#junecourse

[juney-blues]

June Egbert is, and always has been incredibly fascinating to me because of just, how many factors have conspired to make Homestuck fans show their collective transmisogynistic asses.

The main character of Homestuck transitioning is a planned future plot point for the official continuation of homestuck, that was spoiled in advance by a fan making a joke about finding some toblerones Andrew Hussie the author of homestuck hid in a cave.

The current main writers of Homestuck: Beyond Canon have went on record in an AMA confirming that this was indeed always the plan, even before they took up the project.

In spite of these facts, the general consensus among certain homestuck fans seems to be that "June Egbert" is purely a headcanon for the original comic that was "made canon" by a "Toblerone Wish" (a concept that didn't even exist at the time)

For a variety of reasons, the "canonicity" of the postcanon official continuations of homestuck is a mattter of much debate, (though a debate that most homestuck fans seem to err on a side of "it's not canon at all in the slightest," something the writers have feelings on I'm sure.)

All of these factors combined leave the concept of "June Egbert" in a very nebulous place. It's assumed by most to just be an "ascended headcanon" that was shoehorned in, it's a spoiler so it hasn't happened yet in any official media, and the official media it will eventually happen in is regarded by some to be nothing more than glorified fanfic.

If someone is talking about June Egbert, and you don't like the concept of June Egbert, you have your pick of a million different excuses for why she's fake and gay and not worth discussing and bad writing and just the authors doing a gay dumbledore*, paying lip service to representation while actually doing nothing.

And of course, lots of people *don't* like June Egbert! Rather than being introduced as transfem from the start, she's in this nebulous position of discovery where people have to truly reckon with the idea of a "Pre-transition Trans Woman."

You can try to write off *some* of the backlash as transphobia, because obviously not everyone in this fandom is gonna be cool about trans people.

But there's no shortage of fans just dying to tell you about how much they like reading her as transmasc, or the idea of her being nonbinary or genderqueer or genderfluid, or literally anything besides a trans woman. And since they're fine with all those other interpretations, there's obviously no implicit biases driving their distaste for the concept! (if you want to try explaining the concept of "transmisogyny" to people like this you're braver than I.)

you can trust them when they say it's *just* a problem with whether or not it makes sense with the writing, or it just doesn't feel right somehow, or any of the thousands of excuses that this writing situation gives them to just Not Like It.

It's just, so interesting to me. There's not a lot of characters out there that get a trans arc in this way, that leaves room for open denialism and insistence that we have our trans cake and eat it too... Because Homestuck is a timeline spanning multiverse story, lots of people seem to want it to be an alternate timeline thing. Assuring us we can have this character share space with a non-transitioning version of herself and it won't be weird or imply gross things about trans people.

If you ask me it feels like a plotline that'd be really good for exploring some gender horror though, finding your true self and then being demoted to a footnote, an alternate version, because everyone around you likes your pre-transition self more....

Anyway I have no broader point beyond "hey look at this isn't this kinda weird. You don't get this kinda stuff often!"

*side note: it's a little ghoulish I think to compare "a future trans plot point that hasn't been given the chance to even happen yet, in an already famously queer piece of media, from a nonbinary author" to "some stupid shit done by the literal most famous transphobe of all time" but that's perhaps a discussion for later.

[generalbitchfest]

The thing about people saying that Roxy is canon transfem is that the same people then attack [insert whichever author of the Epilogues is the scapegoat du jour] for making Roxy transmasc in the postcanon, as if they somehow snuck it in behind Hussie's back without eir approval. By all accounts, transmasc Roxy was Hussie's idea in the first place! But noooo, our precious transfem icon Hussie would NEVER disappoint us like that, it must have been one of those filthy TMEs.

It's just… the hypocrisy that everyone is REQUIRED to accept transfem John even though that wasn't a thing until the post-canon, but you're a transmisogynist if you like transmasc Roxy even though that's ALSO post-canon "canon"… it wears me down. And I like transfem Roxy! I like transfem John! It's just the attitude that you're not allowed to see them as anything BUT transfem that bugs me!

