Going Insane about Rose's Sexuality and The Dreambubbles

the thing about discussions about whether or not a Homestuck character is gay or bisexual is that it is probably better to go to the most intimidating, treacherous beach you can find, bury yourself in the sand, and let the waves subsume you completely than it is to ever have them. trust me. i've done both.

to elaborate: people (myself included) have such deep emotional investments how their queerness factors into their interpretations of these characters. it is very difficult to have these convos without someone feeling hurt or feeling invalidated. just like, putting an advance warning in this thread. everyone tread carefully.

alot of things in the comic are not explicitly stated nor ever even referenced at all, yet still remain in the fandom egregore.

in regards to the dreambubbles, yes, i think everyone in the dreambubbles is dead. i don't recall giving much attention to the dreambubbles once the comic went haywire. i like to think the destruction of the dreambubbles serves as a symbol of the supreme reality winning.

in regards to head cannons, they're quite expensive and extremely impractical.

the dreambubbles were destroyed by the black hole and sucked outside of "canon," into the fanfic land that is candy earth c. all the surviving ghosts are there.

in regards to what sinistral says, this is a larger symptom of the "narrative sieving" that happens post-canon: one world with everything that matters (alive characters, sburb, plot) and one world with nothing that matters (ghosts, getting married, having kids). the funny thing is that act 6 was already about that, too.

@bluebootyranger that is such a beautiful way of expressing it. and totally true. godbless

@kevin wait the dream bubbles themselves were destroyed by the black hole? I thought that was just the left over ghost army characters getting sucked into it ngl.

when talking about confirmed sexuality of homestuck characters or lack thereof, it is important to understand something: homestuck is, fundamentally, anti-label. homestuck, to use this as an example, is less concerned with confirming a character as a lesbian, and more with deconstructing what a “lesbian” or the idea of a lesbian is.

for example, look at the first in comic confirmed human gay character: dirk. he is, for all intents and purposes, what we would call gay: he confirms he‘s only interested in men, however when roxy calls him gay, he denies this label. he talks about how the label is a remnant of a dead civilization and, well, what does “sexuality” even mean anymore when there are only two people left on earth? what dirk is actively pointing out is that gay and straight and any other sexuality label exist in a cultural context, and can only exist in certain cultural contexts. this also retroactively applies to the beta kids: if your old civilization is dead, and you’re tasked with creating a new universe, why keep a system of sexuality which fundamentally exists on the basis of heteronormativity, i.e. having a “normal” and “the other”. does it even make sense to define a ”normal” and “the other” when you have only a couple people left over from the end of the world?

in this sense dirk is also an elaboration on kanaya, technically the first confirmed gay character in the comic. kanaya is, for all intents and purposes what we would call a lesbian, but the thing is “lesbian” as a label doesn’t exist in her culture. what she is seen as in her cultural context is someone with a really strong preference, the equivalent of having a type and only pursuing said type. troll culture around romance and the way it interacts with human culture around romance is in itself a critique of heteronormativity, a system with a bunch of silly labels and rituals which only hurts those who do not fit into it, but also hurt those that try to participate by systemitizing a number of social expectations aimed not at individual fulfilment but larger social goals.

dave says as much in his post retcon conversation with john and karkat: the concept of “gay” is just irrelevant at that point, and just a leftover of a bunch of social expectations and systems of a dead civilization and actively prescribing this systematized approach to sexuality oversimplifies and codifies what is in reality complex and somewhat nebulous.

TL;DR: rose never ”comes out” or is even confirmed as lesbian because that would pretty much go against the actual themes of homestuck as a story that is, all in all, pretty against systematizing and “charting” romance and love.

@lizardanya oooh that's a really great analysis of Homestuck and it's queer themes actually!

I always love it when I'm like, "I'm a lesbian", and people are like, "Oh, but let's deconstruct that!". I think the idea of escaping labels in Homestuck is funny because it ironically has its limitations. Dirk rejects the use of the word 'gay' because he's the last man in the world and there's no more culture so what do words mean. But functionally, he's still 'a man who loves men and seems to not be interested in women'. No catharsis comes from trying to force himself to act differently during Trickster Mode. So whether you label it or not, the label still paradoxically survives its interrogation and retains meaning.

Dirk is gay.

Kanaya is a lesbian. I headcanon Rose as lesbian, too, but there is no confirmation of this, and who knows what they have planned in postcanon.

