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I can...kind of understand what they were trying to do with Roxy (growing up without proper socialization kept them from being able to explore gender roles properly), but they were not the best character to execute that narrative on, and that narrative would have been more effective if used on a character who stayed in the closet because of their socialization. So yeah, I support June Egbert.

I will say the topic of gender abolitionism is kind of a weird topic for me because...it's part of the reason why I identify as nonbinary. Apart from my not viewing myself as being specifically male or female, I do want people to see past my assigned birth sex and see me as me. And yes, I do believe to some degree gender roles can be used in a sexist manner. And I believe that it is possible for gender to exist without gender roles. So I admit that I never thought of the idea that people could view the lack of gender roles as sexist and transphobic. I do truly apologize for having this way of thinking, and I will try to do some more introspection.

EDIT: I just misread your damn paragraph Raichu, I am so sorry. I agree and will replace the above paragraph with a better analysis on my gender identity soon.

Of course, I agree with the problem that Calliope isn't biologically male or female, so them identifying as nonbinary falls way flat when that might be the closest biological sex for them, as if they are being forced back into the trans closet.

Edited by SatoshiBakura on May 3rd 2022 at 5:59:39 AM

Essential? Iconic? The heart of the series? “If you had to describe the series in a sentence” or in the Laconic page sort of thing?

Sorry if I sound too vague.

On a personal level I CANNOT understand the desire to imply in post canon to not only establish Roxy was unhappy with themself, but that they specifically want to BE one of the men in thier social circle. In Meat it's Dave and in thier Pesterquest good ending it's Dirk. Like... First of all, Roxy is one of the most popular characters in Homestuck. Why would you want to radically reinvent them? But second of all it REALLY enhances the misogyny underneath the whole thing. Only the dude characters are important, so Roxy needs to turn themself into one of the BOYS. Like that's how trans people work!

A series where memes and bisexuality drive the plot and Nicolas Cage is God.

Or something.

Better paragraph on gender abolitionism.

I identify as nonbinary. Apart from my not viewing myself as being specifically male or female, I do want people to see past my assigned birth sex and see me as me. And to this degree, I don't want to be assigned by gender roles. I don't like how people can label me as "masculine" because of some of my interests or label me as "feminine" for being soft. That in part fuels my nonbinary identity, but there is already more to it than that. Again, I don't specifically identify as male or female, and then gender role thing is just what clinches it as nonbinary.

This idea does not work on Calliope, because biologically, they would be nonbinary. Thus, their "transition" functions more as a detransition, as if they are led to believe that gender roles are the only reason they identify as female, which is not how it works. My dislike of binary gender roles that helps fuel my identity clashes with my assigned gender at birth, but that's not the experience Calliope seems to have.

The core of the idea should be this: gender roles suck but gender doesn't.

The weird part is, when reading the comic, I didn't see any indications or implications of Cherubs being biologically nonbinary. Guess I should reread that part.

Ah, it was from the epilogues. That explains things, both in terms of their density and worth of remembering.

Edited by Medinoc on May 3rd 2022 at 7:22:22 PM

oh, that's not what i meant to imply at all, i greatly apologize.

abolishing gender roles is a totally fine thing. or, at the very least, abolishing the need to adhere to them.

gender is fine and something people very much enjoy (such as myself). but expectations surrounding it are often problematic.

So. Gender conversations in the Epilogues, verbatim.

This may not be all that there is, but it's the two Big Ones™

Edited by Sixthhokage1 on May 3rd 2022 at 6:00:53 AM

No, I misread yours and Raichu's paragraphs. I apologize for being a dumbass.

And I feel bad because the implications didn't register for my either when reading the epilogues. All I thought was "oh neat" and kept going.

If I were to change the Meat Epilogue (aside from making it more properly conclusive), I would have June discover herself, survive while NOT getting into a relationship with Terezi, and make her way back to the male Roxy, and have them continue their relationship. June Egbert functions as a more proper coming out story in contrast to Roxy, and would have the proper connection trans fans would desire.

Also, the middle finger to the LGBTQ -phobes by making the one straight couple between two trans people. That's something I want to see.

If Meat was actually a conclusive story, I would be better with leaving Candy almost as is. That story was pure Crosses the Line Twice, so insane and horrific that it was funny. Like, it works on the level of seeing just how much things have fallen. It just suffers the problem of Meat not being conclusive. For example, if Jane recognized the error of her ways in Meat and abandoned her anti-troll behavior to become more reasonable, then I think xenophobic fascist Jane would not be as reviled.

Hey, no worries at all! You weren't being dumb, misreading happens. I think we probably could have stood to be clearer. In any case it got cleared up, that's what counts. :)

As for the Cherubs are biologically nonbinary thing... Maybe? I think that's arguable.

Cherubs definitely have two distinct sexes in a reproductive sense, and there is a physiological distinction, although one that only develops after predomination. As I recall, though either sex can lay an egg, the fact only male/female pairings lead to eggs implies one of each is needed. (But since this is a mostly voluntary hate-fight-courtship, it could be that same-sex reproduction is possible and just rare enough Aranea never heard about it, due to most Cherubs (in the record... however it is that they're in the record) being heterosexual.) So there's some distinction, of some sort.

