This isn't like a super serious end all be all thread about who's transgender or not in homestuck this is mainly just me assembling some ideas I've had floating around that might sound absurd as I work on a fic and as I've been getting through the vrisjune forcefem john vriskafication arc with a friend on its first time readthrough of homestuck.
Something my friend picked up on pretty much instantly and called "vriskafication" was that vriska gave june what was essentially a recolored version of her own outfit, and I read the author's note to it where hussie also calls it vriskafication because that is literally the exact thing that is happening is she's making june "the new vriska" both because of her new blossoming relationship and because she is plotting out a suicide mission in a kind of ill advised attempt to karmically clear out everything she feels bad about doing in her life, topped off by passing down her dice to june.
But a big thing with all her hero talk and making june into one is that for vriska, being a "hero" is an integral characteristic pillar of vriska's own relationship with being a girl. She feels in a way she probably wouldn't even think to articulate that part of what connects her to being a girl more than anything is being a hero, so naturally when she's trying to leave her mark on what june becoming a hero will look like, it just so happens to "coincidentally" look a lot like feminizing/vriskafying her.
In a related way: "hero" is just about the furthest thing from being a girl in dave's head. Her arc is about how she really really REALLY does not want to be anything like what Bro raised her to be - straight, heroic, a man - dave actually kind of really deeply hates all this, so dave's girl gender does not include "hero". For reasons I won't fully explain because I feel this is going to be a long enough post as it is, dave's gender includes "mom". Basics of this come down to her wanting to be pretty much the opposite of how bro raised her and sure you could take that in a lot of directions but I further submit dave's entry item and sprite, an egg and a crow who incubated it (which a dave would later combine with) and how dave later in the comic seems to have a strong fixation on moms, in a way that is easy to kind of brush off as a gag about how dave keeps blundering into freudian slips and hitting on relatives, but also I think is a bit revealing of her own personal desires. I'm not trying to convince anyone here this one is just my personal take.
IMO a lot of transgender homestuck analysis is figuring out what concepts a character deeply tied in with gender and specifically their own gender identity and teasing those out in ways that let you figure out how they're transfem.
Jade's girl gender includes "dog" in case you were wondering and this is the one I am least interested in defending so instead I simply will direct your attention to jade's reasoning for why she wouldn't wear a fursuit that while partially colored by a kids' "I'm not weird like those other furries" attitude actually has a lot to do with how it would be silly because it wouldn't actually get her closer to being an animal (and boy it sure is interesting what happens to her by the end of act 5 huh)
I don't have too much to say here but I have always felt there is a half decent transgender read on most of the cast, primarily because of how homestuck handles the topics of gender and in particular, patriachy and toxic masculinity.
When the big bad person in control of the entire story is just a literal stunted man child and the one who ultimately defeats him are his sister and Vriska fucking Serket, the semblence of transgender messaging here is kinda apparent.
I do also think it is worth viewing a lot of the ways homestuck handles gender under the retrospective lens that we KNOW Hussie is nonbinary, much like how the same analytical lens is used for Celeste or perhaps the Matrix. I don't want to be parasocial about this but when Hussie describes most of the cast as "pseudo self inserts" a certain picture is painted.
Vriskafic8ion comes for us all ::::)
Ooh, I've got a few of these.
Nepeta's RP character is a mother, but Nepeta herself doesn't carry any of the traditional/expected traits. Not to mention she gets miffed pretty quickly when the idealized, non-committal motherhood doesn't work out how she's expecting it to go. Add on how well she gets along with the distilled masculinity that is Equius, her merging with Dave, and having a massive crush on somebody who has to date dated zero women, there's plenty of room for a transmasculine reading.
Speaking of Equius, he's what happens when somebody refuses to engage with the Vriskafication. Being stuck with his fists instead of the bow he wants to use (bows being a popular girl's weapon in RPGs) is a metaphor for being stuck in masculinity. His grotesque infatuation with Aradia includes a form of envy. Here is a girl that refuses to be bound by Alternian custom, and he can barely keep his composure because of it. Equius is capable of making the leap. He's even able to make feminine bodies. But time and again he refuses to grant himself what others freely take.
