i hear yall on 'girls can wear pants just bc jane does doesnt mean shes a trans guy' but homestuck is a deeply symbolic webcomic. its different! the skirt in homestuck is used as a signifier that a character is a girl more than it is as a genuine fashion choice in the early days of the comic; with the sprite as the only representation we have to go on, rose in particular with her shorter hair becomes more obviously feminine with the skirt, eyelashes, and lipstick at a glance. the need for the skirt as a visual distinction decreases as the readers become more familiar with the comic and the art style advances, but the original motive still remains! and is turned on its head when we are introduced to the trolls; while aradia, kanaya, and feferi wear skirts, nepeta, kanaya, and vriska decidedly DONT. this choice is intentional; we are told explicitly that in troll society the differences between men and women are arbitrary, with fewer rigid rules and distinctions than in human society. the extent to which that is actually TRUE is a little bit up for debate, but it definitely has some truth to it, and nepeta, terezi, and vriska all have a level of gender fuckery about them that aradia, kanaya, and feferi dont quite have in the same way. (kanaya of course has a DIFFERENT kind of gender fuckery about her, but its a different vibe and not really relevant here.)
then we meet the alpha kids. the skirt as a signifier is irrelevant at this point; we already know which characters are boys vs girls because we have the background of their adult counterparts. you can argue that jane is introduced wearing a skirt to make it clear that it is her and not jake in her first teaser panel, since she also has short hair! and thats about it. janes narrative is all about her own agency and her lack of control in her own life. she is brainwashed, she is locked in her own home for her own protection, she is kept in the dark from her friends' true feelings and secrets because they dont know how shell react. every choice she makes for herself prior to entering the medium is framed as a mistake that ruins things for everyone; her dad, roxy, dirk. and yet, when she does enter the medium, she is alone and free from other influences for the first time. her dad is missing, condy cant (or, more accurately, currently isnt interested in) access her, and she is outside the realm of societal pressure from earth, with her three friends who have never met another person in real life before. and with her newfound freedom, she chooses to wear pants; the first human female character in homestuck to do so. she has a hands free computer headset that gives her a faux moustache. and i think thats relevant!
of course, when she becomes god tier and immediately crockertiered, all her agency and control is lost in a way that doesnt ever return to her, even in post canon content. from that moment on, she is the maid or the heiress only, and cannot express her own desires in the narrative; she has been reduced to a caricature of what condy and aranea believed of her, and in this narrative she is grossly feminized in the worst possible way. just. food for thought.
