> It's a little disingenuous, too, to describe Nepeta as someone who "thinks that the hemospectrum hierarchy is bad". When we first meet her, she's just too ignorant to even understand what it is! I don't think that paints Nepeta as a paladin of equality who would never, EVER find herself subject to subconscious biases. I think it paints her as the kind of person who could absolutely be naive to the way that the subtleties of macro social hierarchy are influencing her on a micro level.

@jakemorph I think there's some nuance to her understanding of the hemospectrum. From her first conversation with Equius:

CT: D --> Your fraternization with the base classes have 100sened your morals, can't you see this
AC: :33 < and i dont know anything about classes or bases or blood color, it doesn't matter!
AC: :33 < what does gr33n blood even mean! it doesnt mean anything to me and it shouldnt mean anything to anyone else!
(pg. 2162)

The "and i dont know anything" part implies that Nepeta isn't knowledgeable on the hemospectrum, as in, she doesn't know the specifics. But surely, she's aware about blood colors and the corresponding caste system to some extent, right? Nepeta's just talking to someone who knows a lot more about the hemospectrum than she does and uses vocabulary she finds confusing (note Equius' "base classes" comment, where Nepeta thinks he's talking about "bases." Both of them lack the proper self awareness to adjust for their different education levels (Also DANG Hussie is a talented writer, that's a really subtle detail that adds so much.))

If Nepeta was truly apathetic about the hemospectrum, she would be like "yeah, whatever, who cares about blood color?" Which, you might argue, is basically what she did say. But I think there's an important distinction here: "it shouldnt mean anything to anyone else" is a pretty clear statement of anti-casteism. The fact that she says this shows that even though she might not be very knowledgeable about the hemospectrum, she is against it on principle. This makes sense, as a cave girl hermit in Alternian society wouldn't have the tools to fully articulate or understand why the caste system is harmful.

I concede that Nepeta definitely could be unaware of the way that society negatively influences her. Again, she doesn't have the tools to deconstruct subtle biases and microaggressions. But also, I still think that Nepeta treats Vriska rather cordially all things considered. And for her part, Vriska does treat Nepeta well too.

I legitimately wonder why Vriska took Nepeta's rejection so calmly when she, erm, severely overreacted to Tavros wanting to stop playing Flarp. Oh wait, the answer is "Doc Scratch," isn't it? In fact, maybe Doc Scratch subtly influenced things to prevent Vriska and Nepeta from forming a strong bond, since otherwise Vriska might become a little too self adjusted to be useful to him. Who knows.

> Sure, maybe the reason Vriska hasn't found that niche isn't literally, textually misogyny, but let's use our close reading glasses here, yeah?

And, circling back to this one last time: Maybe Nepeta has subtle trans-misogynist biases, or subtle biases that result from other people's trans-misogyny. Maybe she's a subtle paragon of social justice and there are valid reasons for her blocking Vriska. The conclusion I've drawn is that what we're trying to measure here is so minute that there's no meaningful conclusion we can draw from the limited data we have. Vriska x Nepeta interactions are so rare that it's hard to ascertain if/how Nepeta is biased towards Vriska. I think that, ironically enough, this means that the deciding factor is the reader's biases towards the characters and concepts at play.