✟ Gamzee Makara { human! }

Gamzee is the embodiment of Comedy and Tragedy. His backstory is rather tragic: He had a custodian who was never around to teach him basic things and he spent an inordinate amount of time sitting around and waiting for him to show, and with the exception of Tavros he didn’t seem to have much outright friendliness aimed towards him most of the time. The guy he considers his best friend spends most of their first pesterlog insulting him and everything he stands for, and most other people he talks to don’t show much respect for him. Plus, he was born into a cult. "The Church of the Messiahs". It was a cult with hundreds of members that his father ruled. They called his father "The Grand Highblood" since he was a scary man with a whole hit list at all times. The religion consisted of clowns and weed induced prophecy and murder. Lots of murder.

On the flip side, he’s also one of the sillier people in his friend group, often participating in outrageous shenanigans and used for laughs (even during his breakdown!), and part of his potency as a comedic character is because of the tragedy mixed into his story. Strife and hardship is often a cornerstone of some of the best comedy, and this is a problem I see often: People focus too much on one side or the other when both sides are crucial to his character.

So, what is Gamzee?

Above and beyond everything else, Gamzee strikes me as an ordinary kid in a lot of respects. He spent years repressing his emotional response and awareness of his situation through the use of sopor(what he calls weed which he puts in pies an things) and devotion to his religion, and the second he lost his crutch and finds out certain truths about his beliefs he never wanted to know he completely flipped out. (Though he is back into believing it) Why? Because he doesn’t know how to react and respond appropriately to those emotions. He’s an evasive creature, avoiding truth and smiling on despite all the bad in his life. He has trouble confronting, accepting and taking the blame for his mistakes and many of the occurrences around him. This is also applicable to his emotions in a lot of way, as is made obvious in the link above, not just visceral “scares”, as is it also applicable to his belief system, as seen here: miracles He’d rather not hear about the scientific stuff, evading it in favour of his own beliefs. He doesn’t like facing down what he doesn’t want to hear— he would rather remain ignorant to the uncomfortable truths of his life and in regards to those around him. In the same log he even evades an unfortunate truth that while he considers Karkat his best friend: invertebrother He knows that at this point Karkat does not consider him the same, and promptly changes the subject: it's chill :o(

Beyond that, he is also a clown at his core. He does things because he thinks they would be funny or hilarious in some weird way. That’s not to say he’s #1 constant prankster, but this is something that can’t be avoided. He is silly, creepy and weird. This counts even as sober.

To follow up here’s a list of frequent mistakes I see with Gamzee:

1. Sober Gamzee is not a completely different character from Sopor Gamzee. He is the same person, with the same urges and tendencies, only he’s had a bit of a breakdown and he’s far more in touch with his emotions than he ever was before. He’s likely prone to mood swings, bitterness and possibly even self depreciation now, but judging from his behaviour in the cod!tier with the Alpha session, he’s still /very much/ a silly and laid back guy when he’s more stable.

2. Sopor Gamzee does not get offended by things. He will not get depressed because Karkat is being mean to him. He will not get depressed if anyone is being mean to him. He lets insults and taunts roll off his back without batting an eye. If you are having your Sopor Gamzee react badly to insults, you really shouldn’t be. This can also apply to Sober Gamzee.

3. Gamzee isn’t as dumb as people think he is. Does he avoid facts for the sake of his own ignorance? Yes. Is he socially inept? Yes. Is he dumb? Probably not. He has a good vocabulary and despite his nebulous grasp on grammar, he seems to have a pretty decent beat on his friends and things in general. Willful ignorance and capricious impulse does not equal stupidity.

4. It is heavily implied that he is empathetic towards his friends. There is a lot of evidence supporting this, especially in his early logs and even his later logs. He may not have the best advice, or really understand people enough to act on the empathy he has, but he tries: "don't blame yourself knock it the fuck back karkat has no idea how to settle " There is more in the other logs, so this is just a quick taste. Just keep in all of the advice he gives, it can be construed that he is suggesting solutions that he himself often employs when he is feeling down: Crack open a wicked elixir and hope for things to work themselves out. Ineptitude does not imply a lack of caring.

5. Karbro, Tavbro, Equibro, etc; Canonically, Gamzee doesn’t ever use any of those stick to him usually not saying someone’s name to their face and sticking to bro/brother/man/dogg, etc. He only seems to mention people by name when talking about them, rather than to them. This is more of a personal thing though, and if you want to use the -bros or -sis, knock yourself out. There’s just no canon evidence behind them.

