Racial: When all black homestucks hang their heads in shame bc of the voice actors

i'm white so it's not really my place to weigh in on this, but i will say i think of all the people to recast, i would recast rose, as her voice was the one i thought fit the least and the one line read I had from her was a little awkward. spindlehorse has a history of changing VAs, so my guess is that while john and jade will probably not shift, i'd actually give maybe a 50% odds on either Rose or Dave changing VAs.

I feel like playing devil's advocate here is a powder keg, but I think it's a little misguided to assume that the characters themselves would be inherently more black or something if they were voiced by a black VA. It wouldn't change the fact that these characters were conceptualised by Andrew Hussie, a white man, in 2009.

And that's not an argument for authorial intent, its just the reality of what these characters are. Simply casting a black person to voice Dave Strider wouldn't fix the problem. To me that's like making a Friends animated series and casting a black man to voice Chandler, as if that fixes the diversity issue. Dave is still archetypally white.

And that introduces a whole other bag of snakes. Say you actually want to reimagine the kids to be less racially homogeneous. The two credited writers for this project are both white, and one of them is Andrew Hussie. I have no reason to believe he's gotten better at writing non-white characters in the years since Homestuck. How do you figure these people would go about making Dave "black-coded", or Jade a Pacific islander? Would you relate to a black character written by Andrew Hussie?

I don't have a problem with people interpreting the cast of Homestuck as nonwhite, for the record. But it's always been something done in spite of the source material, not facilitated by it. Homestuck isn't good representation just by virtue of death of the author, its problems are too foundational.

i feel like "archetypically white" is a potentially crazy thing to say. cuz what traits are inherent to white people that others lack? in dave's case u say hes archetypically white, i assume because hes a shitty fake rapper whos obsessed with black people but...i feel like if you know any black people youd see how many blacks ARE EXACTLY LIKE THAT SALKJGSDLKA homestuck weirdly is racially ambiguous in that the races arent specified but they are assumed based on given facts surrounding the comic (white author, white writers, white readers, white album art) but not necessarily inside of it. so you CAN potentially come to homestuck with a different assumption that dave is a super lame black rapper, dirk is the type of black dude who has 15 billion mental illnesses about his masculinity, jake is your archetypical lightskin heartbreaker, jane is ur everyday black republican and so on. when it comes to Racial Archetypes, doesnt that just depend on what the reader has familiarity with? so i think the real issue here is assuming the reader of homestuck will always be white, or more specifically, will never be black. but i agree that it could use more diverse writers for sure.

I've been kind of lurking because I'm not Black but as someone who lives in a predominantly Black city.... Siofra but also like everyone else who's been saying that their archetypes are all strictly white.... I'm kind of shocked at how completely lacking in self awareness yall are. as SpicyYeti said, these are all archetypes that exist in Black communities. Because these archetypes are types of people. And people can also be Black.

Particularly I'm completely floored by people always insisting that the archetype of a goofy ironic shitty rapper is inherently white. What qualifications of Dave's character are exclusively "white-coded." and I mean "white-coded" in a sense that they could NOT also be read as Black. Are you suggesting that if Dave was a GOOD rapper he would then be more "Black-coded"? OBVIOUSLY the writers are white, of COURSE there are "foundational" issues, but just like when one of the new artists drew Roxy with textured hair there was a huge wave afterwards (that's still been maintained) of people seriously considering Roxy as Black, why would people not want more representation? Why is it "opening a can of worms" to want inclusion of Black and minority artists, creators, and otherwise participants into the Official Homestuck?

Everyone's forgetting that even before they are any specific RACE they are AMERICAN. Ecto-biology/the meteors can be a really interesting metaphor for diaspora! We don't see any of the kids talking about their Polish or British heritage, but no one even questions those kinds of headcanons... people are so blatant and shameless about seeing Blackness and other ethnic minorities as representation that can only exist in extremes and stereotype, presented for white or otherwise clueless and homogenized audiences.

I think yall mostly just know white people. Very sad but you should really keep that sort of thing to yourself.

I've always thought this specifically about Dave, but there's nothing that makes headcanoning him as Black inaccurate or whatever lol because I knew so many other Black kids in school who were exactly like Dave. My brother is like Dave in that he likes rap and hip hop and makes music etc, he speaks in a nonchalant "cool guy" way. I have never really gotten this idea that Dave is "white coded" T_T I feel like a lot of the Homestuck characters are flexible in this way where anyone can relate to them and their eccentricities.

