Homestuck has always benefited from a massive ensemble cast that juggles attention between each character and showcases their unique relationships, but at the end of the day attention and relevance has always been more heavily placed on a select few. Regardless of who your favorite character was, for Homestuck proper the title of protagonist fit pretty squarely over John (hence why he became lost on Earth C when a "protagonist" stopped being a thing). Even in the epilogues, where half the time Dirk is commanding the narrative and the other half John is basically accomplishing nothing, our perspective most frequently follows him. Maybe this was obvious to the rest of you, but I only recently realized that his position as our main perspective hasn't really carried over to Beyond Canon. I think his lack of narrative agency and relevance (especially since he's dead in Meat) means I didn't really notice how absent he was.
I don't know exactly when it happened, but it seems like at this point the protagonist label (if we had to assign one) has shifted over to Vriska (maybe a bit ironic since we haven't seen her in over a year and a half). I think her attainment of what seem to be retcon powers, something previously held by John, might have cemented that. It almost feels like her time in the hyperbolic time mental hell mental health maturity simulator chamber gave us a chance to get familiar with her perspective as it developed so we can understand how she thinks as we follow her.
What do yall think? Does the title of protagonist still belong to John? Since we've spent so much time with Delta Team, does it belong to someone like Ly'lac? Or to somebody else? Do we have a protagonist at all? Do we need one? Will June one day rise up and take back the crown? Does time even exist?
