Is Kanaya (Mostly) Useless?

[cookiefonster]

The answer to this question, unfortunately, is an absolute yes. Her role in the beta kids' session wasn't that much bigger than a lot of the other trolls who were killed off: she tried to stop Rose from going dark then started to help Jade out with frog breeding, and that's pretty much that. It feels weird to me that Kanaya was one of the few trolls kept in the story's main cast after Act 5 because she started to REALLY not do anything other than be Rose's girlfriend. The epilogues do give her a plot role with the whole mother grub political fiasco thing, but I don't know if talking about the epilogues is allowed in this subforum.

[calamityCons]

The sad thing is I do think Kanaya has a lot of potential to be narratively important or interesting in SOME way. If the other more volatile trolls were allowed to be pacified by Kanaya or their violence was properly mediated by her, things could have turned out much differently. What if Kanaya had paid enough attention to Eridan to stop his violence before it began? What if Kanaya had been able to do something before everything went to shit? Did she even interact with other trolls or TRY to get them to get along? It seems like the trolls were in shambles even by the time they were gonna win their Ultimate Reward. Kanaya is explicitly introduced as being in charge of Mothering the next generation of Troll Society, so why isn't she exercising that kind of disciplinary/nurturing behavior to anyone???

[leijon]

There are lots of superfluous characters in homestuck in general. I do think a guiding message of some of the later acts is that being 'useless' isn't something that should have that much bearing on your reading of homestuck though. There is a plot to homestuck but it's really just a vehicle to explore or develop the characters that Hussie decided should stick. Like Rose straight up points out that Jasprosesprite has no "narrative" reason to exist, she's just there to give the audience a better understanding of Rose. So, like, yeah I guess? She's a "deadly bitch" but doesn't get very many opportunities to be useful (something she laments herself when trying to convince Aradia to let her hang out by the green sun forever), but being deadly and upset about feeling useless are just parts of the plot designed to give you a feel for her character. Which is something that you could argue Homestuck failed at since a Lot of characters don't get satisfying character arcs, or better put, they don't get character arcs that you don't have to read between the lines and scrutinize to hell and back to understand

TLDR Yeah technically she didn't do much outside of the genesis frog/killing eridan/talking to the space denizen at the end but it isn't something that matters that much in the context of a story like homestuck and I don't think she's as static as some people think she is she's just kind of awkward and pretty funny and a weird romantic which is cute. love her

[Dream Muttman]

Kanaya's biggest sin is being a moderating influence in a cast of volatile characters. Her better moments are when she's being volatile herself, but these are rare and only get rarer as the comic goes on.

If the three year gap had been rendered with more resolution I wonder if there would've been a way to keep her interesting. Fundamentally, I think she lacked conflict. Maybe something like "Her and Rose manage to recreate the Matriorb but then Kanaya decides to secretly hatch it in the meteor" would've put her close enough to the center of a conflict and generated enough stakes that she wouldn't be boring.