Oh, and a good rule of thumb: Most people in the world are straight or bi, and fandom demographics will usually reflect this. So characters will almost always be treated as functionally bisexual by a fandom since they want to see themselves in the shimmering mirror of the story, even if said characters are lesbian or gay.

@rosebot the black hole ripped up all of reality, so yes presumably that includes the dream bubbles

Regarding the dream bubbles, I feel it is important to mention that they only existed at Feferi’s behest so that the various ghosts of the session could mingle they’re not a natural part of paradox space.

Regarding Rose, it was never explicitly stated, but she was in a relationship with Kanaya

@jakemorph ah okay, well yeah no we probably won't see the dancestors again then.

@deleriousbiznasty riiiiight forgot about that part (Homestuck is long and I got AUDHD memory issues lol) then that makes me wonder what James meant by horrorterrors returning hmmm 🤔 [looks at the new species suspiciously]

@rosebot your signature is Fucking crazy.

I feel like not everything has to be directly stated. Obviously we all know she is a lesbian, even hussie has refered to her as such multiple times. But it's also part of her theming within the series. The fact Karkats keeps insisting that her and John HAVE to get married and HAVE to have babies is obviously hitting at misogyny and heteronormativivity and the fact neither of them actually wanted that(and Rose never even entertains the thought) says a lot. The way that the only possible heterosexual parings "hinted" are all her being forced by men she is clearly not interested in (Doc Scratch, Eridan, John bc of Karkat) and when she rejected Eridan his immediate fucking reaction was "She is soooo into me". And Doc Scratch is a groomer so. Basically, all possible romantic/sexual relationships with men are her being forced by others or sburb into it, all while she ignores or outright reject those and instead goes for the Lesbian Alien Vampire Lady. I don't think it can get more obvious than this

Pretty good observations. Those are all pretty classic hallmarks of The Lesbian Experience(tm). And I always did like the metanarrative about rejecting heterosexuality as an imposed default.

personally like as someone who finds labels frustrating and restrictive even if i "count" as certain things i like that labels are less emphasized in homestuck because it decenters heterosexuality as the "normal" sexuality. it's not explicitly said rose or kanaya are lesbian they're just only ever shown being interested in women and that should be enough for the reader to get it.

i think that writing style even extends into the epilogues somewhat where the only character that really latches on to labeling their identity is dave? roxy talks about being transgender and changes pronouns but there isn't as much particular language surrounding what label to use but dave is talking about being gay the whole time because he's the character the most obsessed with and attached to earth's culture. i think it's an interesting aspect of his character that isn't brought up much but like even in one of the old walkarounds he was complaining about not being able to see earth culture past 2009 and that kind of informs like his entire worldview on gender and sexuality throughout the whole comic.

I don't know that this was necessarily a deliberate choice, but I think Homestuck's disinterest with the culture of labels many of its readers exist within really works in its favour when it compels the reader to seriously consider those things that go unsaid. Like, even when we're told that trolls are technically bisexual, or that gender works different for them, there's a lot more value to be extracted from the text when we're trained to identify the ways in which some trolls are actually gay, or straight, or have very human relationships to gender identity.

Actually now that I think of it, maybe some little part of that WAS intentional, given that all our understanding of trolls as "bisexual" comes from Aranea, whose fixation on labels so often seems to get in the way of what she's actually talking about...

re: delirious binary

so, the dreambubbles that the trolls/kids were in were made by feferi request, but dreambubbles exist wherever horrorterrors are. these are just ones that were made for being a purgatory for dead teens specifically instead of psychically torturing charles dutton, i guess?

*biznasty. autocorrect. anyway,

dayna and mansta's responses are both super on point. i will say re:magicmirror's "I think the idea of escaping labels in Homestuck is funny because it ironically has its limitations." that yea this is like the logical next place to go after talking about how against labels homestuck is - being against labels can be either used to free urself from heteronormativity OR to passively disappear inside of it (you see how many lowkey conservative fans still like homestuck AJLKAS MAYBE WITH MORE OVERTLY QUEER LABELS THEY WOULDNT FEEL SO AT HOME). in fact i think that exact statement is the story the epilogues sought to tell with meat vs candy (dave's bisexual cope being the poster child of this phenomenon)

idont know if rose is a lesbian because of the insular mechanics of homestuck like. these kids only know like 5 other people in their whole lives ASDF are you really a lesbian or gay or anything if youre going off that small of a sample size?? but yaknow what i feel that homestuck is also powered by belief (rose specifically uses magic, the thing u have to believe in to make work) so like if lesbian readers project their real life lesbianism into rose lalonde then i think that makes her a lesbian for real