questionable trans rep in homestuck

@lyrichartwell re: Cronus, Horuss is also written to mock plurality :(

@lyrichartwell - Yeah. Where John is like, "And I didn't even know how old Terezi was!" or whatever.

@victoria
That's a fair point about Cronus that I can see. I think it still leaves something of a bad taste in my mouth, but as I've said, I'm not really that deep into that community.

I agree that a character doesn't need to explicitly say that they're trans, and often that's not really what I want from stories. With Vriska especially I think I really like how the comic portrays her as trans without explicitly saying so, especially with her Pesterquest route and how it considers a bunch of things from the comic and contextualizes them in a way that makes that reading obvious. However, I feel like the Jade thing has taken on this whole reputation and I agree that mostly people who still harp on about it are bad actors, but I would still just like for them to make things clear. I also feel like it would itself be a valuable scene for Jade and June to talk to each other directly about gender. Sometimes it's better to leave things unsaid, but also sometimes it can be really cool to actually directly talk about it.

@magicmirror

ah, true. I took it as John panicking and admitting to things that don't matter and sort of just, getting down on himself. I don't think Terezi was actually underage when they were flirting throughout the Candy Epilogues, but I think it makes sense that John would panic/worry about that when he has such a habit of kind of, well, as roxy puts it in that one Candy Epilogues chapter, performing "self-flagellation fests", which is a bit what he was doing in that scene. So, I suppose I didn't read ill-intent into it? But I can absolutely see the concern of, in the same update we first tease June, such a joke is being made.

I have bad brainfog atm so not sure how well this is gonna come out.

When the Vriska's entire act 5 arc revolves around how other people continue to do things equivalent or worse to her own actions yet all the blame gets put on her while Gamzee gets away with a simple papshoosh as their "punishment".

Alterniabound especially leans on this idea that Gamxee is some oh so poor victim and Vriska is the scary trans woman who hurts everyone when he is like "ShIt, I WaS AlL GoInG To aSk iF YoU WaNtEd tO HoP In tHe hOrN PiLe fOr a bIt oF MoThErFuCkIn sHuTeYe, BuT... I DoN'T ThInK I WiLl cAuSe i'M pReTtY MuCh sCaReD Of yOu."

I think the fact I also have seen multiple people claim Vriska is a "sex pest" for kissing Tavros that one time speaks volumes of how trans-misogyny affected Vriska as a character is.

@m unironically, i would feel represented by that. if trans women like her, she should stay trans, but i have pcos and randomly developing anatomy that produces a ton of testosterone in one's teenage years is highly relatable to me. i feel very much in the space between cis and intersex; my own ovaries dose me with testosterone, and i'm on hrt. i mean my voice broke as a teenager and i had to get voice lessons to be able to sing. i relate to the idea of an "interrupted" puberty. having what i can only describe gender dysphoria as a cis woman is like, difficult to explain. randomly getting a dog dick is one of the few metaphors i could use to get across how that feels. the fact that jade would have randomly gotten a that it's so there and ridiculous is one of the reasons why it resonates with me. other people might find it offensive, but it feels very emotionally true to me. i'm not offended by it.

@crystalflare even more backed up by the point that hussie admits gamzee is lying when he says this.

that all being said, i like trans jade. i feel like it's not fair to saddle her with so much baggage. it's totally disproportionate.

asfggf i meant able to speak in a high voice. everyone needs voice lessons to sing. i'm not communicating this well. i have a very deep voice. is what i'm trying to say.

