocked away from her by the not-God-Tier-level Terezi, with Jane also describing the two’s actions as just “tomfoolery”, all of which further casts doubt on this being a direct case of God Tier level power.  It’s also generally a bit of an outlier moment regardless, given how it’s otherwise fairly consistent to not have him be as strong as the God Tiers power wise, so this isn’t really a good point to cite for. 

Cans Punching Through Time

As mentioned, Cans, one of the members of the Felt, can quite literally punch people into next week. This is a bit of a weird feat scaling wise, but personally I don’t really think it’s fair to bring it up as a pure feat of physicality. For one thing, the Felt all generally have a variety of time related abilities, but are only able to travel through time with the aid of certain objects, so it’d be more consistent to treat this as an ability to send others through time rather than be him physically sending them through his own effort. It’s also a lot more consistent with general tiering of the Homestuck universe, given the Felt are not meant to be as strong as characters who are able to naturally do naturally time bending feats like Beck Noir traveling through the nonlinear time and space of the Furthest Ring. Finally, even if it is treated literally, there’s not really any good way to quantify how strong it is in terms of attack potency, and since it’s consistently shown that characters don’t react to the attack until after they were sent through time, it’s not really possible to get infinite reaction speeds from it either. 

The Hammer of Zillyhoo is How Strong?

So, while Gamzee didn't do too much with it, this warhammer was seen being utilized by several other characters, including a bunny that used it to threaten away Jack Noir before giving it to John for his later use, and by the Alpha Kids after they got high on alien drugs and ended up randomly making it. However, these instances don’t really give us a solid idea of how strong the hammer itself is on a base level, given the guys who have been shown with it either immediately ate shit and died, were too busy being awestruck, used it once offscreen against a depowered foe in a surprise attack, or never really got used in combat in the first place in the case of Alpha Kids and Gamzee himself. John did later combine it to form a stronger hammer which he used rather extensively, most notably in a fight with Beck Noir, but since that was done while using a different hammer made from it, it’s a bit hard to justify scaling Zillyhoo to this instance.

And it’s not like the other cherub weapons set any kind of precedence, given that similarly, most of them were just made and then never brought up again during the Trickster business. There are two exceptions in the Flintlocks of Zillyhau, which were picked up by Jake and used by him during the Collide battle, and the Cutlass of Zillywair, which Jade was seen wielding. However neither of these cases really help establish their power, given Jake was in a fight with the Felt, who as mentioned are lower tier foes which he was able to take down without even using his God Tier powers, and Jade never actually fought with the blade, just postured for a bit before Dave ran. The most major exception would be the Unbreakable Katana, the main weapon of Dirk/Bro which is established as being part of this weapon set. Given the original version of it was shown to be above base characters and were able to take on God Tier threats like the non-Beck Jacks and the Condense, you could argue that it suggests the set is a God Tier upgrade. But in actuality, the fact this blade is included in the set just throws a massive wrench in the idea of them offering that kind of power. Both of the cases of it competing with God Tiers were when it was being wielded by God Tier Dirk and Roxy respectively, so it being able to keep up with them seems more a case of the power of the ones behind it rather than just the sword itself. This is even backed up by  several points in the narrative. Firstly, God Tier Dave was able to break the katana, despite earlier failing when not in God Tier. Additionally, Dirk started his own session with it already in his possession, but while he was fairly competent, it wasn’t like he just stomped everything without effort due to having a god sword, he still had about as much trouble as any other player. Finally, in the most blatant case, despite wielding it, Bro went from keeping up with Jack Noir to getting easily murdered by him after he went dog mode, which as mentioned was a state that is very much God Tier in threat. All of these cases would not make much narrative sense if you assume the blade is truly as powerful as the God Tiers innately. And this idea also makes some sense considering the game mechanics of Sburb, given that most RPGs are designed in a way that getting stronger is a matter of leveling up and getting better equipment, not just focusing on one or the other. 

