Meat Roxy Analysis

I really really like meat roxy!! But I feel like they kind of get skipped over by most people, like the extent of discussion is usually Yay he’s awesome but I think there are deeper things Hussie tried to do with the character in the Epilogues. He doesn’t really get to define himself to others, he’s usually described by the notably unreliable narrators or rambled to by an overzealous Dave. I think Hussie is making a point about how a lot of trans people are spoken over in their transitions and ignored. For example, we aren’t even told if Roxy uses he/him pronouns by Roxy- Terezi just sees them looking like Dave and tells Dirk to narrate with masculine pronouns. Dirk is also always weird about it. I‘ll continue this with receipts, but it’s getting pretty late. I hope I get to hear other peoples’ analyses of Roxy

I think Meat Roxy has a lot of potential, and his arc that began in the Meat Epilogues could go a lot of really interesting places. Because, as you said, the main concept is "character that is trans, but the author refuses to acknowledge it," which is a really funny and interesting literalization of the idea of ""accidental queerbaiting.""

It's a really, really good meta joke. Just riffing on all the people that say things "how could kishimoto not realize naruto was gay," by making the author literally ignorant of the world he's writing, and the people in it. Reminds me a lot of how (to this day, I guess!) people would say that Andrew "got a character wrong" as if Andrew didn't create them, y'know? Except it's Dirk, who's just really desperately trying to grasp onto his own gender binary by being incredibly weird about his oldest friend. Themes and ideas. Love those.

Anyway, that's all I can say that isn't just recycling the words of people way smarter than me. If you haven't read SpicyYeti's Y12K (and are over 18!), check it out. It's a quite fantastic dissection of Roxy and Dirk's differing perspectives on gender.

@kevin I absolutely agree with you. Regarding people saying Andrew got their characters wrong, part of the reason I made this post is that people also still complain about how Roxy identifies differently in different timelines and act like it was a mistake Andrew made or just shoehorning trans Roxy in for a Toblerone (Which as far as I know now is impossible, because that wasn’t one of the Toblerones, was it??) when I think textually, Hussie is not only characterizing Dirk and making more meta points about authorship in general, but also fleshing out Roxy’s character more and interrogating what gender means to people like Dirk and Roxy who are from a post-gender assignment planet.

Screw what time it is I have to vomit this out

The epilogues partly explain the discrepancy in how Roxy identifies by saying that Roxy had to live life differently as a mother. I think that this speaks volumes about Roxy’s character, considering a lot of Roxy’s transition in the epilogues is explored through talking to Dave, their biological son, and Dave wondering whether to call them his father or not.

I think to Roxy gender is largely related to family. Roxy is the one with heteronormative ideas of romance that they present to Dirk. Roxy and Dirk also have no traditional gender assignment because human society is dead. What they do have are guardians they look up to and model themselves after.

The one time Roxy describes their gender personally in Meat, they say it’s close to non-binary, but not quite. I think that this says so much about Roxy as a character. In each timeline, they identify in relation to the niche they can fill in a family. I find this to be a bittersweet and relatable trans experience that also aligns with Roxy’s people-pleasing personality. I don’t see this talked about a lot, I think because people tend to take the narration at face value and not look closer at what Roxy is saying, which feels like a meta-mirror to how trans people can be made side characters in their transition outside of fiction as well.

re “In each timeline, they identify in relation to the niche they can fill in a family.”

while i agree that roxy does mold himself to the expectations of others, i still think his gender is a finite thing that doesn’t change universe to universe. his void aspect is very complementary to the story his transmasculinity serves… because the void is this sort of unquantifiable, unexplainable dimension that generates finite objects like the perfectly generic object or the matriorb. his transness exists because it just does, it doesn’t need an explanation and especially not a justification. and i think that story is very pertinent to trans experiences today with us constantly being asked to explain and justify why we’re here.

