The most civil June Discussion ever

Well, there's the fact that June Egbert was the direction Hussie wanted to take the character in before the toblerone wish and that's been said quite a few times so I think it is a bit weird to worry that her transition would just be a joke imo

While I also have some problems with HS2, I really think that the conversation in Chapter 16, about how John felt the need to be the man his father wanted him to be, and how doing that, living in his old house, felt like a prison sentence, and the house being blown up felt like a huge relief, that conversation was really good. The new team I think has been building on it, not necessarily "correcting mischaracterization", tho I agree that that would be the case with, say, Candy Jade, Rose, and Kanaya.

In general, as a trans woman, I've found John's depression and self-isolation, and the way that he just doesn't feel quite "right" as himself, to be very relatable as early as the epilogues. I think some people forget that it was largely the way John was written in the epilogues that kicked off the whole June Egbert headcanon trend on twitter in the first place.

As for specifics on the way I think the story may go, I think that John saw a version of herself from looking into the Hope radiating from Jake(at least, that's what I took away from that one gif), so that seems to have laid some seeds that will probably come to fruition over the course of the long journey to Deltritus, however they end up doing that. Vriska will also likely be involved given her smile flashing at the end of that gif.

In Meat, I feel that John will probably get prototyped with something weird and we'll see her transition like, in the way Davepeta did, basically. Very likely a bunny of some sort, given that line Rose has near the end of OG Homestuck about how there was Dog Jade, Bird Dave, and Cat Rose, but no animal fusion with John.

i'm curious as to why you seem to think earth c is "where the only difference between male and female is at most pronouns." i don't see ANY viable foundation for this in canon... though there's not proof to the contrary, it is still a society built to mimic earthern pop culture. it's also significant to consider that june grew up in a world with gender as a solidified concept. i also think even within a post-gender world there would be people who would want to change things about their presentation regardless of their identity or in synchronicity with it; though i can't personally see beyond sociocultural bounds and i doubt anyone truly can i'm still confident i would, at the very least, have landed on shorter hair and a different name in a world without gender.

on a more personal level i do resonate very strongly with june as someone who is, in comparison to their peers, transitioning pretty fucking late. transition doesn't inherently entirely alter who you are as a person (though it can, especially if a good deal of your interaction is defined with dysphoria and depression). i definitely understand being hesitant about june in fear of losing key aspects of her character (hell, ive seen plenty of it in fandom), but i'd hope that the hsbc team doesn't go that route.

Thank you junedave and lyrichartwell for your comments.

I said "where the only difference between male and female is at most pronouns." because the little we do see is of the trolls, humans, sprites and chess people on Earth C seemed to have created a culture where all of them live in a combination all all those cultures. I'm getting that from the shops, streets and the school we see with how their journey in Homestuck is treated as history you learn in school. This along with other things made me wonder what would people on this Earth consider feminine and masculine when they have both human and troll culture/media? Would feminine and masculine be that different to them and in what ways?

I also believe there is a lot of mischaracterization in the epilogues and HS^2 because I refuse to believe the characters in Homestuck would isolate themselves from the friends they knew/lived with for years. The only thing I've seen people say to support this is that they grew up but that is not enough for me. I do not believe that a grow of friends you knew for most of your life, that you fought gods with, that you create a universe with would drift away like they did in the epilogues.

Where did Hussie say that June was planned before the Toblerone? Not doubting you, just curious, I had never heard that until recently.

Also, sorry for the double post, but @CyanBlaze - I agree with you about the characterization of the kids in the epilogues. Maybe you could say that like, from the author's perspective, it would be "too easy" or "make the fans too happy" if the kids maintained their friendships and connections, but to me, idk, they've been through so much together, there's no way they're "just friends", they're all quite literally a family and need each other in a world where literally all they have is each other. I can understand conflict, but the way they all tear each other apart just feels like the result of a choice to heavily overplay the drama.

My only real hope with June is it's given the time it needs to happen naturally, and that she doesn't transition right at the end of the story.