On top of all of that bullshit, there’s a final fact that makes this just that bit more of a nightmare to figure out: we have absolutely nothing to go on for an explanation of how Gamzee got access to the Warhammer in the first place. So there’s no definitive way of knowing whether it’s a truly real version of hammer he got offscreen through time shenanigans, it being a fake one similar to his God Tier outfit, or any other convoluted explanation you can think of. And it’s likely we’re not getting a definite explanation for this anytime soon, considering he is currently very dead in the Post-Canon and it’s a very minor plot point in the grand scheme of things. So while you could hypothetically argue the hammer could have the strength to measure up to the higher tiers to an extent, the amount of jumps in logic you need to do that makes this a fairly dubious idea at best. Now if you excuse me, I have a stump to go find. 

Verdict

Stats

So the discussion of the power of both characters can be a bit hard to lock down, as while neither have many impressive displays of strength themselves, they do scale to plenty of characters who have shown a variety of impressive displays. On the lower end, both did have plenty of comparable displays of casual wall level feats and being able to easily rip people apart, and they can scale to various feats in the building to city block level. Gamzee can pull ahead of just this though, as thanks to scaling above his fellow trolls, he scales to the various meteor related shenanigans done by Aradia and Sollux, including redirecting the Reckoning meteors, which could hit anywhere from City level to Continent level, and sending the meteor on the way to the Alpha session at 4.248 Exatons, or Multi-Continent level. While the calc was referring to a combined instance between Sollux and God Tier Aradia, given he was earlier able to pilot the meteor on his own at the cost of the effort half killing him, it’s likely he should scale to it himself, though it’s likely this is the upper limit to his strength.

However, while these displays are stronger than most direct feats done in the Madness canon, Tricky has some arguments to put him far above it. There were of course the arguments for putting him on par with the cosmology, and though it is a bit questionable to assume he should be scaling to most of it, even assuming he’s downscaling to the point of only being universal would still be significantly better than Gamzee. Even ignoring that, the Improbability Drive being able to affect and create stars, while a bit vaguely defined, was still likely to be far stronger than Gamzee’s high ends. Finally, even ignoring both of those arguments, thanks to the FNF mod being canon, Tricky can scale to Pico surviving an explosion that blew a hole through the Earth. Even at its lowest end at 2.667 Zettatons, this would still be about 627 times stronger than Sollux’s meteor piloting at the bare minimum. Even assuming Gamzee massively upscales thanks to being above all the Trolls and using his rage power, not only is the gap far too wide to logically assume they’re equal, Tricky can also upscale given his Demon form let him grow in physicality. As such, Tricky has a very comfortable edge in raw power. 

As for speed, both of the two had plenty of comparable ends. Both have shown the speed to blitz around as a blur, and while Madness has shown more consistent bullet timing, Gamzee being able to scale to characters like Jade and Dirkbot let him compare to that. Both also could arguably scale to light speed projectiles, though Tricky did have the better claim in this regard, as him comparing to foes who move in tandem with what are explicitly described as light speed projectiles was a more solid casse than Gamzee scaling to the laser timing done by the MSPA Reader and Kuprum, given in those cases the lasers were entirely offscreen and only described in narration. 

However, when comparing their absolute highest ends, things were pretty clear cut. Tricky was able to scale to Hank, who at best is able to react at the speed of causality, which is about the speed of light. However, Gamzee can scale to Bro Strider, who’s ability to hit a paper in super speed would be the equivalent of 16.68 c, which is nearly 17 times faster than the speed of light. And both can upscale to these values to similar degrees, so this would make Gamzee far faster. There is of course the statement of Tricky “always being fast enough”, which could imply that he has an odd ability to grow in speed as a form of statistics amplification, but this is a more questionable detail that isn’t really backed up by anything in the actual series, along with being a borderline NLF, so personally speaking I don’t buy using it.

As such, this section was overall pretty tied, as Tricky was at least 627 times stronger than Gamzee, but Gamzee was at least 17 times faster than Tricky. 

Arsenal & Abilities

Now in terms of their general arsenals, both did have quite a bit to toss at each other, though Tricky did have a pretty clear edge. Gamzee did have a decent variety of melee weaponry, but Tricky’s options were overall far more deadly in execution than them, most notably given his variety of guns that gave him a significant range edge over Gamzee’s single bow and arrow. Not helping is that a decent chunk of Gamzee’s options were frankly pretty irrelevant to a fight, as plenty of it was stuff that he’s never used in fights even if it was potentially useful. Abilities were similarly pretty stacked in Tricky’s favor, as thanks to the Improbability Drive, Tricky boasted a lot more directly useful abilities for combat, whereas Gamzee’s abilities were more indirect in comparison. Between these factors, he’d definitely be able to quickly dominate the battlefield with goon summons, projectiles, and all sorts of weird shit, which would definitely be able to keep Gamzee on his toes. 

