i also think the fact that a lot of the openbound-introduced dancestors are essentially parodies of the post-scratch trolls is pretty interesting when you look at it through the lens of character parallels. you can imagine that if someone like eridan had more self-awareness he might look at cronus and think 'jesus, is that really how i act?' (but of course he doesn't because he sucks) in poking fun at the fandom perceptions of those characters they almost become, like, an incredibly blunt version of that character. horuss cranks all the dumb horse stuff to 11, but he's also essentially a completely hollow person, something that equius kind of shares in how he hollows himself out to worship alternia's hierarchy, sacrificing any character growth he had or could have had in order to fulfill his role as a jokey, static bit player in dying to gamzee.