@magicmirror

it's been relayed by the original HS2 team on i think multiple episodes of Perfectly Generic Podcast, and I believe the sentiment has been repeated by the current HS:BC team in some of the patreon commentaries. Given time and interest I'd maybe look for the specific episodes/commentaries

Thank you! Yeah, I'll look those up, that's useful context.

I also wanna second junedave, and was thinking of saying this in my first post but didn't want it to be like, egregiously long. But yeah, while exploring a postgender society would be really cool, I don't think that's what's going on with Earth C. Sure, some characters give implications of that, but our main cast are not the most integrated into Earth C society, and it honestly seems moreso like wishful thinking on their part. Given that Earth C is basically poorly copying Old Earth America as a blueprint, it seems likely infact that there is gender inequality. I'd argue you can see this with Roxy in the Epilogues. He does explore his gender and transition when with Callie and living in the Carapacian Kingdom, but when in Candy, when the narrative sort of shifts to put her in a relationship with John that isn't good for either of them, obviously she doesn't put those feelings away, like she said, but there does seem to be a societal pressure on her in that timeline that is lacking in the other. Overall, I imagine that Eartch C is closer to a postgender society in the Carapacian and Consort Kingdoms than in the Human and Troll Kingdoms, which might itself still be a really interesting thing to explore!

But, also, John grew up on regular old Earth. And even if Earth C was a postgender society, we know that John is the person who has least integrated themself into Earth C society. So, I still think June is going to have to deal with a lot of societal pressure and internalized structures.

cyanblaze: yeah, alright, that makes sense. i do think its a bit early to be making big conclusions on earth c culture, though to each their own.

id argue that the epilogues are intentionally mischaracterising. the choice to format it like an ao3 work is not a frivolous one, and the authorship being traded off between figures is not either. that's not ridiculously relevant, though. i do think june would drift off. she is a breath player, after all.

(and ive definitely seen non-realised trans people isolate so they don't have to face outside perception.)

i'll be honest, i don't see how they could do june egbert well. ignoring how bigot-y having a character whose "MAN GRIT is off the charts" transition into a transwoman feels to me, i'm not confident that the BC team can make it work.

the fact of the matter is, john is an incredibly established character. he had nearly a decade of characterization, and for all intents and purposes his arc should've already been over. without the writing team being impossibly diligent and careful, june will land somewhere between complete erasure of who "John June Zillyhoo Egbert" is as a character and completely tone-deaf and flippant.

that being said, i do think that june could work as a harry arc instead. it could be used as a way to flesh him out over the course of the new session. however, that runs into the issue of figuring out what to do with the whole john situation. there's been 6 years of build up from both a writing and a reader standpoint. it would be hard to wrap that up cleanly, and there most certainly would be backlash.

either which way, i have a feeling it's not gonna end up great in one aspect or another. i could be pleasantly surprised though, so who knows!

I would just like to say that it feels a bit weird for you to be dictating what feels like transphobia against trans women when the trans women in this thread have said they'd like to see June Egbert happen, but okay go off i guess

Also, I really don't see how June Egbert would be erasing John Egbert and the complaint or prediction just feels weird. You don't become a different person when you transition? I don't get where the fear of June being a totally different character and disregarding all of her previous characterization comes from. Well, I can think of an answer, but I'd like to give folks the benefit of the doubt.

re: seven

i'm afraid i have to disagree. sure, john had 7 years of characterization, but what was the nature of this characterization? he is frequently a character whose feelings and desires are sublimated to the plot, who represses his feelings about a lot (for example, the death of his father). not a lot about his character really changes in any meaningful way over the course of his arc in homestuck; rather, his arc is defined by "his" being used by outside forces (vriska, terezi, sburb, etc.) to perpetuate their own goals. for example, he is the character that receives the retcon powers, but does this mark any real change in his character development? not really, it rather ultimately serves the end of fixing the alpha timeline so that sburb may perpetuate itself through the creation of a new universe.