However, in practice, not many of these options were things that could be used to bypass the most broken part of both characters: the fact they’re both really bad at dying. Sure, Gamzee was significantly weaker than Tricky, but raw power alone isn’t enough to take down the juggalo, so a lot of the above mentioned advantages wouldn’t actually be that effective at killing Gamzee. And similarly, while Gamzee could conceivably speed blitz Tricky with a ton of attacks, just stabbing him blindly wouldn’t be enough to end the clown. That basically meant that most of the fight would devolve into, well…

Now, the question of which of the two could even figure out a way to take out the other was a pretty debatable one, given the insane amount of punishment both could survive. Though Tricky did have a couple notable arguments on him being able to end Gamzee. For starters, atomically disintegrating him was a method of death that was significantly more deadly than anything Gamzee has been shown to have survived, which at best was getting cut in half. This is an ability Tricky showed in his Demon form and is consistent with how Dissonance Energy is specifically described as being able to affect targets on an atomic level, so this was a method that could be used to hypothetically take Gamzee out. This method would also completely destroy his body, meaning Tricky wouldn’t be able to revive him back either. But because that might not be enough, there is another, more hypothetical way to bypass it thanks to the Improbability Drive.

See, while Gamzee’s layered meta immortality does make him practically unkillable in Homestuck’s original narrative, we do know that it’s not a complete defense, as seen with his ultimate death in the Post-Canon. As mentioned, there’s not really a clear explanation offered by the story on how this was possible, but to go back to the “narrative rules don’t apply now” interpretation, that implies that being able to adjust reality’s rules can allow him to die. As such, the Improbability Drive being able to affect reality and break its rules to cause illogical things to happen would potentially let him break the rules of Gamzee’s immortality, therefore making him able to die. Now are these completely perfect win conditions? Admittedly, no, as there are many elements of both series which are up to interpretation and you could argue these wouldn’t be enough to end Gamzee. However, there is at least an argument that these methods could kill Gamzee, which is a lot more than you could claim in terms of his methods to kill Tricky. 

For one thing, quite a bit of Gamzee’s kit just wasn’t going to be useful. As mentioned, just stabbing Tricky a bunch wouldn’t be good enough to do it, and while you could argue the Warhammer of Zillyhoo could hypothetically do major damage, it’s a bit of a stretch to get to that point. The chucklevoodoos were likely not going to affect much either, as fear is not something Tricky has shown to be motivated by, and even potentially giving him illusions wouldn’t do much considering the sheer chaos Tricky can unleash. Time travel also wasn’t a good option, given that not only has Gamzee never used it mid-fight and would have no idea when to go to, given this would be their first meeting, but even successfully messing with time wouldn’t do much, since Tricky would not be affected by timeline changes. Even trying to play the long game couldn’t work, given that while purple blood trolls can live a while, they can’t live forever like a Zed. 

There was one last potential ace in the hole in Lil Cal, given the puppet is able to brainwash enemies, which could potentially net Gamzee the win on a technicality. However, not only has Gamzee never personally used Cal in the middle of a fight, the corrupting effect was something that has only been shown to take effect on foes who stare into the puppet’s eyes for a bit. As this is not an instantaneous effect, it was unlikely that Tricky could just be forced into looking into it in the middle of an attack, and given his inferior strength, it wasn’t likely Gamzee could force him to stare at it. Even if this did manage to get pulled off, Dissonance Energy has also been shown to be able to distort minds, and given Tricky is able to resist that energy, he should potentially be able to resist the brainwashing for long enough to knock it aside.

For what it’s worth, generally Gamzee’s immortality methods were more effective on paper, as both of his meta immortalities were just things he had innately. Meanwhile, the Higher Powers reviving Tricky wasn’t something they’ve done more than once on him, the cloning thing was a bit questionable to apply to standard Tricky, and the Improbability Drive’s revivals could be negated by destroying it. However, the big issue here is that it’s not likely for Gamzee to figure out that the Drive is how Tricky can deny death, as he generally is not someone who tends to fight strategically. Tricky’s superior durability and Gamzee’s tendency to drag out kills also meant it was unlikely Gamzee could just accidentally damage with a stray attack to the head like Hank did before Tricky could finish him off in turn.

