Headcanons and Trans Representation

or, Margot titles her thread comments now, the self-important prick

I'll start by saying that Homestuck’s whole take on gender and sexuality at large is very interesting to me. The inherent metatextuality of it, which fully embraces the idea of the headcanon as an inherent part of itself. That is to say, it purposefully leaves a lot to interpretation, seeming genuinely more interested in pushing the audience to have their own readings of it.

As I said, I (mostly) quite enjoy that. I have previously talked, in a more tongue-in-cheek kinda way, about how I see certain characters in HS as butch, for instance. And I could say a lot about how important that was to my own identity, and my perception of gender and sexuality at large. And perhaps someday I will. But this is about questionable trans rep, so...

Alright. If in the best case, Homestuck's ambiguity allows for a multitude of interpretations without explicitly denying any one of them, in the worst case, it... Sort of reinvents queerbaiting. NOW PLEASE KEEP READING INSTEAD OF RESPONDING TO JUST THAT LINE. I'M NOT FINISHED.

While I love the "I know authors who use subtlety and they're all cowards" meme, there is nothing wrong with subtext. You can be, perhaps paradoxically, rather explicit without necessarily saying anything aloud. One of my favorite works ever, Berserk, has a lot of queer themes that are impossible to ignore, yet would still be categorized as subtext.

Now. Homestuck’s queerness isn’t subtext. It is woven into its worldbuilding. We know all trolls are bisexual, we know their gender is not determined by sex. Characters are explicitly queer, and go through self-discovering journeys. And most of it, for the most part, works.

When we get to trans characters, though... Things get a bit more complicated than that. While there were definitely characters which you could read a trans allegory into before (Calliope and Kanaya come to mind), I would argue that the first explicitly transgender character in Homestuck is Davepeta. And to be clear, I adore Davepeta, and I like that we have an explicitly non-binary furry/otherkin representation in Homestuck. Additionally, I am aware they were very important for a lot of people figuring their own identities out, and I do not, for even a second, wish to take that away from anyone.

Still and however, Davepeta’s non-binary-ness comes, presented in text, from the fact they are a fusion of Nepetasprite and Davesprite (himself a fusion of alternate Dave and a bird). In their talk with Jasprose, they explicitly point that out, Jasprose even commenting on the fact she still sees herself as a girl becuz cats don’t really have that many takes on gender. And to be clear, I don’t have an issue with that. Fantasy/Sci-fi explorations of gender will always be dear to me. It is, however, still an example of the non-human enby trope. One that again, I am very fond of, but that nonetheless presents gender out of the binary as something, for lack of a better word, alien.

There is only so many times I can say I don’t mind that before an already long post becomes terribly repetitive. So I’ll just say it one last time: THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH EXPLORING GENDER THROUGH FANTASY AND SCI-FI CONCEPTS. I DO NOT THINK DAVEPETA IS BAD TRANS REPRESENTATION.

Ok? Ok.

The next moments of straightforward trans rep come in the Epilogues. Meat!Calliope and Meat!Roxy explicitly come out to Jade. The latter then gets great focus on the embracing of their masculinity, as we get to see an honest-to-god transition happening on screen, which as of now, is also the only transition we saw happen on screen -- yes, we know June will happen eventually, but it hasn’t yet.

We also get a quite unique perspective on transition with Candy!Roxy, who in direct contrast to their Meat counterpart, doubled down on the traditional role imposed by their AGAB, a very common type of denial among those pre-transition. This is not to say Candy!Roxy is not trans at all, as they all but come out to John, with their monologue on how motherhood and the “purpose to their body” served as strange relief to their dysphoria and so on. I think it serves more to comment on how gender identity is much more complicated than simply “born in the wrong body”, a surface-level explanation to trans identity which is useful but nonetheless reductive. This is why, I would wager, one of the content warnings in the Epilogues reads "detransition", despite the fact that doesn’t actually happen in either timeline.

And this has been. Controversial. A lot of it comes from just average transphobia, and it isn’t any deeper than that. Another group, however, seems to be made of people that say they were “robbed” of their personal headcanon for Roxy, which is to say, almost always, transfem Roxy. And this has manifested in many ways, as mild as people describing frustration with it, through folks that cite it as one of the reasons they don’t like “post-canon” stuff, to a very loud minority who, if I can be honest for a second, sounds exactly like a transphobic parent describing how they lost their child when said child transitions.

I’ll preface the next paragraph by saying that if you are not trans yourself, your opinions on Roxy’s transition are irrelevant. You may have them if you so desire, you may, even, make them heard if you want. It is, as they say, allowed. I simply do not care. For the people that are trans tho, and who took Roxy’s transition into another gender personally... I get it. I fundamentally disagree, but I do get it. Again, as said in the beginning, the idea of the headcanon as an inherent, designed even, part of the Homestuck narrative gives one the liberty to assign any identity to any character. And to have that yanked from you becuz it is not the story they wanted to tell can feel rather unfair, especially if Roxy has, as I’ve observed is the case with many of these critics, been very important to the discovery of your own identity.

BUT, and I mean this as nicely as I can, that is, one thousand percent a you problem. To wish that a character was secretly trans all along, without engaging with the idea of transitioning at all, without any repercussions to that whatsoever, especially in detriment of actually seeing that unfold in the plot itself is... Cowardly. It’s not simply wanting escapism through fiction, that is wanting fiction to be solely escapist. It’s entitlement dressed up in robes that emulate progressivism. The personal connection one has with a character will not, ever, be more important than actual trans representation.

Which leads me to the next trans rep and general “gender stuff”, in Pestequest (I’m purposefully skipping Hiveswap as I want to focus on Homestuck proper. Which includes post-canon. Deal with it).

