Prefacing the meat of this post with the disclaimer that I do really really love Homestuck!! It's a huge part of my life, even if I'm not super integrated into the fandom side of things, and I think about a lot of it on a daily basis. Genuinely it means so much to me, which is why I think about this critique so often.
Homestuck is not kind to aromanticism. Like at all. In most other senses, it was super great for queer rep!! I'm not saying it's not, but regarding aromanticism specifically.....
There are, arguably, three mentions of aromanticism in the entire comic. It first comes up with Kankri, as a part of the whole... satire of an SJW Tumblr user caricature that he is. Very much played for a joke, very much making fun of aromanticism.
The second is Jake, who calls for "No romantic stuff! No platonic stuff either!" in one of his discussions with tavrosprite, but again this isn't handled super well? It's very much framed as a self-destructive statement here, even though his experiences do actually resonate really well with me as an aromantic through an aromantic lens!! The conversation continues with tavrosprite talking him down from his declaration of aromantic (and aplatonic) intent and it's super heavily framed as though if that were his reality it would be inherently lesser. Obviously he's not canonically aromantic, not necessarily (though I still have my own personal headcanons about it, I recognize that they are not canon in any way), but he's still one of the only two even references to it in the original comic-- given he explicitly says he wishes there was a word for the no romantic stuff no platonic stuff feelings he was having.
I think the third one is the worst one, though? It's in the Epilogues-- and I need to put it on the record that I genuinely love the Epilogues. I think they're fascinating and they do what they set out to do really well. Yes, they're supposed to be difficult, and they're supposed to be upsetting to read! It's fun!
This statement, I do not think, is supposed to be interpreted as "difficult and challenging intentionally".
In the epilogues we get to find out that Callie is maybe-aromantic! Here's the quote: "[Roxy's] possibly aromantic skeleton alien monster girlfriend."
This is... like really bad, actually? Especially given that we never go on to wrestle with this queerness, unlike with the other parts of Callie's identity?
It's framing their aromanticism as the first in a list of progressively more inhuman statuses, and directly tying it to the romantic relationship Calliope's in. The implication, of course, being that aromanticism is inherently inhuman just as these other categories are. It is inherently othering to aromanticism as a whole, while also aligning one of the only two explicitly aromantic characters in Homestuck with a romantic relationship that goes on to be a major focus of their story without addressing the aromanticism at all.
Again, I love Homestuck very much, but I think there's a conversation to be had about the aphobia present in the comic and its contemporaries, as an aromantic fan.
I'd say that the description of romance as a whole in the quadrant system is aphobic because it implicitly states that all human romance must also contain sexual attraction ("Matespritship is the closest parallel to the human concept of romance trolls have. It plays a role in the trolls' reproductive cycle, just as it does for humans."), and that the only romance to not contain sexual attraction are the "weird troll things" being auspisticism and morailagence. By itself this could be seen as an oversight but I think within the context of your post it could be seen as intentional aphobia.
This is a really good point, yeah. The aphobia in Homestuck... wild.
The absolutely fascinating thing about Homestuck's aphobia, though, is that the quadrant system serves as a critique of how romance is framed and constructed in society and the absurdity of the way we define these relationships. It's a satire, in many ways, of amatonormativity; and it's intentionally framed as ridiculous, multiple times. While we as a fandom have grabbed onto it as something we really like, because it is to be fair incredibly fun to expand on, the framing of it in the comic is very consistently mocking. Genuinely I am fascinated by how such a solid satire of amatonormativity and the arbitrary nature of romance, two very incredibly aromantic talking points, coexists with Homestuck's aphobia.