I know a lot of geeky black boys like John who love Ghostbusters and shitty action films, I know black girls like Rose who are into goth culture and who write poetry and who wear dark clothes, and I knew so many smart black girls like Jade who were nice and bubbly and sweet. Point is, I don't think any of them actually had "white-coding" lol. I think making them all little white characters with no color besides their shirts was just Hussie not thinking at all about the race of the characters outside of making fun of people they knew online, and Hussie being white knew a lot of white people and white people tend to just not think that Black people could also like any of the same cringe shit they like.

As for the trolls, I still feel the same way too I feel like a lot of the trolls could also be seen as Black because I related a lot to them. Now, I may not know a Black Juggalo who drinks Faygo, but I have known many Black people who are lost in the throes of religious psychosis and who preach all the time about Jesus and God and a Savior and who also feel a lil dangerous to be around because of that fanaticism. I don't think it's that much of a stretch for people to say some of the trolls who were more violent are Black, but I do indeed side eye people who decide to jump to make a bunch of racially charged headcanons about them because of that race Headcanon (someone on tiktok made me remember some really horrible Gamzee and Kurloz Headcanons that were clearly made by some white teenager and I just had to go on this tangent real quick T_T) I also understand people being really uncomfortable with certain headcanons as well, so I'm not here to actually argue one way or the other about certain trolls races and stuff. Just that I personally don't think a lot of these characters are coded as "whitely" as a lot of fans think.

@spicyyeti

Well based on your own examples you seem to agree that these archetypes exist. The differences are subtle, but they're there. And perhaps those nuances are more easily ignored in a webcomic, and people can imagine the kids as any race they like. Like if you're not familiar with Hussie and his background, or the retcons made to any mention of race in the comic. You can also be ignorant of the voice actors and their ethnicities. Like, what's hypothetically stopping someone from just interpreting the characters however they like despite the casting?

Of course, that's a completely different conversation. We know who the cast are. I think we agree that in some way, the casting delegitimises certain interpretations at least to some degree. But that wouldn't be exclusive to white voice actors. Indeed, giving a character a black voice actor would equally exclude a non-black interpretation of that character. If you really must undo the fact that these characters were de facto written to be white, I don't think VAs are the solution. It's just a voice at the end of the day. But if you're already at the point where you think some of the ambiguity should be done away with, then why not go all the way?

@Sword
I'm confused, I thought we wanted black coded Dave? Your cultural background informs your identity. You can argue for edge cases, but without literally giving the characters physical racial characteristics there's not much of a point. Dave and Bro draw inspiration from an archetypical kind of white guy from the 2000s. A kind of white guy that Hussie was, and habitually drew (look at tso or AIDS). This is inherent to Dave's character, that he was written as an irony poisoned white kid obsessed with hip-hop. That's without mentioning his straight blonde hair. He's not even necessarily bad at rap so I don't know what that's about. Yeah I know, maybe you interpret the characters however you like, that's good. But this isn't a piece of fanart or something, this is official Homestuck media, and what you're seeing is Hussie's non-commitment to "racial ambiguity" fold in the face of what is necessarily a less ambiguous medium.

Let me flip your logic turnways. Besides like, giving a black voice actor a job, how is a character made more black by having a black VA perform him? Does something about a black person's vocal chords instill the character with more blackness?

I feel like you're intentionally taking me in bad faith, and conflating how these characters were written with how I think they ought to be. I don't think I've ever even heard of "Polish background headcanons" for the kids, much less for you to assume I or anyone else in this thread have different standards for those. Why is it complicated to expect good representation from the credited writers? Well, I only really recognise Andrew Hussie, and Andrew Hussie is quite literally the kind of person you accuse me of being. And I'm not guessing that, I have like two decades of his works to inform me.

Oh My God Bruh

Siofra what I'm really baffled by is "playing devil's advocate" on a thread where someone's upset about white casting (when, being just voice acting, is one of the easier opportunities for inclusion) being another way for people who are explicitly against Black and nonwhite readings to say that those headcanons and perspectives etc are worth less, "not canon," etc. What was your intention of your initial comment, that wasn't even providing anything new from the previous posts of people saying that "actually, they SHOULD be white! because the characters are totally white haha," just like you are? What you said was not at all valuable to the discussion (even the one that stirred up exclusively because they saw Spicy's post as an opportunity to give their own devil's advocacy)!