Tertiary Factors

So, finally there’s this section, which is fairly clear cut in Tricky’s favor. Both of them are insane to the point of not really relying on traditional intelligence or skill, but there wasn’t much question that Tricky, formerly being a knowledgeable scientist that was stated to be the second smartest character in Nevada, had far more potentially impressive intelligence than Gamzee, who spent most of his life just getting high. Experience was similarly pretty stacked, as Tricky has been able to hold his own in direct battles with both large groups of opponents and other fighters with body counts in the triple digits. Gamzee, by contrast, had a far more limited experience in direct fights, as much of his threat was more through intimidation over direct combat. And while both did have ridiculous pain tolerances, Gamzee has shown he can still feel hurt after enough punishment, as opposed to Tricky, who is quite literally immune to it altogether.

Conclusion

“YOU DO NOT KILL CLOWN! CLOWN KILLS YOU!!!!!”

Advantages:

• Far stronger with high end scaling

• More effective arsenal and abilities

• Improbability Drive was unlikely to be countered

• Potentially able to bypass Gamzee’s immortality

• Far smarter and more experienced 

• Has the best FNF mod

• Cheshyre

• Would genetically engineer catgirls if given the chance

Disadvantages:

• Weaker without high end scaling

• Far slower

• Immortality was otherwise less good on paper

• Whatever this is

• Didn’t get his sweet and sour sauce

• Madness Combat lore is a euclidean nightmare for scaling

“I TOLD YOU TO MOTHERFUCKING KNEEL, MOTHERFUCKER.”

Advantages:

• Stronger without high end scaling

• Far faster

• Immortality was better on paper…

• Was somehow the less annoying one to research

• Toby Fox

• HoNk

Disadvantages:

• Far weaker with high end scaling

• Less effective arsenal and abilities

• …but Tricky could potentially bypass it

• Had no real counter for the Improbability Drive

• Far inferior in intellect and experience

• Killed Nepeta 🙁

• <insert joke about the Homestuck fandom here>

• The Epilogues fucking suck

These two certainly weren’t playful clowns to be underestimated, and it’s likely that thanks to the two’s quite literally inhuman persistence, this battle would be a long and dragged out one for both of them. However, while Gamzee was a slippery one, Tricky’s superior power, kit, and experience in all things combat would be enough to sentence this troll out of this reality. Unfortunately for Gamzee, the only killing joke to be found here was his inevitable expurgation. 

The winner is Tricky the Clown

End

So, this marks the end of my blog’s first season. It’s been about a year and three months since I started making these, and I feel like I’ve had a good ride with them so far. If you're wondering why this of all matches ended up getting the honor of being the season finale, it's because it's my favorite matchup ever. These series could mesh very well, the Improbability Drive offers a lot of animation potential for both weird set pieces and choreography, and I can't think of many matches where the death potential is "you can do as many as you want just to sell how unkillable these two are". One part of this match I think is pretty underrated is the music potential, since both series have a lot to offer. I'd envision it as a really chaotic electronic piece that makes it seem like reality is failing to comprehend the battle, and if I ever get the money to splurge on a commissioned track you know that's going to be my first pick. And finally, despite the annoying bits of research I’ve had to do for this match, these are both series I adore a lot and love thinking and talking about, so I’m glad I was able to cover them. If I made you interested in or gave you more of an appreciation for either, I’m glad to see it.

In any case, this is not the end here, I am fully intending to keep up with these blogs into the foreseeable future, and I hope that I’ll continue to be able to keep up the quality with these. Thanks to everyone who comments and keeps up with these, it means a lot to me that these are always pretty well received. 

Next Time

Sourcelist:

• Tricky Respect Thread by u/Hank_J_Wimbleton_69

• Gamzee and other Homestuck Respect Threads by u/Cleverly_Clearly

• The MS Paint Adventures Wiki

• The Madness Combat Wiki

• The Madness: Project Nexus Wiki

• The VS Battles Wiki