Basically I'm wary of anyone who says that any given character is 100% canonically intended to be transfem/transmasc/whatever in Homestuck proper (as opposed to the postcanon). Frankly, I think it's pretty obvious that Hussie never considered that these characters could be anything other than cis until after Homestuck was over, so IMO there are no "wrong" headcanons about this. And lately I've seen people latch on to more and more characters and say that they are completely 100% canon transfem, and it basically always ends up being used as an excuse to attack people with transmasc headcanons. I'm so tired of it.

In regards to this post that I edited with more thoughts since I can no longer reblog lol (she did block me, which I super appreciate, and I also blocked her, and I appreciate you letting me know so I could do so!)

Anyway

TL;DR:

You're absolutely right. I was on the ground floor and it was fucking terrible and the queer community has only gotten more radfem pilled/anti-transmasc in the following years.

-> Not putting the long version under a read more since if this blog gets deleted, the read more goes with it and I have anxiety around the permanent loss of posts on the Internet lol

I could ramble about everything you said for years and years especially because like I Was There when it started you know? I was there when the Epilogues dropped and I was there when the discourse went the most toxic HS discourse had been in years (afiak maybe there was real bad discourse between the ending and then that I missed lmao). So please trust me when I say whatever I type next is me trying to be as succinct as possible without losing (what I consider to be) important context.

First paragraph:

IMO transmasc Epilogue Roxy was created explicitly to be fandom hostile and I don't really care who had the idea first.

Side note: My roommate sometimes talks about how she thought it would have been way cooler thematically for Roxy to be transmasc in one Epilogue and transfem in the other along with other contradictory stuff between the two and I have to agree.

Even more side note: I honestly didn't even vibe with transmasc Roxy BEFORE the discourse? Like I still got v upset when the people who called everything in the Epilogues capital C Canon still refused to recognize Roxy as transmasc (and I regret some of the takes I had about how people talked about Roxy tbh), but like, I am not a Transmasc Roxy As Canon Take It Or Leave It defender lmao. Roxy is only transmasc in the context of Beyond Canon. If people love transmasc Roxy that's great! Same for transfem Roxy or unaligned Roxy or cis Roxy. HC however you want! I personally love transfem Roxy!

The point of the Epilogues being written as they are with no clarification on who did what was to avoid this sort of discourse.

The re-imagining of Hussie as the most Woke is hilarious and IMO some heavy copium and refusal to engage with reality because they refuse to admit they're cherry picking (whether it's about what counts as canon or what good and bad things Hussie has said and done).

Like just a few months before the Epilogues dropped Hussie caused some "oh hey remember Hussie still has bigotry issues even if it's not malicious" discussions.

People who call Hussie transfem are misgendering them. Like if they are looking at ANY of the evidence of Hussie being trans ("any pronouns" in bio + Easter egg in Psycholonial credits clown gender clownsona, at least one post by WP team referring to them with they/them pronouns), much less all the evidence COMBINED (plus Discord logs with several people who work with Hussie only using he/him pronouns for them), they are doing an exorsexism by calling Hussie transfem and acting like "any pronouns" means "never he/him." Straight up.

(Let me know if there has been more information released about Hussie's gender, but the last I checked a few months ago, that's all I saw.)

Second paragraph:

Literally the mindset after the Toblerone "canonized" June was "if we had to accept transmasc Roxy then you have to accept June (:" as though they weren't harassing transmascs out of the fandom for MONTHS prior to that. Not even just over June discourse tbf.

An additional layer is Homestuck fans who only engaged with what is posted on the official Homestuck website would have zero way to know about June for YEARS. Like, as my tags on that post say, I'm a HUGE stickler about what counts as "canon queer rep" (with nuance for when people have to sneak it past censors and such and that simply does not fly as even post-canon rep until more recently!