If we stopped at any kind of analysis based on exclusively what we would typically assume that the author would be most familiar with, there wouldn't be any point in Marxist, feminist, queer, etc readings of literature as a whole! You are either actually trying to troll here, or you're just completely so far off base you have no idea what anyone here has been talking about that isn't also trying to epitomize white headcanoning. Like "Does something about a black person's vocal chords instill the character with more blackness?"???????? INSANE.

>I feel like playing devil's advocate here is a powder keg

If you are aware enough to think that you probably shouldn't press "post" yaknow? And more to Spicyyeti's point made right after it brings to mind that thing where if you put a stick figure in front of someone, just a regular ol stick figure no defining features, most folks will imagine the figure as someone like themself. And then when you start adding on more details here and there, unless you put in stereotypical (and often racist) features, somehow the character is now talked about as if they are inherently white, even when people still continue to see the character as someone like them. This also happens a lot in very like cartoony everyone is some kind of rainbow colored creature type setting. Have you SEEN the posts people make whenever someone dares to draw ANY of the My Little Pony horses as black?? YIKES!!! Now some of those episodes you can reaaaaally tell its white ppl writing these scripts with the white audience as default, but I can't really think of anything about, say, Fluttershy that is specific to white ppl?? Im sure theres many little kids who saw themselves as being like fluttershy, and fluttershy like them. And Im sure some of those kids were black and then imagined a human friend version of fluttershy as being black as well.

Like okay I don't know why my brain pulled MLP as the example to use I'm sure theres something better thats just what sprang to mind. But you get what im saying here right? People are gonna look at little cartoon drawing characters and see themselves, and be disappointed when some new addition comes along that goes "nuh-uh" and reinforces white as default. Especially when its a situation like we have here where homestuck has been fraught with this issue. If we are encouraged to see these characters as whatever race we see them as in our hearts, then wouldn't it be nice if just this once it didn't completely default to white?

It's just kinda hell on Earth out here. I could drag out a whole ass debate here but it's just kinda hell on Earth.

This is a little bit broader than the topic but my lingering fear with the Homestuck cartoon isn't that it's going to be bad, but that it's going to be "good". You cut out the long rambly dialogue gags, you cut the anticlimaxes, you smooth out the edges and the creases and you make the uncomplicated fantasy adventure that settled in the imaginations of white teens in 2014. The Homestuck you see on all the t-shirts.

Homestuck started as a pretty white and cishet comic from a Bostonian, and coming back to Act 1 I get how this would play into the approach but it's concerning how literally none of the later comic and postcanon's leans even feel echoed in here, the pilot is being pitched and sold as "we're bringing back 2012stuck" and like. Man.

Literally some of what's been said here is like peak early homestuck fandom in terms of just casual racism and dismissal of minority fans, with ABSOLUTE dismissal of Black fans. Like you realize Siofra that your behavior here is exactly what people dread as being given courage from shit like this. Regardless, I don't think this is the thread and discussion you clearly are itching to have. You should make your own thread where you can talk about how definitely white Homestuck is and you'll be able to see exactly who your oomfs are.

(my homestuck race takes are their own thing. tbh i would rather just say all the beta kids are white and get on with it so we can have some characters designed black from the ground up i say posting in a thread made by spicyyeti, but i respect and understand the good in fighting the tide and decentering that Presumed Whiteness all the araciality and fandom bullshit pushes onto these characters. fwiw i think even if the kids aren't caucasian they are white, in the hard to define sense that growing up in specific sheltered enclaves of the first world makes you, and this does inform their dynamic against the deeply othered and much more loudly poc coded trolls, but like. fuck man idk piss on the twitter servers banish reddit to the shadow realm im tiiiiiiiiiiiired)

@siofra i feel like you're not approaching this conversation with good intentions and you should refrain from responding if youre going to double and triple down on a post you came to "play devils advocate" in

i understand that there's like the overbearing will to just give up and "let the characters be white" in the eyes of the public because it's such a hard fight to have but it just doesn't really sit right with me at all to give up because there's plenty of people who really just, never thought that they could be something else and are open to it. i saw it when haven's pesterquest roxy sprites came out like that actually shook the way people see things u actually see plenty of people draw roxy black TO THIS DAY simply because at some point it was "canon." things like this go a long way