it isn’t entirely relevant but since it came up I guess I’ll talk about how the most like “controversial“ take/hc/whatever that I had (and I do kinda still think this to a degree) is that Cronus actually being humankin interests me way more than it being purely for attention and/or to be an ass. like all the trolls are parodies or pastiches of Annoying People On The Internet to varying degrees and the dancestors are an Incredible time capsule of the various kinds of tumblr shitheads. I have never once deluded myself into thinking Cronus (and more importantly the intent around him) to be anything but a reference to the exploding and rapidly transforming otherkin side of tumblr. I was the only otherkin person any of my friends knew at the time and they kept being worried that I would feel offended but the type of otherkin culture cronus is parodying Isn’t the type of otherkin culture I fostered my identity in. And a lot of people simply could not tell a troll account if it bit them in the ass and that caused so many headaches for so many people. We had to change the otherkin tag every other week because people would spam it with horrific images and/or harass the users posing in the tag(s) and a lot of it truly boiled down to someone with a big audience pointing at the most obvious troll account in the world and saying “hey look at this Freak!! isnt otherkin so weird/problematic/whatever” and That’s the space that Cronus is taking notes from. but there is a thing a lot of long time otherkin say and it’s that: the children who misunderstand or are just acting out wild fantasies will grow up and go away, trolls and bad actors will get bored and leave, but the “real” otherkin will stay. And some people claim they can even sniff out what type of person someone is after they’ve only been in a irc/forum/discord/whatever for a couple of weeks.

And that is where my interests lie. because you can come into an otherkin space with the intent to troll or not fully getting that it isn’t just roleplay and find out some new things about yourself. And I think that tension there that “oh shit I think I’m actually serious about it but I need to maintain my Image” sort of vibe that’s really interesting to sink your teeth into. And since few people care about dancestors I can play in this funny little sandbox aaaall I want.

Anyway yeah that’s why cronus being otherkin never bothered me. Like I said not entirely relevant but it was brought up Sooo

@magicmirror I honestly think it is kinda important for it to actually address the fact that happened instead of pretending it didn't, and I didn't really see it as an "out of taste pedophilia joke" so much as John having a mental breakdown and suddenly realising that no, they didn't know Terezi's age at the time. Back in the epilogues when John gets Terezi's photo they remark make a mental note that they do look a little older but prior to that they genuinely didn't know, only that often times only minutes would pass in between their conversations on Terezi's end.

No I don't think Terezi was underage at the time but I also think part of the point was that it didn't matter, it was meant to show how John was refusing to grow up so the only person John could relate to at the time was the one person who was also not moving on and was younger then him.

first hs2 team was genuinely transphobic about roxy it still drives me insane lol when they had dave say his relationship to roxy was "complicated and bad now" for like NO REASON other than roxy was 'different now' and also like. didnt even care enough to give meat roxy 1% of dave's screentime its straight upppp such a fucking mess

@anthy

also like how they'd apparently been on the ship for years but they kept adding dave being accidentally transphobic to him like ok if they've been there for THAT LONG and you're still fucking up YOU ARE JUST TRANSPHOBIC. DAVE IS JUST TRANSPHOBIC NOW LMAO

@M LMFAOOOOOO THEY MADE DAVE TRANSPHOBIC AND DIDNT EVEN REALIZE? SOMEHOW? they tried to make it like a complicated and nuanced issue but like never even gave reasons for dave to be mad at roxy other than him being trans now.

> 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...

@victoria I think you're right about Terezi hating Vriska (that's textual,) but I don't think Nepeta refusing to roleplay with Vriska was hypurrcritical; I think it was justified.

While Vriska and Terezi theoretically have the same "rap sheet" when it comes to what they got up to in Flarp (gamified murder,) only one of them seems to be genuinely remorseful of their actions (and it isn't Vriska.) Similarly, it's shown that, unlike Vriska, Terezi regularly talks with Nepeta. Of course Nepeta would be fine having a chat with Terezi. She isn't the one who mamed Tavros, or killed Aradia, or blinded Terezi (arguably beneficial but definitely malicious.) While Vriska didn't directly interact with Nepeta, Vriskers did a LOT of harm to AC's friends. Nepeta almost certainly saw the way Vriska treated Tavros, and Nepeta shares a lot of traits with him. Nepeta is an outcast, and is (according to book commentary) "probably" susceptible to her mind control powers (I certainly don't think she's 100% immune.)

To focus in on the specific interaction, which *basically* goes like this:

> AC: I'm autistic AF and can't make eye contact for ****

> AG, roleplaying as someone who did unspeakable crimes: I laugh and take out my dagger.

> AC: Nooo don't roleplay as Mindfang! You only do terrible things when you are her.

> AG: Okay, I'll be my fursona.

> AC: You only do terrible things as your fursona too.