I think it's similar to how homestuck has both criticisms of white favoritism in the trickster mode arc and characters based off of racial stereotypes; hussie is just for whatever reason inconsistent in his criticism
i feel like the framing of the mention of Callie’s aromanticism is kind of idk the right word for it but like just the most negative way of interpreting possible? like what is the tangible difference between “skeleton alien monster (possibly) aromatic girlfriend“ and what’s actually written? or any other combination of those words in a way that grammatically makes sense. Callie is a skeleton alien monster like that is what they are. why is “skeleton” less “human” than “monster” in your interpretation? like i dont follow at All how each descriptor is more inhuman than the prior, or how that implies their aromanticism is specifically part of the inhuman-ness of them? it’s just a (possible) detail about who they are. Like I just can’t understand the point being made here. Am I too dragongender otherkin brained to even pick up on any possible negativity relating to both being aromantic and not human (outside of the like trope sense of it I get that it’s a trope esp with robots and aliens).
Like kankri is kankri and the other point I feel like I have to go back and refresh my memory before actually digging into it but I at least understand the points Being made I just can’t with the Callie one. I’m just confused
Disclaimer in case it’s needed I Guess: I am aroace. I have openly been aroace for over a decade online (less so for irl). I haven’t gone on any dates I haven’t had any smooches or sex or any of that nature. I am the like cliche example people think of in regards to this stuff as long as they don’t learn about my Other Accounts. I am coming at this as a peer and in good faith trying to understand the experiences of others in this community. Dear readers Please don’t get on my ass about this And/or that I don’t use the typically accepted aroace flag because I don’t like the colors and simply prefer combining the aro and the ace flag into one, or flying both flags at once. Purple and green are nice colors
RE:[autumnwyvern]
I originally just ignored the point about calliope and after reading that part of the epilouges again I'm similarly confused about how it's meant to be a rude depiction of calliope as it's sort of just a description of them; unless "girlfriend" is also meant to be "dehumanizing".
It's the framing of it that bothers me. The progressive order is debatable, but it's the way the modifiers all connect and the way we never touch on the aromanticism again after this point. Using "possibly aromantic" as one of the four modifiers on girlfriend and having all of the other three relate explicitly to how Callie's othered and offputting to POV character June. It's framing aromanticism as part of that group by proxy, There's nothing inherently wrong with being aromantic and nonhuman-- as an otherkin aromantic myself, I fully get being both!! But there's a difference between happening to be both and implicitly framing aromanticism as inherently nonhuman, which is what the epilogues do by lumping it in with other explicitly nonhuman modifiers on girlfriend. Also, still a weird look to have your only non-satire explicitly aromantic character's aromanticism revealed as a modifier on them being someone else's romantic partner, and to then continually and consistently discuss said character near-exclusively within the context of that romantic relationship without ever discussing how the aromanticism interacts with it.
RE: aphobia in the quadrants
i think it’s a bit disingenuous to assert that homestuck is uncritically implying all “human relationships“ are inherently sexual in nature, considering the quadrants and the general idea of “reproduction” in homestuck is a criticism of heteronormativity and by extension allonormativity, since those are interconnected.
i don’t remember who exactly pointed it out (it might’ve been victoria of burning down the house fame but don’t quote me on that) in a tumblr post that the two characters used as an example of a red quadrant are faceless guardians who at that point are literally only known as “mom“ and “dad”. it’s kind of reflective on the childish nature of the characters, like they’re a young enough age where the one example of a “typical human romance” is your mom and dad, but also it’s about how the views of a “normal human relationship” are usually first communicated to someone in the roles of “mom and dad”. it’s also notable that the description doesn’t just mention ”sex”, it mentions reproductive sex. homestuck is pretty obviously not of the opinion that all sex should be reproductive, so i think the more accurate way to view this description of a red quadrant and by extent “the human conception of romance” is to recognize the social critique homestuck is making of the larger social push for reproduction, and how romance is the social construct this is enforced through.
i do however agree on the general criminal unde-representation of aromanticism in homestuck. i feel it could be a very interesting theme to explore in the larger themes of homestuck, and yet it never comes up properly. part of this i guess is that homestuck is very invested in relationship drama, it’s more interested in exploring unhealthy relationships than healthy ones, and more interested in having all its characters entangle in strange and awkward romance dynamics. but again i think someone being aromantic could definitely fit into that drama, especially with the consistent theme of trying to fit yourself into cultural ideas of relationships vs embracing building unconventional bonds if they come up and untangling personal desire from cultural baggage.