6. He does not want to kill indiscriminately while sober. Even prior to the shooshpap. He did not randomly kill Terezi, and instead employed her to kill Vriska for him through “careful” (read: blatant and truly clumsy) manipulation. This is especially true after the shoosh pap; he’s not going to flip out and kill people just because he can.

7. Even when Gamzee is sober, it doesn’t mean he can’t be calm. Calm!sober is a very rewarding and fun play style, please consider it. I like to play it as him being very threatening still, but never quite acting on it, and interspersed with a lot of genuine joviality.

8. Gamzee and Karkat were /not/ moirails while he was on sopor. I see this mistake a lot, and it’s highly suggested that Karkat doesn’t really like Gamzee at all prior to the game. If you compare how he treats Gamzee to how he treats Sollux, Kanaya or Eridan, it’s a world of difference, and that only changes after the game begins and he starts showing concern for Gamzee. This isn’t specifically a Gamzee thing so much as a Karkat one, but it bears mentioning.

9. He will not go from high to sober at the drop of a pin. I think potentially it can be an interesting concept if done right, but he needs to be pushed and broken in some major way, such as the events in canon. Chances are there won’t be an opportunity for this to be done right, so best not to do it, especially if you want to stick to canon. It’s insinuated his transition from calm to sober was over a longer period, and with a lot of outside influences coming in to fuck things over.

Gamzee and his Friends

Gamzee is really, utterly blatant about his interests, and possibly quite loyal as well.

Check out his first log with Karkat The entirety of the log can be construed as pale flirting with the concern he shows for Karkat’s well being and his preoccupation in trying to set things up in a positive way for Karkat. You can also see that in some of his log with Terezi — It’s insinuated that Karkat likes Terezi early on, and he even manages to set it up so Terezi will be Karkat’s server player: matchmaker you can even hazard the conclusion that the spacing out may have even been an act to encourage her to go play with Karkat under the belief he couldn’t be relied on. Wow! That’s a lot of concern and thought for Karkat, and a lot of blatant pale actions.

On the flipside, his flushcrush with Tavros is also pretty obvious,

Compare that with how he acts with Karkat or anyone else. He is excitable (downright hyper) with Tavros, incredibly talkative and his entire cadence of speech is far more upbeat and less laid back than his other conversations. It’s pretty obvious he likes Tavros, and he likes him a lot.

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Vocabulary

As mentioned earlier on Gamzee has a good vocabulary; he uses a lot of different words to describe things, and quite enjoys making up words as well (harshwhimsy, grieftrapeze, etc). He also has a lot of creative names for body parts. Play with this, have fun with it. I have an extensive cheat sheet of Gamzee vocabulary both taken from the comic and concocted on my own— don’t just stick to “miracles” and call it good, have fun! That’s half the joy of playing Gamzee.

Here’s a few words from my own collection that I like to use:

righteous, riotous, contrivance, toothsome, heinous, mutinous, disorderly, desecration, horror show, salacious, reproach, raucous, delirious, salty, rebellious, lurid, grievous, unkind, uncouth, rude, shitbit, jovial, sprung, atrocious, amiss, scripture

Here’s some canon examples:

wicked, sicknasty, tight, legit, bitchtits, peeps, strict, fresh, ridic, tenacious, mucilage, sassed, noise, fraudulent, haps, sacred, sick, flagrant, grieve, blasphemer, front/fronting, ruckus, sickening, mirth, whimsy

Basically go crazy with this shit, he likes wordplay, abuse it! Pull out dat thesaurus and have some fun, but be careful about the sound of the words you use. They tend to have a certain “feel” about them, so don’t choose big words for the sake of big words. I don’t quite know how to describe it better, sorry!

Grammar

Now this is the tough one, especially since my own grammar suffers in context so I don’t quite have the words to describe it properly. The point is Gamzee does not speak with standard grammar usage. My best advice is to study his logs and get a feel for the cadence of his grammar, but I can give you a few pointers/cheat sheets, but ultimately it’s a matter of practice. Most samples are taken from RP logs I’ve done unless otherwise noted, so please ignore lack of context and consistent quirk.