i think this also ties in with the issue you bring up of john having "MAN GRIT off the charts", which supposedly problematicizes the canonization of june. "man grit" is a trait that within the narrative is projected onto john, by both his father — through the feats of strength that are required to uncover the notes he's left for john (and note how often john isn't the one who actually performed the feat) — as well as the game, which tracks the growth of his "man grit" when he levels up on the echeladder. john refers to himself as man grit in homestuck (pg. 7376: "JOHN: wow, she's really down for the count, isn't she. / JOHN: i got a lot of extra punching practice in my fight with the skull jerk. / JOHN: maybe i gained a bit too much man grit for my own good?"), but note how he refers to it as something he gained, not something that is inherent within him. what this reflects is how sburb instrumentalizes certain ideas about child-rearing in order to perpetuate itself. each character's planet presents them with a packaged quest to facilitate a certain kind of development for sburb's own benefit, as the only real end is the creation of a new universe and thus the perpetuation of the cycle.

i think this all becomes a bit more clear if we view sburb as in a way a metaphor for society, as something which perpetuates itself through the inculcation of certain ideas and values into children as they grow up and develop. as a character, john pretty much just "goes with the flow" of this cycle, without really questioning it that much. so in that way, i think the reading of june egbert is actually a very useful way of understanding john not just within the context of the epilogues or hs:bc, but in the actual comic of homestuck as well.

lastly, i just want to ask how making june canon would "erase" the character of john? i think that framing it as an issue of character arcs is unhelpful, as the idea of the character arc is something which the characters of homestuck themselves problematize in the original comic (pg. 7507: "ROSE: I seriously have the DUMBEST arc anyone could conceivably imagine. / DAVE: rose we dont have fuckin "arcs" we are just human beings"), and the mere existence of the epilogues shows homestuck's preoccupation with troubling the assumptions of traditional narrative arcs. where do narratives begin and where do they end? what is the purpose of telling things as a narrative? these are questions that homestuck raises, and i think that june egbert is a great way to pursue that questioning.

re: vriskazone
I don't think making June canon would "erase" the character of John unless that's the way the HSBC team does it. The only basis of what June is going to be like is a single silhouette frame and fan content. We don't know who post transition June will be. John has had the freedom to do what they want but has choose to go with the flow all their life. All of John's choices have had extreme influence on the story. I think that June has the potential to either be very different from John(A whole new person) or June being a more free and true version of John(Ultimate John/June). I'm sure HSBC is going to do Ultimate June but you never know.

John has so much content and themes with masculinity, growing up, freedom and narrative that June could slot into the story perfectly. My main gripe is that the Epilogues and HS^2 parts are not great foundations for that story.

re: cyanblaze

i mean how are the epilogues and hs:bc not great foundations for that story

Sometimes I forget that a lot of people don't know that there's been years of meta discussions about June on Twitter Tumblr and Discords & that the idea came directly from after the epilogues dropped. In the Candy epilogues John ends up being an isolated bum who thinks everything around him is fake in a way that many trans women related to feeling like before they realized they were trans, Roxy speaks to John ABOUT gender and at the time and he clearly hasn't been doing a lot of self reflection for those years. Before the name June being said by Vriska was pointed out people were calling her Joan. It's been relatively unclear what exactly would be the tipping point to bring John to break out of that and transition but the (I think) obvious conclusion to this point in her life is to make a big change in order to reclaim a sense of identity and place in the world that she was left without, the idiosyncrasies of the character have always been a part of the discussion regarding her.

Everyone's been talking about how funny and interesting June is going to be and you weren't there... But now we're here so maybe the fun can be spread across the world.

Re:vriskazone
When I said HS^2 I mean the beginning when it was called HS^2 and had different people on the team.

In my opinion there are many aspects of the epilogues and HS^2 are not great in the way that many of the plot points are bad. The strained friendships, characters misunderstandings, conflicts and ultra meta concepts that make it feel like nothing that happens in the story means anything. I'm also not a big fan of the super evil Jane, disconnect John, Missing Dave, the whole redemption arc thing, Yiffany name/birth lore(The character is very cool though) tav abuse that everyone but John and Jake seem to just ignore and much more.

To me the bad foundation effecting HSBC is addressed the end of Act 1 where all the drama and conflict from the strange plots come to a head with all them together actually talking and HSBC team handled in a way that made the most sense it could have while planting seeds for the future acts.