...Okay upon arriving at my Marriott that is, shit you not, on a road that is Canadian slang for "heroine addict drive", it occurs to me that June could've been intended at least as far back as Game Over.
sidescript-(May have been further back, but I'm being realistic about how stuff like this gets made, creatively, and I mean if we're honest it's still very likely it wasn't even intended until the instant Andrew encountered the theory in the wild, and just. Get off my back ftvygbuhnijm)
We know that the toxic masculinity stuff in relation to both narrative control in general, and Caliborn in specific, was intended.
We also know that metatextually, June cannot be a narrator in the traditional sense. Her classpect doesn't jive with it, her feelings on retcon as an ability don't jive with it, and so on.
But what really sold it for me was that June's character arc relying on retcon doesn't actually make much sense metatextually if she's a guy.
Like obvs Homestuck as a story tends to really eschew character arcs in the traditional sense, but everybody that survives to the end has a thematic and metatextually meaningful transformation in their character. Davepeta is rather self evident (though I should def do a post about it sometime), Dave is more self assured and self-fulfilled away from Bro, Karkat's self-loathing dimmed with positive social contact, Terezi gained imposter syndrome as the tragic punchline to pre-retcon Terezi's plan, Vriska finally got the opportunity to experience a taste of the life she deserved and spurned it for a lot of stuff that I'm sure millions of words have been written on already (some by Andrew themself!), and so on!
But June? Hm. On the surface June hasn't really changed that much, aside from supposed media taste and trauma? Except, wait. She did have one other major milestone, actually!
At the start of the story she was someone the narrative kinda shafted, with all the familial death, losing Vriska, having to kill herself via retcon, and so on.
And for the most part she was... kinda lax about it?
She was angry at Bec Noir, obvs, but mostly she was spending time being pissed at liking bad movies and Davesprite watermarking shit with his face. She wasn't really engaging with what the narrative pushed onto her, she was just. Accepting the punishment as fact of life.
But after Vriska (another canonically trans character, sure, but also perhaps more importantly a woman, insofar as the relation between gender and Narrative Dominance is concerned) gives her the "ultimate weapon" (a weapon that is not a weapon, hm, I should do a deep dive on that someday...), she starts to acknowledge that the fucked up shit the narrators do doesn't have to be that way.
By the leadup to Game Over and Caliborn's authorial and literal fight with June starts, she has sort of filled this narrative contrapasso with Narrators, and especially Caliborn.
Textually, it is both a crowning moment of June taking a stand in opposition to the Narrative hurting her friends, but also setting up how much work there still is to stop it from happening any more. If we look at this from June not being trans, then the metatextual implication is that... characters... don't have to take shit from the narrator?
(There's also "men can and should advocate for women", which is a good one, but feels... soft? Given the broader scope of the story? Idk, I like this reading but I'm trying to push June readings into the light vygbuhnijm)
Obvs there doesn't have to be metatext here, it could just be that this was the best way to lead into the awesome visual of Game Over being a second Cascade, where Intermission and Act threaten to collide with one another (Hm. I wonder if Collide being named that was intentionally making overtures to this...).
But it's already a really important event in June's character and as a sort of trigger for a lot of thematically gravid events, so it feels weird that this event in particular wouldn't have anything to add beyond acting as pure meat?
(T'be clear, not in a "Wow if Andrew didn't put thought behind this she's dumb haha" way, just in a... "A lot of thought and consideration was clearly put into this moment and the events that would come out the other side, so it would be insane that it was all just off the cuff".) (Also this wouldn't seem to jive with how Andrew has written Homestuck prior to it. For all that they focus on a stress-relax-stress method, they tend to put a lot more metatextual weight in the meat than in the candy.)
BUT, if June is trans, then suddenly this is also about self-actualization and making a stand against both an external enemy and an internal one. She's not just punching Caliborn, she's punching the manifestation of everything she hates about herself and wants to separate herself from. Caliborn becomes the anti-June, her Joker. And Game Over now metatextually balances June's growth into herself, whether she realizes it yet or not, against everyone from the meteor dying, who, importantly, did not get the chance to actually *have* that growth.
It implies the meteor crew were already ghosts *long* before Game Over had occurred by highlighting that lack of growth, and mentally preps us for June being a more active (or perhaps "passive" in this case, hahaha classpecting humor) participant in events.
Anyways. So uh. Yeah! I've got a wedding to get to in under an hour, and the bus takes like 20 minutes to get there, so BYEEE
- Let the record show; I have no idea what I'm doing