idk man I’m still not feeling it
like are we not allowed to have platonic girl/boy/whateverfriends anymore? could girlfriend be describing a sexual attraction based relationship? could the “possibly” aspect, with how it makes things vague, means that Callie isn’t aromantic and that’s just June’s guess? Could it be something that’s explored more thoroughly in the future as we see more of the ship squad on their journey? There’s just so many different ways to go about reading/interpreting that single line I don’t really think that alone with how much of the comic still ahead of us is really enough to go off of. like if they fuck it up real bad I’ll own up to it I can’t see into the future (if I could I wouldn’t be injured rn har har) so it could go either way. but theres too much nothing, for lack of better phrasing, I can’t see it I just can’t :(
RE:[lizardayna]
That is one interpretation of how kismesstitude is portrayed, but one could also interpret that portrayal as fitting into the broader theme of plationic idealism in homestuck; the faceless archetypes of "dad" and "mom" could serve to re-enforce this depiction as a sort of platonic form of kismestitude that is then applied to other relationships. You say that homestuck is not of the opinion that all sex should be reproductive however it could be seen as holding this opinion as an opinion rather than an outright demand since for many individuals in the universal their romantic orientation (being the most common one for their species) is directly tied to their species' method of reproduction (humans are straight, trolls are bi, and leprechauns are gay all because that is how they as creatures reproduce)
Re: Autumnwyvern
"Girlfriend" as a word has an unignorable romantic connotation when it's used without a space between girl and friend, and within the context of this scene part of the framing is placing Callie as Roxy's romantic partner to distance June from Earth C. While it could just be June's assumptions, that doesn't change the fact that it's one of two explicit mentions of aromanticism in the text that are both framed as jokes; and while it could be explored deeper at a later point, there has already been in-depth discussion of Callie's queerness in the time since then, and their aromanticism has been absent from that discussion.
It's the overall discussion of aromanticism in Homestuck that I find incredibly lacking. Either it's framed as a joke and a caricature (Kankri), it's framed as self-destructive and self-isolating (Jake), or it's framed as part of a list of non-human modifiers on a relationship with romantic connotations (Callie). I want it to be explored more in the future, because I want there to be good aromantic representation in Homestuck, but as it stands it hasn't been and there hasn't been any indication that it will be, in any way.
I find myself agreeing very much with how Aromanticism in relation to Callie is a bit odd (although it strikes me as blundering going for 'Callie, notably a bit strange, the last of their kind, and Roxy's Girlfriend' where the joke is 'girlfriend'), but I certainly don't see that permeating through the comic as an intentional-or-otherwise issue. The Dancestors are obviously going to age poorly, that's sort of the point, but the exploration of Troll/Human culture is very clearly in the sense of something closer to a nature documentary, or the fact that it's talking in broad terms about alien romance-- In the same way a general, satirized as 'dumbed down' version of this for humans is "when two people love each other very much..." As for Jake, the Nobles' session is riffing on teenage relationship drama for the whole of it. Jake shutting down around romance entirely is sympathetic to my experience, yeah, but it's also Jake Page Of Hope being a dork-- Fork found in kitchen.
This isn't to say I support it uncritically, I just don't think this discussion is revolutionary or something that needs apologizing for. Homestuck also throws around slurs like popcorn for a while. It's also misogynistic in some of the places it's not powerfully queer.
Anyway, maybe it'll come up in the course of Beyond Canon. Lord knows there's plenty of room and attention to the messy horseshit relationships.
Remember to drink water and think before you speak :3c
Oh, no, I don't think it's necessarily a revolutionary or requires-apologizing take, I just think it's a discussion worth having because Homestuck is so powerful in its other forms of queerness but it handles aromanticism specifically fairly poorly in the three times it comes up.
