What does becoming a furry in Homestuck mean? (In reference to your recent Nepeta post)
Okay so the thing is the way that Homestuck treats furries is honestly kind of equivalent to how it treats queerness. As in, Homestuck initially treats it like a joke or a thing to mostly sneer at. Homestuck was very much part of the wave of disaffected ironic assholes of the Newgrounds and Something Awful type, especially to start with, and that sort of relied on shitting on demographics that were seen as weird and permissible to find cringe and make fun of.
Jade comes onto the scene, and a lot of people sort of groan at her whole furry shtick. Jade is largely, however, just a pretty sincere character, and even though she feels some embarassment over the idea of BEING a furry (i.e. her distaste for the idea of actually wearing a fursuit) she nonetheless begins the admirable refrain of combining the finest qualities of humanity with the elegance and nobility of the animal kingdom.
Her earnest affection for all things anthropomorphic sets up more than just her excellent taste. And as much as she is a bit of a pattern-breaker, one pattern she doesn't break is that of having a Signature Animal.
The four beta kids have a bunch of different things associated with them: the four elements, four items, four musical instruments. But the animals are practically integral to who they are as people and characters.
John's attachment to the bunny is obvious, and helps to spur on one of the most emotional scenes in the comic. (For him. Him specifically.)
It's also something deeply precious to him, as it's a gift from every single one of his friends in a very roundabout fashion!
For Rose, Jaspers is half the reason she decided to play the game in the first place. She missed her dead cat so dearly she was willing to play a game that might end the world for it.
(Pictured above, Rose lying about her feelings, water is wet.)
Dave seems to at least feel some affection for crows, or at least shame when he kills them.
And his fusing to become Davesprite is what allows him to survive as a "copy" of the original Dave. Once again, Dave's disaffected irony giving way to the necessity of becoming a furry to save the world.
And for Jade, of course, Bec.
And it's notable that, by the end of the comic, at least THREE of our main beta kids have merged with their animals, and, in a way, become the best versions of themselves.
Jade obviously gets to achieve her dream of becoming a furry, and in doing so gaining power and agency that she was always denied due to her position in the story.
Davepeta, as I stated in a previous post, is the true Final Form of Dave, the pawn that made it to the end of the board, the only surviving character from Homestuck's "original" timeline, and is truly happy with themselves.
And Jasprose appears to have fully hurled herself through the walls Rose put up around herself to protect her image, and thus absolutely mortifies Rose. She just seems to be having a great time.
Homestuck evolved from a story that was deeply cynical and mean-spirited about furrydom, to a story where three of our four starting protagonists, in their truest most powerful forms, combine the qualities of man and beast to achieve self-actualization. And to bring this back around to queerness, these three characters also happen to be canonically queer. So there's that.
This isn't even to get into how this might relate to Troll Lusii and the concept of "growing up" to be more like one's parent on a planet raised by animals, but that's for another day.