And, since Cherubs seem to know what their sex is, presumably there is some distinction in the like... brain difference or whatever it is that allows them to be separate minds in one body, which allows them to know. So on that front we can infer the likely presence of a biological differentiator between Sex A and Sex B, even with the whole, shared body thing.

But because of this, there is no natural mapping from the Cherub sex binary to the usual Earth sex binary which is based on reproductive role?^note Setting aside that sex isn't actually a true binary because it's complicated, intersex conditions and all that They seem to be identical in reproductive role, or rather, totally reciprocal.

So mapping Cherub sex A to Cherub sex B could be based off of superficial similarities if we wanted to read a lot into IIRC Calliope and Caliborn's mother being skinnier than their father, which is totally arbitrary and doesn't make much sense;

Or could be based on the way that seemingly every intelligent species in Paradox Space have binary sexes which are associated with the male and female genders, to an extent that is easily recognizable cross-culturally, between trolls and humans and Carapacians, and even Leprechauns despite them only having one biological sex (I don't think we know anything about the Consorts, unless the post-canon stuff elaborated on it.), so at the logical conclusion this is true of Cherubs despite their lack of much organized culture at all;

Or it could purely only make sense in the context of Caliborn and Calliope's personal perspectives on the troll and human gender categories they observed (which would speak even more to Calliope being trans-in-spirit);

So it really depends on perspective and interpretation on whether the Cherubs are "biologically nonbinary", since we have little insight into Cherubs other than two exceptional individuals. (And also alt Calliope who still identified female and I'm not sure how much, if any, human socialization / troll observation she had?)

The Epilogues don't seem to be operating under a 'Cherubs are biologically nonbinary' interpretation, as Calliope does acknowledge that they had a dichotomy, but rejected the map from Cherub sex binary to human sex binary* onto human gender spectrum as arbitrary and illegitimate. But, the idea that there is no mapping from your sex to your old gender identity invalidating that gender identity is still kind of a weirdly essentialist reason to transition.

But what bothers me more, especially now reading the scene over again, is that it's so entirely bound up in the conflation of gender roles with gender as a whole? Which is not accurate in the best case, and in the worst case is the bedrock of a bunch of TERF arguments like "trans people actually reinforce gender roles". Which makes the way it kinda resembles Calliope detransitioning even more fraught.

And even without that, the rejection of their identity apparently purely in service to ideology without change in their enjoyment of 'being a girl' uncomfortably reminds me of like... political lesbianism? That kind of self-denial, trying to force being the "correct" identity instead of what is actually most congruent with themselves. This is sort of uncharitable of me, since you could read into things that Calliope is happier that way and just didn't explicitly mention, but even then I think the way that wasn't stated shows a problem.

It is nice to know this kind of feeling wasn't just me, though. Well I guess it's for the worse, since it would be objectively better if the arcs were done well and it was just me who had issue with them, but you get what I mean.

wow, those are actually worse than i remember.

there's so much cis flagellation^note (and thus the "forgiveness" of trans people for this flagelation) in the first one it's almost embarassing to read.

regardless, rai's assessment is defs still spot-on with how... off the trans rep is, given the context surrounding these scenes.

Edited by EpicBleye on May 3rd 2022 at 7:42:17 AM

Writing team for the Epilogues:

Andrew Hussie: is nonbinary

Aysha U. Farrah: is nonbinary

Lalo Hunt: is nonbinary

Jen Giesbrecht a.k.a. Cephied_Variable: from what I can tell is cis, made a couple tweets about trans Roxy as part of a Twitter AMA

ctset a.k.a. vfromhomestuck: Only thing I know genderwise is that she's a woman, no clue about cis or trans. Seems to have scrubbed her internet presence

HS2 writing/directorial team:

Andrew, Aysha, and Lalo return

Kate Mitchell: trans woman

Pip Dillistone: nonbinary

Xamag: nonbinary

Taz optimisticDuelist: nonbinary transmasc

Edited by Sixthhokage1 on May 3rd 2022 at 7:06:59 AM

What are you talking about? I never changed my position. I still think it's okay for stories to make us uncomfortable sometimes, and that trying to sanitize them is pointless and kinda silly. I also said nobody has to agree with me and admitted that I could've expressed my opinion less contentiously. Mischaracterizing what I said as dishonestly walking it back is pretty smug and condescending of you!

But yes, I'd very much like to change the subject. Carry on.

There's a difference between a story intentionally going for something uncomfortable to make a point, and a story using slurs that were en vogue in the 2000's for a laugh.

Of course there is, but the comic did use those slurs at the time, and now they provide an illustration of how people on the internet spoke back then. To me, that has some value. But if you disagree, I respect our differences!

I know Offending the Creator's Own is a part of the trans conversation in Homestuck. A lot of the decisions on exploration of gender aren't handled elegantly, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't malice that led to these decisions. But I can't say it's echoing previous trends (save for the Jade stuff perhaps) because with the exception of June, the characters they decided to write as trans aren't ones that come from any real life background. It's a weird, messy situation.

