i low key fell for meowrails hype when i was first reading homestuck but in my defence i was like 12. in retrospect they’re like, a deeply heterosexual relationship and i mean that in the sense that like they’re toxic in the way a lot of straight relationships where the man is a misogynist is..

act 5 has a big thing for introducing straight relationships that get radically re-examined in retrospect (terezi and karkat is a BIG one) and meowrails kinda slips by because they don’t really get put into focus after their deaths.. arquius apologizes to fefeta i guess. my point is it’s easy to come out of homestuck without truly examining their relationship unlike for example karezi where you get basically bludgeoned into recognizing the flaws in their dynamic.

ultimately meowrails are built on equius thinking nepeta is embarrassing and telling her to pipe down and nepeta dragging him into a semblance of emotional maturity. she’s not even “fixing him” because the core of their dynamic is that neither of them actually change for each other, nepeta still does all that shit equius thinks is embarrassing and equius literally dies on his racist hill at her expense.

i also can’t help but note that nepeta encourages equius’ pursuit of aradia, even though anyone can see that endeavour is a dead end built entirely on his racism and misogyny. in this way nepeta just kind of condones his misogyny, similar to how in real life straight relationships where the girl knows her boyfriend is a shitty misogynist but never meaningfully calls it out just passively encourages her shitty boyfriend to be terrible to women in general.

so yeah at the end of the day i think meowrails is one of those relationships that we’re meant to deconstruct after it’s introduced, it’s just the message doesn’t fully stick because the criticism is never explicit and the relationship gets referenced in somewhat positive light until the very end.