(From my understanding — I dropped off HS2 pretty quickly and while I think I will eventually read it, I only get glimpses of what's going on and most of that is against my will lol)

While I'm not saying there were NO transfem John hcs before the Epilogues, June became popularized BECAUSE of transmasc Roxy, and I just don't think I could ever get into a character that was created out of spite over another trans character. And I say "created" because (as some of my other reblogs have talked about), the people at the helm of pushing June to the point of harassment warped her into Vriska lite. John as a character was not good enough for them.

Obviously there are people who make June content that do actually still have that good good Egbert essence in there, and it's not like trans people always have the Exact Same personality they had pre-transition! Nuance nuance nuance.

But yeah there was a lot of anti-transmasc harassment around John (and in general tbh). Because radical feminism has been alive and well in queer (even trans) communities for years.

Third/Final paragraph:

Yeah I def understand being wary of them. I guess I was naive to think I didn't need to be! I should have realized a post about "canon" transfem from 2023 was a different vibe than from like 2016. I just genuinely didn't think I said anything more than "slightly annoying" at worst in the tags!

Yeah no Hussie did not consider any of the characters trans except MAYBE Davepeta (who I love! But also did not organically become trans as much as was a fusion of people of two different genders).

I still don't think Hussie thought deeply enough about any of the characters to "consider" them trans as much as "oh yeah transmasc Roxy would be funny considering the main Roxy hc and this is the Be Careful What You Wish For story" and "oh someone told me about June? Yeah okay sure that seems like a neat direction to go."

Side note: June would have been SO MUCH COOLER if she was considered DURING the Epilogues and that could have been a conversation John had with Roxy in Candy!! But they also whiffed a bunch of cool conversations John and Roxy could have had so le shrug I guess.

Side note continued: I mean they also seem to not give too much of a shit about what was established in the Epilogues when writing HS2 so I guess that's in line with whatever they're doing now lol

But yeah no like I know of at least one trans guy on twitter in 2019 who changed his name from John due to the June discourse. I saw people who posted a lot of John art suddenly stop posting John art. I saw people stop adding John merch to their etsy shops.

I keep being told the fandom has gotten better since then, and I generally don't peek outside of my Strider obsessed niche to check, but really sucks to see that these people, while maybe not as common as they used to be, are still prevalent enough.

Though I guess considering the current state of trans discourse which has only gotten MORE anti-transmasc in the past 6 years, that shouldn't be a huge surprise.

My bullet points were absolutely not used as bullet points should be. They are basically just thought/paragraph breaks whoops lol

[maybetheyregiants]

like. what bothers me more than anything is how little people gave a shit about john before June happened. like. I was there. nobody gave a shit about john. like literally to the point of being a meme that the only kids anyone cared about were the strilondes and maybe sometimes jade. so the fact that all of these transmasc and nonbinary headcanons (not to say there weren't any before, but they were largely a blip on the radar in terms of fanwork) of them popped up and gained traction basically overnight is like. oh so you just hate trans women. okay.

[nekropsii]

what is John's gender?

Well, I’d be inclined to say someone’s a little biased towards a particular answer, judging by the wording here.

If you’re going to ask questions about John/June in a gender neutral way, where their gender is either a question or up for personal interpretation, it’s good form and common practice to refer to them simply as “Egbert”, or “Jegbert”.

John is the masculine form of the character. June is the transfeminine form. Egbert is up for viewer interpretation. This is why you do not refer to depictions of June as John, and vice versa. It’s rude. Always check the original poster’s tags.

John is what is definitively canon to Homestuck as we know it. This doesn’t make it any more or less valid than those who abide by June, but it is what’s canon. Some people use this canonicity as an excuse to be transmisogynistic, and that’s not acceptable.

June is in a weird, unfortunate state where she was confirmed on Twitter to be an arc that will happen in the future of Homestuck^2’s story, by request of a fan. Homestuck^2 is definitively not canon, it’s effectively an official spinoff fanventure with some minor direction from Hussie. She has also not happened yet. She’s barely even been alluded to. It’s kind of sad- sorry to all June fans for the literal JK Rowling-tier representation. :/

[rin-hanarin]

The only worse place to talk about it is Twitter, but fuck it, I need to get this shit off my chest and at this point I have no idea how, I'm so mad at everything.