I will risk a hot take tho, and say most of the rep in Pesterquest is... Not textually explicit. Again, I think it’s pretty obvious Vriska and Sollux are meant to be trans, and trying to deny that is just a recipe to looking silly. That said, the most explicit discussion of gender we get in Pesterquest is about Eridan and his dresses (something that actually comes from Homestuck itself, but I digress). They are, also, “this character has been secretly trans all along” situations. Which as I made clear, I’m not the biggest fan of, at least not as opposed to actually watching a transition happen.

For what it is tho, I think it mostly works. The Pesterquest routes are meant to be short vignettes of the characters we already know, written by fans of said characters and thus projecting their own readings and, yes, headcanons. And I understand the routes have their own haters, a hate that is now also accompanied by a feeling of envy. And I don’t say so judgementally to be clear, I think it is a perfectly valid feeling to be upset that someone got to make their headcanon true in detriment of your own. I recognize I mostly like the identities being “canonized” and thus don’t have a huge problem with them, but I can relate to feeling like certain routes got characters completely wrong in other ways, so ultimately, I am capable of sympathizing with the feeling.

The larger problem here, I think, comes from the fact that we then have, as of right now, only two on-screen transitions, only one of them having any real focus: Roxy, being transmasc.

Once again I feel the need to make clear what I am not saying: there’s nothing wrong with having trans men in your story. There is, in it of itself, nothing wrong with having a trans man and not having a trans woman in your story. There is, however, much to be said about the perceived palatability of transmascs over transfems, in media and in real life.

This manifests in many ways. For instance, it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that there is a certain obsession with trans women while trans men are sorta sidelined. That is not to say this is a good thing -- the word “obsession” should give that away -- as the mainstream discourse often presents trans women as the main issue to be discussed, while the identity of trans men or their existence in and of itself is simply ignored. We see this, for instance, on how TERF ideology frames transmascs as confused innocent women, and transfems as vile freaks trying to invade their spaces. Both are terrible, both cause real material harm, and I would not dream of, as a trans woman, claiming my trans brothers have it easy out there.

I would thus hope my trans brothers would not turn on me when I say their sisters and I do have it worse. The bathroom bills and “trans women in sports” discourse are about imaginary dangerous trans women invading “cis women spaces”, and even when trans men and butch women are targeted in this scenario, it so happens becuz bigots think they are “men in disguise”. While y’all do often get caught in the crossfire, they are aiming at us.

This negative hypervisibility then results in the trouble of media representation, where they’re met with the paradox where they want to portray an underrepresented class, which is all trans people, but they also want the least amount of backlash possible, which is a trans man (one who is usually also white, and either perfectly passing or “non-threatening” in a way that usually translates to being “girly” and or “soft”). That is not to say it’s bad that we have that kind of representation, not at all, these people exist and should be represented. I wouldn’t even say it is a conscious thing most of the time, I want to and do believe people who care about representing trans people at all do not have a secret vendetta against trans women.

There is a bias, however. To put it bluntly, the sight of a “woman in pants” is less shocking than the sight of a “man in a dress”.

Ok. Let’s talk about Jade Harley now.

The first signs that Jade is not cisgender comes in the Candy Epilogues, when she talks to Jake about how Dave, apparently, cannot get her pregnant. When Jake tries getting more details out of her, she sort of dodges the question, but does reveal it has something to do with the fusion with Bec. When Jake presses on, asking if the dog genes are keeping Jade from getting pregnant, her response is literally “not my....... GENES exactly :\”, and that she asked Rose to help out. When Jake is confused about how that would work, Jade straight up says “Dave wouldn’t be the father in this scenario”. In H2^2, we then see the result of this, with Rose having bore Jade’s child... *deep sigh* Yiffany, aka Yiffy.

SO. Dog dick discourse. I would be lying if I said the Epilogues don’t hint at that. They make it very clear the problem is caused by her fusion with Bec, and that Dave can’t get her pregnant becuz of it. It should be said, they are also certainly playing into a common depiction of Jade in porn. I will not give details on this, we got minors around. If you know, you know.

So. Is Jade trans? I think it’s worth mentioning that a few members of the old writing team have confirmed on social media Jade being trans is the intended reading, but I’m sorry, that does not count. If you want something to be canon to your story, write it in your story.

And that’s the problem, I think. Neither the Epilogues’ team, nor the HS^2 team, and as of now, not the HSBC team have done much with that. At the reveal of Yiffy’s existence, they even seem to treat it as a dirty little secret, something that shall not be mentioned. And that, I think, is where the greatest problem with it lies.

I would not mind Jade being, for lack of a better term, “sci-fi transgender”. Like I mentioned in the Davepeta section, concepts like these have been extremely important to me in discovering my identity, arguably more than actual straightforward trans rep (then again, the fact that there is so little of the latter is part of the problem). Even with all the clumsiness and avoidance in the portrayal that I talked about, she still does “feel” trans to me. As a furry, I don’t even mind the dog fusion stuff, that is genuine goals for so many gals I know. I can absolutely imagine a portrayal that, if not technically transfem, could speak to transfems deeply. Could make us feel seen.

This is not what we got. The most explicit transfem rep we got so far is cryptic SBURB shenanigans that are not even allowed to be spoken aloud. Jade’s transness is treated as something that needs to be hidden. Something that we cut away from to keep it respectable.

I would not input malice from any of the teams which have approached the subject, but I am disappointed. I have faith we’ll eventually get more to it. And again, we are actually, after years in wait, getting to the June stuff. But that’s the whole point. It’s been years, over a decade depending on when you start counting, and transfems have... Crumbs. And I just think we deserve a little better.