> AC: Let's not roleplay actually.

IIRC, Hussie themselves says that Nepeta was in the wrong here for not catering to Vriska's violent roleplay whims, but refer to what I wrote earlier. I think Nepeta has every reason to assume that that Vriska roleplaying as Marquise "Did unspeakable crimes" Mindfang would go into territory that she doesn't want to get into. And I don't think she even has to assume! Clearly, Nepeta has roleplayed with Vriska before, and it didn't go well.

For what it's worth, the Homestuck Wiki ("Vriska Serket -> relationships -> Nepeta Leijon") also seems to share your (@victoria's) view. It claims that Terezi also does "bad" things when roleplaying with Nepeta, which is true to a lesser extent, but I think two friends that know each other very well can respect each other's boundaries and trust each other. The wiki also claims that Vriska wants to be friends with Nepeta and is oh so sad when Nepeta turns her down, but like... really? Is there a single 1-on-1 pesterlog with AC and AG? Does Vriska ever show remorse over the lack of Nepeta in her life?

Also, out of all the trolls, why would Nepeta have internalized (or externalized) transmisogony? She's a weed smoking catgirl who thinks that the hemospectrum hierarchy is bad. You can easily make the case that Terezi assuming Vriska was responsible for murderstuck is bias on Terezi's part because Terezi has a poor opinion of Vriska. But I think that Nepeta's "refusal" (more like quitting after the upteenth earnest attempt goes sour) to roleplay with Vriska is grounded in facts. Facts that reveal, time and time again, that Hivebent!Vriska is terrible at interacting with her trollmates, especially those she considers beneath her.

And honestly, if Nepeta heard from Tavros about Vriska's surprise trap dommy mommy roleplay attempt on him (which happened but a few weeks ago,) then I think Nepeta is the hero here for even ATTEMPTING to roleplay with Vriska.

there's a lot of stuff here to respond to and I don't have it in me to really directly address any of it rn but this all got me thinking about something that I think is worth bringing up here? trust me this is related to homestuck

trans representation is in a very strange place right now, because societal perspectives on trans people are changing so rapidly. this discussion got me thinking about a really good video I watched about Wandering Son a while back, I can't remember who made it unfortunately, I don't think it was someone I'd watched regularly? I just saw wandering son and thought "eh fuck it let's check it out"

anyways, part of the video was about how Wandering Son is one of many pieces of trans representation that has fundamentally changed just due to the passing of time, and it echoed my experience with the piece 1 to 1

when I first watched the anime in high school, it resonated so fucking hard for me. it was genuinely some revolutionary shit, and extremely optimistic for the time. but now a lot of younger trans women see it as extremely doomer-y and maybe even just transphobic torture porn. and the video goes on to talk about how some more recent trans manga they read felt unrealistically positive, and that that's how older trans women than them described wandering son. and it all speaks to a very rapidly progressing landscape of trans culture, and a kind of inevitable poor aging of representation in a world which is getting better for trans people in a lot of ways, even as we backslide in a lot of ways too.

I bring all of this up to say that where I'm coming from is what many would call an "older trans perspective" at my morgue-adjacent nearly 27 years old. and I struggle to see really any of the trans representation in Homestuck as legitimately bad. I think what victoria said was mostly pretty resonant to me.

in my experience, good representation usually does not come in the form of "explicit" representation. I think of system stuff in particular, which is almost always better represented with something like an alien or whatever showing up and linking brains with a character than by someone trying to Capture The Experience of a system. capital r Representation is so often someone trying to fit every single experience into one person in a way that often comes off as a gross jumble of stereotypes.

so I look at how Jade is and like... even if she was a cis woman before the fusion, I don't think that keeps her from being trans rep? I think given the opportunity they had and the apparent intent behind it that they probably should have just come out and stated it as her always being trans in the comic, but I don't think it's a requirement for it to be effective and Good trans rep

this is all kind of a mess and i'll probably have to elaborate on it later after I've gotten some sleep, but I wanted to get these thoughts out now before I zzzz. see you frafers. feel free to tear this post apart and i'll respond when i'm able

