questionable trans rep in homestuck

I agree about Jade, while I appreciate that after Chapter 8 some of the writers gave their thoughts on Jade's transness of twitter, I really really wish it would've been discussed openly in the comic. I'm still holding out hope that we'll get that conversation when June starts talking about gender, but it should've happened during HS2.

Commenting to find this one later, see if anything interesting crops up. Dancestors probably got some shit going on regarding this that hasn't aged well. This thread will explode in popularity if they cast an openly cis VA for Vriska in the show, that's for sure (dear gods plz cast a trans VA).

it's okay they're going to hire me as vriska, trust

@duckbuster can I be Aranea? /lh or hell I'll even take Mindfang. /lh

omg yeah we can be spiders together haha yay

ohhh Luna could you summarize what the writers said re:her gender here? It's been a bit for me haha

ohhhh, as we're talking about Dancestors, while I think Kankri is largely written well as a critique of people who use social justice for clout without actually caring about the real issues, there's a couple things that just, read instead as Hussie legitimately making fun of "sjws" or queer people. The main thing is the whole, "trans caste" thing that Kankri briefly brings up in his rants. It's not given much space, bc it doesn't actually make sense, but its inclusion at all feels just mocking of trans identities. I don't feel like that was Hussie's intention, it feels more a result of carelessness, but still.

There's also Cronus' whole thing with being otherkin that is, again, only there to be relentlessly mocked. Not great. i won't speak further on it tho bc, I don't know much about actual otherkin identity myself :V

@alexis
yeah i mean, I don't want to go looking for the old tweets bc, one, twitter, ew, and two, I think most of the old team wants to distance themselves from Homestuck now, understandably. But to my recollection, Pip and Aysha both made tweets saying that Jade is trans and has been trans all along.

lowkey "trans-caste" read more to me as mocking "trans-racial" in it's more commonly viewed meaning. Though that could also depend on reading blood caste as more of a gender or race metaphor.

yes, but "trans racial" is often used to disparage trans people in general, which is why Kanki defending it as a valid thing seems to be belittling trans identity to me

I wasn't comfortable with the way the other characters talked about Jade and her "dog parts" lol that just made me feel like they weren't really taking it serious or they were making it a big joke or slightly dehumanizing her. But other than that, I have absolutely no issues with other trans characters in Homestuck. I really liked the small side story with Roxy and Callie exploring their genders together that was really nice how they wrote them (also they're just very cute)

omg yeah Luna of course, I just couldn't remember what the vibe was, thank you for summing it up! I think having Jade confirmed always being trans would fix: Everything in the world for me. No more of a certain brand of discourse. World peace (well... probably not)

yeah this is why I want to see it actually discussed in the comic! bc, the writers saying that makes me take it as true, but having recently reread all of post-canon homestuck, the way they shy around it kinda bugs me

As a system of otherkin enbies of transfem experience, our biggest issue with postcanon Jade has for years been the way large chunks of the fandom have considered the "dog parts" aspect to be better inherently transphobic when we know people for whom that's Hashtag Transition Goals

it's always been really strange to me how people use jade's behavior in post-canon as Proof of nefarious transphobic stuff. the #1 most common thing that jade experienced throughout homestuck proper was having her agency taken away, it makes complete sense for her to then go All In on having as much autonomy of her own self as possible, and like.

idk, sometimes people get a bit pushy?? especially when you're just getting a feel for how to actually assert yourself and your desires in a universe which has actively been pushing you down for years. it's not because suddenly in the epilogues she is trans so now she's a predator, that's fucking. Wild.

Not sure why I never see people talk about the tasteless pedophilia joke concerning John that Happened to take place in the same update as the June sorta-reveal. Again I am aware that this stuff is probably being done somehow not out of any bigotry towards trans women but there is a level of tone deafness where intent almost doesn't matter.

jade is, while not a perfect person, pretty demonized by the fandom in unfair ways. yeah she was "getting in the way" of various same sex pairings, but she was fucking lonely. she wanted a relationship and these were people who let her into their lives and then unceremoniously kicked her out when they were "done with her". is the asking for a threesome when one party clearly isn't interested okay? no. honestly i feel a little offended by it as a bi person, but she's not a predator. she's a pest at worst.

@magicmirror what exactly are you talking about? The End of Act 1 update?

i think the word i want to use for a lot of homestuck's approach to identity is "prescient". this may be kind of a chicken and an egg thing, but let me explain.

i think i've gone both ways on jade's whole deal, but i think i've come around on it. not because i think it isn't transphobic, but because it's a really reliable red flag. it's been 5 years. it is barely relevant in modern day. it is as relevant as like, gamzee drinking jane's trickster breast milk. so when it obviously lives rent-free in someone's head, it's more telling of them than it is the text. jade is a nearly-40 year old trans woman, who has been using deviantart since she was 13 in the year 2009. i'm surprised this is the only thing we get on the matter.

i also think writing off characters because they don't explicitly say outright in the text they're transgender is leaving paint on the palette. the way vriska's entire arc is a shockingly prescient depiction of transmisogyny. scenes in past karkat: wake up with vriska often have this template that goes something like:

VRISKA: Please valid8 my existence.

WHOEVER: no. kill yourself, freak.

VRISKA: Haha, you got me good! Really pr8nked me!!!! ::::)

and sometimes in past karkat: wake up, you get stuff like feferi joining in just to be on the "right side" and nepeta being like "no, i won't do mundane roleplay with you, you're a murderer" while being cute with terezi. and later during murderstuck, you get stuff like gamzee's framing of her for murders she didn't do, using things she did, which terezi believes vriska did because she had preemptively decided that vriska was the one who did it. because vriska's awful, obviously she killed nepeta and equius and maybe even gamzee.

this isn't even getting into the stuff with doc scratch, because arguing that doc scratch is a pedophile can be an uphill battle that i don't really want to fight right now.

i think saying vriska isn't transfeminine because she doesn't say it outright, even though her arc and her relationship to others is a spot-on depiction of transmisogyny and the way trans women are othered and pushed to the brink for flaws that others are celebrated for is kind of missing the point.

@lyrichartwell
as someone who cut their teeth in the early 2010s kinnie mines, i think depicting cronus as someone who lies about their otherkin feelings to manipulate others is actually kind of prescient as well. the kinnie culture of the time was - and likely still is, this surely has not gotten better - primarily a lot of teenagers, who suck at relationships at the best of times. as a kinnie tumblr survivor, i think this is an apt and potent depiction of the ways people will play this semi-spiritual aspect of themselves primarily to find new victims. the kinnie folie a deux is a classic way to feel.

and again, there's the pattern of writing off subtext. there are characters who i think are more subtly depicted as aspiring towards humanity. you could make sincere arguments for both vriska and karkat, beloved characters all around. one of my favorite moments in act 5 act 2 is vriska asking, in sincerity, what humans are like. it's got a real yearning for a human experience that really stuck with me. and with her recent helltier design, a design associated with inner peace and acceptance of the self, including the human white shirt, i think hsbc agrees. you could even argue this for caliborn and his yaoisona.

there's more i could say on the matter, but i spent an entire meeting mulling over the wording on this post in specific, and that's simply too much.

i really don't know what they can do for jade to fix the hole that was dug with that besides just confirming she was trans from a very early age otherwise like saying she was cis and then got a dog penis in the fusion is just fucking crazy its just too crazy. also just in general i feel like that route represents nobody and adds nothing there would be no point of it