@spicyyeti Absolutely, I didn’t mean to make it sound like I think Roxy’s gender changes? I was trying to say I think the text implies a reading where Roxy is always a nonbinary character, just presenting to others in different ways, and I think that reading it this way deepens the meaning of how Roxy is treated by narrators and framed within the story’s internal logic.

oh yeah i do see what you mean. i hope we get to see roxy’s presentation in meat go beyond being so attached to dave’s image or even dirks because that is such unexplored territory right now.

I POSTED THIS ON THE WRONG ACCOUNT INITIALLY OOPS NEED THAT RESPONSE FROM JOEYY DELETED

As was pointed out, yeah, having Roxy transition was in part motivated by him being a Void player. My perspective differs from @spicyyeti, though. Roxy's gender is not fixed. In the comic, Roxy expresses the sentiment that there is no timeline more valid than another, irregardless of doomed or alpha status. Every timeline manifests just one of endless valid possibilities. In Candy, Roxy gives a similar pep talk to John when he vents about how that timeline doesn't "feel" like it's going how it's "supposed" to. This is the same conversation where Mom Roxy brings up that she once considered transitioning & decided against it. She can be someone else if she chooses. Compare this to the compulsion of her fellow Strilondes on the other side of the aspect wheel: Dirk must stay "true to himself" (originally said about his homosexuality), no matter how difficult that is for himself or others. Dave is compelled to make the same choices as he manages time loops, without question. As a Light player, Rose's desire for there to be a cogent story feels justified by the alpha timeline, no matter how fucked up everything else gets in the pursuit of victory. Each of them holds onto an idea of their personal "brand." Roxy? Just someone trying to be a good friend & person. Not without their own internal world but not bogged down by it when there's so much to be grateful for

While Dave's arc is all about subverting the hero's journey in a more traditional adventure structure (this itself gets subverted by the fact an alt-Dave still has to fight Lord English), Roxy's exploration of identity is a foil to all the demi-ironic-god meta bullshit that Dirk cares about. The Ultimate Self isn't something to become or ascend to, because there's nothing greater than the sum of its parts. Roxy Lalonde simply is, & I love that for him/her/them in any world. Dirk can't stand that someone could be at peace winging things when he's gone through all this anguish about who he is & what exact role he feels he has to play. In all likelihood, he deeply envies Roxy. I truly look forward to when he has to actually face this, assuming Roxy gets the chance to confront him soon. It will probably be horrifying to realize how bitter Dirk really is, or for Dirk & Rose to consider they might be straight up incorrect about the nature of their reality (canon)

Considering all that, I understand the queer DirkRoxy shippers. Masc Roxy could maybe fix Dirk, if he'd allow it

Replying so I can find this post later because y'all have amazing points about trans Roxy 💖

@lmmlm Roxy saying that they considered transitioning but didn’t…kind of just supports the idea their gender is constant? I’m saying that the reasons+circumstances where Roxy chooses not to transition vs the reasons+circumstances where Roxy does in different timelines are really important to the character Hussie builds for Roxy in the epilogues. If Roxy isn’t the same person with the same internal gender struggles they’re working through it kind of just tells a worse story/ is worse characterization IMO, and Hussie tells us they have the same gender struggles in both timelines by having Roxy point out they chose not to transition.

I think people's appreciation for Roxy's gender arc in the Epilogues is really hampered when they fail to take the lesson of the Ultimate Self to heart and they continue to think of "Meat Roxy" and "Candy Roxy" as two different people rather than two points on a long continuum that represents The Whole Of What Roxy Can Be... like, when people read the older Roxy in Candy saying that they experimented with gender in their past and they say "huh, but we never saw that!?" when we literally did see it, it was just in the other Epilogue! And Roxy literally says then that their gender expression train hasn't come close to hitting all of its stops yet either! I think the way the Epilogues explore one person's journey of self discovery over the course of many years using the fantastical conceit of multiple timelines is easily one of its strongest and least well appreciated finesses