@ethanclark I think you're engaging in a little bit of retroactive rehabilitation of Terezi's image here haha. Like, "remorseful of their actions"? Meteor Terezi is quite possibly Terezi at her most ruthless! Okay, let's set aside the time she got Dave and John killed (the first troll to even try to kill a human) - those were alternate timelines, maybe that doesn't count. But this is how Terezi reminisces to Dave about the violence of the world she left behind:

GC: D4V3 D1D YOU KNOW TH4T C3NTUR13S 4GO ON MY PL4N3T, L3G1SL4C3R4TORS W3R3 NOT CONF1N3D TO STUFFY COURTBLOCKS 4RGU1NG C4S3S B3FOR3 H1S HONOR4BL3 TYR4NNY?
[...]
GC: TH3Y W3R3 D3PLOY3D THROUGHOUT TH3 G4L4XY TO 4PPR3H3ND CR1M1N4LS BY 4NY M34NS N3C3SS4RY [...] TH3Y WOULD NOT R3ST UNT1L TH31R SUSP3CT W4S 1N CUSTODY, ON3 W4Y OR 4NOTH3R
GC: TH3Y WOULD G4TH3R 3V1D3NC3 OV3R TH3 COURS3 OF TH3 1NV3ST1G4T1ON, COMP1L1NG 4 C4S3 TO B3 PR3S3NT3D 4T TH3 TR14L, SHOULD ON3 B3 H3LD B3FOR3 TH3 F1N4L SUBM1SS1ON OF TH3 GU1LTY CORPS3 TO JUD1C14L 4UTHOR1T13S
GC: P3RSON4L F33L1NGS 4ND V3ND3TT4S D1D NOT M4TT3R, NOR D1D 3V3N TH3 N4TUR3 OF TH3 CR1M3
GC: ONLY JUST1C3 D1D! (p. 3710)

She's not remorseful of all the lynching and lusus-feeding she took part in, she's just found a very solid excuse for taking part in it (for justice, duh!). Does Terezi maybe seem like a nicer person than Vriska despite it all? You're absolutely not alone in thinking so. But that's exactly the point that others in the thread are making; despite their pretty similar histories of violence, Terezi has found a niche where it's considered friendly ribbing when she roleplays trying to eat Nepeta's babies, and Vriska hasn't. Sure, maybe the reason Vriska hasn't found that niche isn't literally, textually misogyny, but let's use our close reading glasses here, yeah?

It's a little disingenuous, too, to describe Nepeta as someone who "thinks that the hemospectrum hierarchy is bad". When we first meet her, she's just too ignorant to even understand what it is! I don't think that paints Nepeta as a paladin of equality who would never, EVER find herself subject to subconscious biases. I think it paints her as the kind of person who could absolutely be naive to the way that the subtleties of macro social hierarchy are influencing her on a micro level.

Thank you jakemorph for putting what I was about to put into words better then I could.

agreeing here on most of the stuff about the way people talk about jade in the context of post-canon and also on the "wish it were possible to have a body like this" front specifically in the ways people talk about as being "gross"

oh yeah i suppose the dragon gendered person should probably comment on the hot topic issue instead of rambling about cronus huh.

um yeah I personally don’t find any issues with the doggy aspects of jade and I mean. I think I can say a fair number of furries in the fandom depicted Jade as such even before all this (for better or for worse) because yeah there’s a fantasy aspect of it. personally my idealized self is not possible with current technology and its a bummer but I just gotta be fine with that. it’s not like there’s nothing I can do costuming and masks are a powerful art for things like this (just like in general not even specifically fursuiting).

and as for how vague the exact situation is I’m mixed. i am very much so the kind of person who sees something be a little vague or with a couple details missing and take that as a sign to let the mind run wild. there’s so much possibility in not knowing! but on the other hand it would just be kinda nice to get some more details. I’m not exactly sure how I want that to play out I think Jade just saying it for the sake of the audience is kinda hamfisted but maybe they can make it work I dunno.

but regardless I like to think that even if has made some things weird or difficult Jade is at least happy with her body. I think I would be in that position. I mean I’d want like dragon stuff but also at this point I think id take anything to appear a lil less human and more Creature yaknow?