I mean, speaking as someone who's trans, I hate the June reveal because it doesn't actually amount to anything. It was never planned, never delved into, and it feels like trying to earn brownie points without the effort.

Hussie is noted to have gotten excited and personally invested in June when she became fanon post-Epilogues, and I think it's pretty evident that June Egbert was important to their own gender exploration.

Also HS2 absolutely had gender shit going on with Candy John that's clearly meant to head towards June Egbert.

Good for them, it still sucked and the writing is atrocious.

I mean, HS2 has its own problems, mostly from having two disjointed plotlines and not really going anywhere.

I wonder if Hussie only recognized June after the Epilogues. I would argue that they subconsciously wrote John with gender identity issues before realizing their own identity, which is why John becoming June makes sense. Perhaps recognizing that in hindsight is what made Hussie so eager to declare her canon.

Yeah, whatever. I'll just be over here not taking the least charitable read of everything that's come out from queer-led era Homestuck.

Far be it from me, someone who *is* queer, to not feel much charity to a bunch of idiotic writers who threaten to sue people over trivial bullshit.

Sometimes queer writers can be shit at what they do.

I think the Cherubs being biologically nonbinary might have just been headcanon that I might have assumed canon. WHOOPS.

If they aren't, then I'm fine with enby Calliope (in theory, not necessarily in execution). I apologize for being dumb again.

Edited by SatoshiBakura on May 3rd 2022 at 9:37:36 AM

Yeah, my big complaint with HS2 is that it was trying to do too much at once. When it got put on indefinite hiatus, it had reached a page count equivalent to mid-Act 2, while each of the plot threads it was juggling felt like they were in their own Act 1s.

Edited by Sixthhokage1 on May 3rd 2022 at 8:41:37 AM

You literally, explicitly disapproved of people reading the mod and insinuated they shouldn't, and then doubled back to saying "I never said they shouldn't do it". I don't understand how that's not walking your position back and pretending you didn't. You have gone from actively criticizing other people who have different taste from you, to respecting the difference. That is a change, you don't get to claim it's not; either you changed your mind, you're now lying, or your initial claims were stronger than what you actually meant. I can't see how there are any other options.

If I really had an interest in being smug and condescending, I wouldn't have ended this argument for you. Or tried to, anyways. I'm only continuing it now because you have personally attacked me and my motives!

Anyways, the post I've actually been writing,

Wow, the replies to one of those twitter links. I love being an "obvious opportunistic transphobe" because I don't think the thing that explicitly frames itself as being "dubiously canon" is not, in fact, canon.

And, that aside, if you're willing to give people who are attached to a trans woman Roxy headcanon the 'right' to that headcanon (as if that was even a thing creators could withhold if they wanted to), you should be exactly as willing to give anyone attached to a cis woman Roxy headcanon that same right?

Believe me, I know trans women are less represented in fiction than cis ones, but individual headcanons aren't representation, and even if they were, they're additive; you can't decrease the number the number of trans characters in fiction by headcanoning some cis, no matter how many. The work itself will be unchanged, and everyone else's headcanons still exist. But to me that's missing the point, because this kind of judgement shouldn't be about group dynamics or identity politics or the larger culture at all?

If someone imagining a character as trans makes them happy, that's good, because it makes them happy. If it makes them happy because they can identify with it, good; it's good if it's for any other reason, too, but the identifying can be especially important to people. But like... It can be especially important to anyone? If someone out there positively relates to Roxy Lalonde really hard for whatever reason, maybe the way she speaks or acts or some of her positive traits or how she overcomes a lot of her negative ones, that's a good thing. And if Roxy being a girl is important to that, then them headcanoning Roxy as a girl is a good thing in that it helps them keep this nice thing. That goes even if they headcanon Roxy as a cis woman, even if they themselves are cis, because... duh.

And the usual counterargument I see is that this is a false equivalence because trans people or gay people or any other minority group are more vulnerable. (And, the fact that women are themselves a minority group, sociologically, is just sort of... ignored?) And like, on average, yes. And that's important. But having a threshold of "You have to be this vulnerable to deserve comforting headcanons" is dumb, and even if you do do it, there will still be some people in whatever majority group you care to specify who are that vulnerable as individuals for all the manifest complicated reasons people can be.

And construing headcanons as an important element of role modeling and (I would hope minor) aspect of emotional support is like, the only context I can even conceive of moralizing it in the first place. So seeing stuff like this old tweet is really irksome.

I wouldn't say I expected anyone in the writing team to be TERFs but I genuinely do have the impression there was some dumb associated ideology, whether the writer with it was trans or not. Roxy's conflation of gender and gender roles still feels like it's a reflection of an author's idea, rather than an in-character mistake; but that's a bad misunderstanding of what gender is. And it is a key point in a lot of TERF ideological frameworks, but of course it's possible to have that misunderstanding and not fall into the TERFdom. It just still isn't going to lead anywhere good.

Like, clearly trans people can think dumb things about trans-related issues, because I've disagreed vehemently with other trans people on such things sometimes and so at least one of us has gotta be wrong, y'know?