While I have always really liked Roxy and Calliope together, I have also found that the way the comic sort of just dances around calling their relationship something at all as a bit strange, especially since the Epilogues make it a point to almost obfuscate what their relationship is like and how it works or whatever, as if it's something possibly more strange or different than any other "weird" queer relationship in Homestuck. And I do get what you mean about the descriptors for asexuality being used in conjunction with Calliope's "otherness", like they're almost combining the two in some way that can be a bit offensive. I think a few people here are missing the general point, which isn't that the descriptors are "accurate" to Calliope's appearance, so therefore it's fine, it's more so the context for that quote and the tone it's written in.
Tone is just as important when writing a story, and sometimes biases and bigotries slip through when we're writing. It reminds me of how, in older critiques or writings for the character Wonder Woman, people would associate the Amazons and Lesbianism together. There is nothing wrong with writing about Themyscira being an "island of lesbians" or Themyscira having primarily lesbians on it. But it's the way you describe the island and Wonder Woman that matters.
"Themyscira is an island full of only women, is ruled by women, and has a lot of lesbian relationships." is a lot different from "Wonder Woman is a tall, busty, Amazonian woman from an island of lesbians."
In the same vein, I would think saying "Calliope is Roxy's asexual partner, and they've been living together for years," is different than "Roxy's possibly asexual, alien, skeleton monster girlfriend who she lives with." The first sentence doesn't list a bunch of the descriptors for Calliope and tells you more about her, such as her name, what she's been up to, and even how she might identify. The second is incredibly invalidating and uses those descriptors in a completely non-neutral tone. The descriptors are just there to only tell you about Calliope's appearance and not what is actually important to the sentence and meat (lol) of her character, which is her queerness in relation to Roxy's.
I hope I'm explaining this right, but I couldn't help but read this and agree because authors do this same thing but with lesbians (unfortunately) and I can relate heavily to you OP.
i definitely wish jake was allowed to engage with his aromantic tendencies more. it isn't even just that one explosion about no romantic no platonic, he has a ton of dialogue that reads as apathetic to being in a relationship at all, or as a lack of understanding about how romantic attraction feels. when hes originally talking to jane about his feelings regarding dirk, he essentially just goes "well we're good friends so i dont have a good reason not to", which was my general opinion about romance as a teen as someone who got courted a Lot and eventually ended up as aro. both relationships hes been in in homestuck proper and beyond canon have been out of a sort of obligation and not because he actually wanted to be in the relationship. dirk is described as a "relentless suitor" who wont give up until he gets what he wants, and beyond canon jane and jakes relationship is a mess of emotional manipulation, obligation, neglect, and control issues. also hes green black and white.
callie and roxy have both been sidelined bad in beyond canon and id love to have more insight into how their relationship actually functions instead of how other people think their relationship might possibly function, especially since callie's always been heavily associated with the idea of romantic love as something other, from her obsession with "shipfic" to her repeated references to being intrigued by red feelings as something inherently other to cherubs as a non-social species with hatred based reproductive cycles.
quadrants are definitely treated as a joke or something needlessly complicated in canon, but i really like them. my current "boyfriend" and i label ourselves as moirails because i feel like its more accurate to what i want in a partner, and as a bdsm practitioner kismitude is a good way for my to describe what i want in a dynamic, both of which are practices that allow me to avoid traditional "red" romance.
whether you like it or not, its a part of you now.
as a fellow aromantic ive thought about aromanticism (and asexuality) in homestuck a LOT, but mostly just in relation to quadrants, i never really thought about how its actually portrayed in the comic. i think a big part of that is unfortunately that im just so used to aromanticism being brushed off and treated as a joke (or at best an afterthought) that it just. never even occured to me to examine that further. but what is actually there, written in the text, does kinda suck !!
the framing of callies aromanticism IS kinda wierd. personally i dont have that much of a problem with it but i do see how it could be harmful, and considering that its the One Singular at least somewhat serious mention of aromanticism in homestuck (AND its in post-canon)... it being directly connected to romance by including it only when mentioning how callie might be roxys girlfriend was a really good point - plus its through johns perspective who at that point in time admittedly didnt have the broadest view of non-allonormative relationships. it just doesnt look great.
