Ly'lac of the Final Applause is Black
And her experiences reflect those of specifically black fans of Homestuck. I'm going to carefully explain why because ever since this Update dropped there has been a plethora of, quite frankly, really annoying non-black Homestuck fans not understanding why Ly'lac can't be seen as just a general stand in for all POC and is specifically made to be commentary on the way black homestuck fans are treated in the community.
For starters, the meat of this entire update and what it's trying to say is here in Ly'lac recounting an incident in which she tried to share a somewhat unpopular headcanon about the character Gumby. Ly'lac thinks Gumby is "Nymph-coded" and has even drawn Gumby as such, but when she went to the forum for this tv-show what did people do?
People told her that her Headcanon was not only "wrong" but that she was wrong about which character was really "Nymph-like" and this is important because Ly'lac is trying to find representation of herself in media that's not catered towards her. They use phrases like "He didn't really act like a nymph." which is something I fear is super distinctive with race headcanons of characters.
I saw many people interpret this update as being about trans headcanons, and I think that while it is great that many people were able to relate to Ly'lac here, this wasn't about trans headcanons or sexuality headcanons at all. This is a race thing. The deflection that people have towards Ly'lac about her headcanon is also very familiar to me as a black fan of Homestuck. The way in which someone will outright force me to list a bunch of reasons and proof of why this character could POSSIBLY be black, or people will point to some other character and say "I think they're actually the black coded one." when nobody was even talking about that character in the first place.
"If there was any character that could be a nymph, it'd be the blue one." is just outright a repeat of "Dave can't be black, if any of the beta kids would be black it'd be John." and it's like on some level I understand why a lot of people who weren't black read this update and then just didn't get it immediately, because black people and fans are overlooked all of the time and it is like pulling teeth to get people to maybe admit that they just didn't see something to be about race at first because they don't think about black people at all.
And Ly'lac's frustration with this is really apparent because this quote here is literally referencing the araciality of all of the Homestuck characters. They're all little uncolored people or gray trolls or literally green, so why DOES it matter if someone thinks a character is Black? Why do they have to justify their reasoning when other headcanons are accepted by the wider fan community? Why does a deviation in the norm for headcanons, specifically headcanoning a character as Black when most people don't do that and they see a different character as black instead, get so much push back?
There is also just the fact that Ly'lac is very much drawn to resemble a black person. Her hair is shaped like dreads, it's very blocky and square. Ly'lac's conversation with her unknown friend AA uses language specific to Black people:
AA makes a point to call Ly'lac dark multiple times and sure one can say that this is simply because Ly'lac's grey but she is speaking to her like some Shakespearian Hotep and I think that is on purpose:
And I guess maybe non-black fans just didn't catch this either because idk how well-known hoteps are outside of the Black community either lol. And I also don't feel like explaining what a Hotep even is that just sounds like it'd be exhausting and tired to me and ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh so I just won't. Google it yourself do not ask me.
All in all, Ly'lac is black. And that's all there really is to say on the matter.
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