I can't stand the way June is considered the only correct way to like "Egbert" these days. Something entirely created by the fandom after the story was finished and after over ten years of the comic's existence is somehow the truth now.

I can't treat June as anything but a perfect sterile OC that has literally nothing to do with John, I hate how this fantasy of a perfect stereotypical girly girl without any of John's interests or flaws or issues completely replaces him now, and you can't possibly be opposed to it. Somehow the cause of his depression in official material is not trauma after a really fucked up experience, years of isolation, grief after the loss of the only family he actually has any connection to, but dysphoria of all things, because of course it is.

And you know how it's fixed? It's fixed not by just John being trans, but by him being a completely different person as a nice addition to it, because all of your problems go away if you're not yourself anymore, right? People make a giant point out of June NOT being John, and this fucks me up so bad, because the only thing I can see is the idea that you can't be happy the way you are unless you change yourself completely and as a result turn yourself into someone else, some perfect picture of yourself that doesn't experience pain or any negative emotions whatsoever. Not only that, but a giant rift between John and his friends he apparently deliberately cut himself from is fixed by him not being John anymore, how convenient is that. Suddenly everyone loves "June", suddenly everyone gives a shit about "her". I don't understand why being trans considered a panacea from every problem in existence.

I understand that everyone has their right for projection and a perfect fantasy, but something about John Egbert's character specifically is so important to me that I feel sick seeing him being replaced by someone else and disregarded by both official and fan material like he has no right to heal and just gradually make his life better as he is, without being someone else.

[ble-ed-mo-re-mov-ed]

Hey, Junelikers, what does “if you deadname June dni” mean? Like, do you mean people who purposely deadname June art/tag it as John? Or do you mean people who still like/draw John? Genuine question because I really don’t know which one.

[generalbitchfest]

This was originally a reblog to the June post I just recently reblogged (re: don't tag John as June) but I got deeper into it and I'm not sure of a good place to cut it into two separate posts without losing the context. So. Anyway.

This is more about Homestuck "canon" than June specifically?

-

I will always call June's canonization toblerone canon btw

I don't know how many fans from the past few years know that she was a high popular fanon for like 4 months I think and then Hussie sent people to find a toblerone and the person who found it tweeted at them asking if they could get the reward of making June canon and Hussie tweeted back that yeah she was canon

In the same sort of way they said all ships are canon

And then, of course, later WP staff were like "no they were actually super excited about the idea of June so this was going to happen we promise!"

Which like

I'm not trying to imply it's entirely a lie but if it's 100% the truth it just really shows the entire team's incompetence and/or willingness to add fuel to the fire that was the harassment that *some of them encouraged if not participated in*

Retroactively saying "this was planned for max 4 months but only got revealed here after being prompted by a fan" isn't necessarily out of line with real dumb shit WP and co have done forever but god damn

Anyway

Point is

It's not like she was planned since the Epilogues (or else they could have done some cool shit in the Epilogues but they really missed a lot of cool shit they could have done in them in general, esp with Roxy and John's relationship)

But, this is me, and I think anything after the Snapchat credits (maybe not even including them) are canon in the way there are books in the Catholic Bible that aren't in the Protestant Bible. Or like the addition of the Mormon Bible. Or, maybe more appropriately for Homestuck, the Gnostic scriptures.

So I guess people who accept beyond canon or dubiously canon or whatever the fuck it's called into their canon are Homestuck Catholics, Homestuck Mormons, or Homestuck Gnostics. Take your pick and/or do a theological discussion as to who should be what depending on which Post Act 7 material they consider canon.

Are those who like the Snapchat Credits Catholics since the addition doesn't super change the base canon? Maybe if they also include Hiveswap and/or the Skaianet lore drop?

Or do those belong to the Gnostics?

The Epilogues/HS2 fans are Mormons though, right?

[generalbitchfest]

One day I will have blocked every user on this site that tags explicit John posts as June.

One day.