kankris thing speaks for itself (haha) and jake... i have always interpreted jake as aroace, i think so much about him and his arc(s??) is more interesting when reading through an aromantic lens, but ughh the way its actually framed. its like something is wrong with him and hes messed up or SOMETHING i dont even know but hes sitting away from everybody else, only talking to the joke of a character that is tavrosprite, he doesnt even get that much screen time, NONE of it is taken very seriously at all so when he expresses the 'no romantic relationships' and everything, i cant take it seriously! and then its never touched on again. i dont think im articulating myself very well at all but its all just a mess, im not a fan of the way that was portrayed. and then his whole relationship with dirk, what a mess that was, carrying on into the way hes treated like shit in post-canon, mostly by dirk and jane. he is also portrayed as Stupid for not realizing or reciprocating when jane is flirting with him and everything that follows, which i DID notice and i REALLY dislike but thats a whole separate conversation.
overall, yeah, homestucks treatment of aromanticism is. pretty shitty. maaaybe SOMETHING will improve in the future as hsbc continues (looking at callie) but i dont have very high hopes lol
what who said that
I'm not aro but if I can offer a perspective on specifically the Epilogues (because I think a lot of the stuff mentioned about HS's perspective on this is true) - I actually think the lack of clarification on Callie and Roxy's relationship serves an important purpose to some extent. IMO it's reasonably safe to say they have some sort of queerplatonic relationship that feels very secure to them, but since our POV characters are outside of it they mostly express befuddlement. Like, it should maybe be stressed that the sentence in question as being alienating is from the perspective of John, as written by Ult!Dirk. A hugely recurring theme in the Epilogues is the almost complete lack of ability for most characters to envision anything outside heteronormative relationships. The anxiety over not knowing drives a lot of John's actions and his conversations with Terezi, when really if he just sat down and had a conversation about multi-partner or platonic relationships, it all probably would have worked out (think of his flirtation with Kismesitude at the end of Act 6 Homestuck). But, John "I am not a homosexual" Egbert refuses to have these kinds of deep introspective conversations about romanticism and sexuality and gender, and would prefer to pine over women from afar. I'm sure she has completely normal reasons for this.
The fumble I think is due to the Epilogues deliberately not offering any closure on this front...all over the place it wants to use polyamorous or other nonstandard relationships as fuel for drama without really examining them because it's intentionally from that limited perspective. Or when it does, it's toxic (Jane taking Gamzee as a kismesis, thereby neglecting Jake). Jake's already been mentioned but I think Karkat may apply as well, he's clearly fascinated by romance despite an aversion to it, and it's pretty consistently framed as a hurtle for him to overcome rather than being somewhere on the aro or ace spectrum.
My hope for the future is that Beyond Canon eventually circles back around to offer other perspectives to serve as a counterpoint to what the Epilogues are doing...it's something Homestuck as a whole could improve on for sure
This is a pretty frequent topic of discussion within my friend group, actually!
The first thing that comes to mind is like... How romance is regarded in rel8ion to who has the *capacity* to experience certain forms of it. I know this was definitely discussed 8ut even though I just reread like a month ago I wasn't really focusing on shipping so I didn't really catch much of it, so I don't have any examples, I just want to throw that out there as like... A concept.
Through introducing another species with a different enough romance system to 8e odd and alien and incomprehensi8le 8ut with aspects similar enough to amatonormative romance that you can easily rel8 to it, it 8rings up a lot of questions a8out like. Are m8spritships and amatonormative rel8ionships really the same EMOTION, or do they just present the same? Does this distinction even really exist? (I would argue it doesn't: I see romance and attraction in general as too deeply personal to come to any real conclusions a8out what these things FEEL like across entire species and cultures.) Can humans experience TRUE pale attraction or are they physically incapa8le of producing the correct chemicals for it? Are chemicals and hormones what define attraction? (Again, I would say no.)
Two last things: Aro Jake is so fucking real, and also take these screenshots that I don't want to give my personal feelings on too in-depth 8ecause that's fucking scary 8ut if anyone else happens to have an analysis of them that may perhaps rel8 to the topic at hand 8e my guest...!