You're right and this is why I give critical support to these matters. also why the casting is total hell on earth. It's why the pilot (and the animated series looming after it) makes me nervous. Already its very existence kinda saved Beyond Canon, there's also real opportunity to bolster or at least stand along the work HS2 is doing. But it could also enshrine the fake Homestuck people hallucinated in 2012 and radicalize a whole new generation to post really bad takes in threads like these on another scale of magnitude

I'm genuinely confused. I feel like I reiterated multiple times that I'm fine with people interpreting the characters however they like. I'm... criticising Homestuck, the webcomic, on the basis of how it was written.

I suspect my post was reported, because suddenly there's two moderators in here. I also suspect they barely read the reported posts, looking for phrasing that looks vaguely problematic (like "devil's advocate" and "straight blonde hair") given how nonspecific my warning was. But my actual argument is that Hussie was a sheltered trust fund baby who wasn't very good at representation.

I'd love to use the American sitcom Friends as an example again. I'm sure there's someone out there who interprets Chandler and Joey as gay for eachother. Goodie! People should be allowed to do that. Their interpretation, however, doesn't alleviate the actual writers of Friends for their poor representation of gay people.

i also think it is 100% reasonable for black people to want to be represented in homestuck. homestuck is a very white fandom, and it's not like you can't argue with POC on the internet, but i think conversations that say "this character HAS to be white because they live in the suburbs" or "this character HAS to be white because they are a bad rapper" throw black fans under the bus. i don't want to open this can of worms but i'll get my can opener out: it does make me uncomfortable that the only "black coded" interpretations the fandom will accept are made in the context of arguing that a character is an offensive racial stereotype. how tf am i supposed to recommend this comic to black people if the loudest race conversations in the fandom are about how unbelievably racist the author is. if it really is true that these kids were always intended to be white, let fans reclaim some of these characters! let dave be black! let jade be a pacific islander! Redesign the trickster modes to have the characters be dark skinned. Give at least some of the trolls black voice actors, and make those decisions wisely. Let black people enjoy and feel represented by homestuck! i think it is a story a lot of people can relate to. i am putting my hat in the "recast dave" ring. nothing wrong with the voice actor, but the tone of this conversation has tipped the scales for me. if people are looking at an all white cast and taking it as a signal that the characters were "meant to be" white, then that's all the more reason to prove them wrong.

i kinda wanna just cut to the heart of the issue and say that i know these characters arent black. but i dont care. theyre black anyways. blackwashing in fandom is like punk rock--you dont do it in tandem with popular culture. you dont deny that there is a popular opinion, you rebel against it. thats what an artist does: exhibits an unflinching POINT OF VIEW. and to sab's credit, that point of view isnt coming from hussie. its the kind of point of view from someone like me when i make those voiceclaim tiktoks. it would have to come from a nonwhite person on the creative team. so again, i agree on the point that an all white team isnt going to help us. but its like........not too late????????????????????????? FLASJDFKLDSA

re: But it could also enshrine the fake Homestuck people hallucinated in 2012 and radicalize a whole new generation to post really bad takes in threads like these on another scale of magnitude

yea i can see that being an issue with the pilot as a whole if its played straight. but i also have some hope in andrew hussie as a writer that maybe itll go in a different direction that isnt just "2012 in 2025" nostalgiabait, but something maybe like the scott pilgrim anime that engages the original story AND modern discourse at the same time. WE'LL FUCKING SEE I GUESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

eh fuck it i'll throw my hat in the ring

If I may speak for everyone in the room I don't think anybody really gives a fuck about "redeeming" Homestuck's legacy or whatever. By the Hussie Law Of Araciality there can be no racial representation in Homestuck. There's just coding, and the occasional horrific racist stereotype.

This discussion exists for the fandom. Works with Legitimacy in the eyes of the fandom (mainly works either written by or endorsed by Andrew Hussie) carry weight in how people understand and analyze the text, how they move forward in fanwork and fandom spaces, how audiences respond when the black artists and writers on a team decide to go balls in on adding melanin to inklings. Like mansta said literally last post, this shit really does have an impact!

you werent reported and i chose to respond because i did read your posts and again, all you're doing is double down on a thread that you specifically came to advocate for the devil in. save ur energy