And we can't talk about Jade's gender without going into her home life. Grandpa Harley has views on gender that would make Caliborn proud. Men are supposed to wield massive guns and kill without hesitation. Women (and animals) are trophies to be displayed as proof of your domination over them. And when Jade gets into an argument with his stuffed corpse, the topic happens to be that Jade's weapon isn't big enough.
Magic is FAKE AS SHIT/FUCKING REAL
Ah fuck I fat-fingered a hotkey for sending posts.
Continuing with Jade, let's talk about her own stuffed corpse. Grandpa has physical evidence that Jade will be a girl; an exact copy of the girl she'll grow up to be, in a dress and everything. But unlike the ladies on display across the manor, Grandpa hides this one in the attic. He might know the truth, but he can lock it away and pretend it doesn't exist.
Magic is FAKE AS SHIT/FUCKING REAL
I'm about to get on a plane across the Pacific can someone who follows me on Tumblr post some transgender Meenah meta
>eats somewhere other than olive garden once
>fucking dies
In general the thing I have been thinking on recently is, for lack of a better term, clowngender Roxy, psycholonials ways that is, specifically in the context of hs^2 and the epilogues(debateably bc too) but like, the set up of the meat and candy split for roxy being one end fully womanly, full on milf, the other end a dude a guy, in the most strilonde style wears special shades and everything, and yet roxy is deppressed and sad and feeling kind of shit in both, and i think its a natural extension of the themes and narrative of the epilogue to make a point of, meat and candy with their respective inhumane gods set boundaries to what a person can be, where roxy is naturally struggling to fit into either box not because the boxes themselves but instead a disconnect from the whole system(in general this i think also ties into the nature of what self insert aspects roxy has but that's a completely different meta)
homestuck to me reads as an incredibly transfem comic, and this is especially backed up by how the comic depicts masculinity. every depiction of masculinity is either toxic and violent and unhealthy (caliborn, bro, equius, etc), or dismal and depressing (dad egbert). and every "male" character in the comic that is portrayed in a positivie light all act a lot less masculine. masculinity is a thing in homestuck that is not meant to be aspired to, its always a prison trapping the characters and to which true freedom is escaping from those shackles.
June Eg8ert's #1 Fan. June Egbert's #8 Fan.
by contrast, femininity is almost always shown as empowering and freeing and radical. its kind of beautiful to me
June Eg8ert's #1 Fan. June Egbert's #8 Fan.
to be clear I kinda wanted to share like
the idea of figuring out words/concepts characters associate with their gender (or heavily disassociate with their gender) and encourage more exploration of that. I love me some general transgender analysis dont get me wrong I just kinda wanted to make it clear that that's the point I had behind this thread.
another good example I think would be like
I think two words that are intrinsic parts of gender for tavros (as a girl) are "fairy" and "gamer". Her dreams of being the fairy that pupa pan would visit implicitly liken her to the role of jane in peter pan, "games for girls" is a refrain when any game she plays comes up, all the people she played games with prior to her paralysis were girls, and when she roleplays with vriska in the plot point she does so as a girl fairy - therefore her girl gender insofar as she connects with it is "fairy" and "gamer"
https://lime-bloods.tumblr.com/post/676501496438865920/with-regards-to-this-finding-transgender-subtext?is_related_post=1
this post I think makes a good argument for "bunny" as june's girl gender word
I think there's also a strong argument for "daughter" as one for june bc of her interest in movies with father-daughter relationships and particularly the one in con-air (which ties right back into the bunny (which ties back into the daughter stuff again as dave implicitly compares june to casey as she's giving the bunny to her)) this can also kinda fit with how in beyond canon june never really leaves the bean style that the writers and artists have compared in their commentary to june not really seeing herself as an adult yet
woah look ma I'm on TV
>eats somewhere other than olive garden once
>fucking dies