Replace That/Which with What Don’t always replace it, but it is an easy way to start messing with the grammar. You’ll get a feel for when you should replace it pretty quickly, so let’s get samples rolling:

The Use of At This can also help using at instead of other words at times, like gamzee doesn’t do stuff “to” you, generally, but rather at you.

Being/Been/Be Consider using being/been/be in more improper contexts, either by forgoing necessary context around the use of such words, or playing with the order they’d usually be used.

TC: and all being like to thank you. :o) TC: YOU AIN’T GOT A MOTHERFUCKING CLUE WHAT I’VE BEEN AT, MOTHER FUCKER.

Tense play/Word Order Playing with your tenses can help with this a lot by shaking that up, also just in general messing up the order his words come out.

Okay, that’s about the best I can do on that, but please remember the grammar play. Once you get a hang of it it’s pretty easy to do, and it’s a cornerstone to Gamzee’s communication.

The Motherfuckings

Alright, just going to touch on this quick: Gamzee says variations of “motherfuck” a lot, so here’s a list of some of the variations:

motherfuckin motherfucking mother fucking motherfuck mother fuck motherfucker mother fucker

The spaces are pretty important since it’s a development to his sober quirk, I usually play them with the rule of thumb of being putting separate emphasis on either word, so keep that in mind when you’re sorting out his cadence.

The Sober Cadence

Okay, this here, is the meat of playing Sober Gamzee. I see people who have good word choices, fuss up the grammar and otherwise do a good Gamzee fail completely here because they don’t set up the flow right. Here’s something I usually keep in mind: The more threatening lines or lines which require bigger emphasis should generally be kept to uppercase, whereas friendlier lines on lowercase. Of course you’ll want to mix this up depending on his mood, but really, REALLY mind your flow. You have to pay close attention to what you put on the upper and lowercase lines, and resetting your quirk is a common device to get the right flow. Don’t be afraid to “honk” to reset a line (aka reset an uppercase line (HONK) into a lowercase one with that filler), or use an emote: : o) : o( etc, or even just laughter. There’s plenty you can do to reset your lines to keep your cadence flowing properly. Here’s a few examples:

—— even though he isn’t really threatening anyone, he still manages to get some menace in how he words things and balances things out on his lines. ——

That’s an example of resetting also, rather than having Gamzee scream about how he hasn’t been bathed in a while, he went with laughter instead so he can have nice happy discourse with his palebro. You could also use a “HONK” or a heheh or anything like that, just above all pay close attention to what you use on the uppercase lines.

SLAM POETRY

Okay admittedly for this I just crunched and wrote a lot of poems to figure this out, but here’s a few suggestions:

1. Rhymezone. Use it, love it, pet it.
2. Listen to some rap— try and focus away from a lot of the current mainstream stuff (THOUGH SOME IS GOOD!!! Your milage may vary) and instead more lyrics focused stuff with messages and stuff. The vocabulary and word play in a lot of rap is absolutely amazing, and there is some really good stuff. This can also help you figure out a beat to measure your words to.
3. Write a bunch, just practice it out. As sober Gamzee is insinuated to be a good rapper: fuck yeahAnd I thought even as Sopor he had some pretty sick rhymes, so I’d recommend at least trying to get some-what good at it
4. Mind the cadence if you’re rapping as sober. That should be an important part of your rhyme scheme.
5. Yeah, that’s it. Just practice! Use his vocab and grammar craziness, make up some sick words if you can’t find an appropriate rhyme and have fun with it.

Gamzee is in fact, the only friend in his group that isn't in college!! He doesn't mind much though, he is kinda a bum. His legal name is Gregory Makara, his religion doesn't give out middle names. His nicknames are Greg but almost everyone calls him Gamzee and to be honest his high ass hardly remembers his actual name and most likely will respond to Gamzee. Unless your his dad. He is deathly terrified of his father. He has dark umber colored skin, is 6'1", very lanky slim skinny build due to lack of a good diet and his addictions, has wild dark black curly hair, has warm Hazel eyes. He wears white facepaint with grey around his eyes, nose, and mouth to create clown facepaint. He wears a baggy tie dyed rainbow shirt, a metal peace symbol necklace, baggy jeans, mix matched character colorful socks, and bright purple crocks. He paints his nails black and wears a few different colored yarn bracelets he made himself.

Gamzee comes from Hispanic origin.