do you have any thoughts on rifles in homestuck. there's a lot of rifle wielders in homestuck, but i can't really see a throughline with those characters or any major things a rifle represents. with most other weapons i at least have some idea what they represent and what they say about a character but not so with rifles
i can’t say i’ve ever thought about this to the degree that it seemed like rifles had some persistent symbolic significance throughout the comic, no. Jake and Eridan sharing in being Heroes of Hope and both wielding firearms seems like a pretty obvious hint at guns as tools of colonial oppression, reinforced by Caliborn’s gun literally doubling as a badge-of-office in the form of a king’s scepter.
I would have said Roxy and Jade’s rifles are basically tangential to Jake’s, their both being his proteges in one or way or another, which is not a good answer if you’re looking to semantically define a rifle as a symbol. but the frequent reminders in Jade’s narration that using a gun was her grandpa’s idea, and the way her taxidermy roleplay focuses on the urge to get a bigger gun and the fact that she can’t even carry Jake’s would seem to pretty straightforwardly position the guns in Jade’s life as artifacts of masculinity on a similar level to the tests of strength in John’s childhood. which might lend itself to explaining the little pistols baby Jake uses in lieu of a blunderbuss (though even the 2xpistols are quickly compared to the weapons used by a Tomb Raider and are thus symbolic of Jake’s defiling of hallowed tombs).