#i love talking about gender in homestuck i go absolutely rabid

[tomatograter]

do you have any thoughts on trans girl jake? i thought their narrative and character arc on being specialized by the others, and being comfortable about themself will wrap up nicely with them ending up as a transgirl!! it defies what people expects of them, and breaks them out of the traditional idealized reoccurring masculinity theme (which jake was obviously uncomfortable with)

(what follows is my personal thoughts, i’m not laying down the word of God, i just have Thots on Jake English ALSO THIS IS A PRETTY LONG POST? IM SORRY. i promise i will include pics.) 

Jake English is a gender mimic. He’s the ‘raised by wolves’ trope, except instead of literally being raised by dog like Grandpa Harley he had a few years with Jade and then mostly nothing but the monsters at lusii island and a crap-ton of escapist media. He’s used to having a full playing field where he can indulge in unquestioned fantasy, and that comes in the form of his Indiana + Croft sexy 2000′s hero persona that is comfortable for him (and its worthy of note how one is Peak masculinity and the other is Peak femme fatale) until he has to really interact with real people with Expectations and Biases. 

This is where i need to talk about the alphas. It’s nearly impossible to talk about Jake without talking about how he adapts around other people, specially the ones that he truly gives a shit about. Jake selectively picks the opinions that matter to him, and these are mostly what the other alphas think. (Compare to how he speaks over Erisol, jesters around Caliborn, and mostly pumps his own self pity with Tavrosprite for compliments- If you don’t want to count the epilogues scene he has with Davekat which mostly boils down to “you might have a point, but i’m loyal to jane, so you’ll have to really convince me of politics.”)

What holds him back from dating Dirk is Jane’s opinion, and What Jane Could Think (which is in no way jane’s fault, just his overthinking) because unlike dirk’s high octane masculinity, she’s the pillar of sitcom normalcy in his life. She lives in the real world, mostly removed from the bullshit the rest of the alphas are in, and she’s written to be the ideal generic romcom youth living a perfectly picture worthy life. The disastrous conversation where Jane denies her feelings is prompted by Jake finding confirmation she’s into him via Roxy- and he immediately grows nervous of that meaning she wouldn’t “approve” him going any other way, or that it’d be weird for a boy like him. And he needs to be sure before anything else- and also every step of the way, which will eventually exhaust her because its a load of bullshit and not her responsibility.  It’s not that he doesn’t want to, it’s more that he’s afraid what others will think if he wants.

But he’s never direct about it. He just brings things up and lets people get their own opinions from it- because he’s REALLY passive about conflict and he’d rather solve things with the least amount of struggle possible, always. He just needs confirmation. And then comes this bit:

I read this bit of text in 2 ways: 1) Jake realizing pretty soon that his attractions aren’t limited to gender. & 2) Jake realizing pretty soon that gender is just a big ole scam, and that he couldn’t care less if it weren’t for outside perception of him. It’s just another performance!

Jake’s ongoing theme is that he hates being perceived (be it sexually, mentally, personally, in the sense that he abhors judgement and objectification and is afraid of being known) just as much as he gets by freely by allowing others to project whatever they want onto him- and he’s not bound to complying unless it’s shit he enjoys. He’s an indulgence chamber. He doesn’t want to be bound by rules or expectations partly because he’s sort of a lukewarm coward and partly because he thrives in contradiction. And all that sounds pretty dandy, but it doesn’t means he’s exempt from anxiety of what others think of him every step of the way and what that means to his projected image. Brain Ghost Dirk is part dirk splinter, part jake constantly asking himself ‘what would dirk do?’ because he thinks he’s not capable on his own.

and its where we get my favorite line:

“i dont WANNA be a man and i dont WANNA punch her in the face!” Maybe 2000′s action heroes who shoot first and ask questions later are, generally, sort of pretty stupid? And his fantasy can only go so far before it becomes something all too real he doesn’t want to be a part of? THIS is the line. I’ve already written about this bit before, in how Jake’s sexuality and the denial of his agency over it are traditionally a feminine narrative applied to a character desperately trying to be the quirky male lead of an adventure story. He really wants to be both. He doesn’t want to be forced to choose or to subscribe to one extreme. He wants his cake and he’s going to fucking eat it, too.

The crockertier Jane/Jake scene encapsulates everything jake wants to project, Indiana & Croft, and spins it on its head: he would rather die than be the big man hero and hurt jane (and he does die for it, later) & becoming the femme fatale means giving up what little agency he has for other people’s eyecandy benefits. and maybe that really fucking sucks? He loves these concepts but he also really hates the reality of them? That’s the concept of Jake.

But despite all that, he’s generally comfortable with his masculinity to the point of neutrality unless somebody else brings up The Norms and how he’s betraying them by not being the definition of a cishet dude. All the alphas have a very tricky relationship with gender performance, and they rely on notions of eachother. ( https ://twitter. com/hulknaps/ status/1133205821024800769?s=20 ) But Jake relies on the alphas to define him based on the moment. He adapts to different people in different ways. he switches often, because the persona he’s constructed is not solidly him, just one of many detachable masks of convenience. the aspect of transformation or characters with chameleon features is all over his intro page too, even if it starts as a red herring that he might be lord english.

Just count how many references you can make to alter-egos, transformations, ‘avatars’, multiple personalities or forms in this one page. i’ll make some of them easy: Mystique, Ghost rider, Hulk, his beloved Avatar, all rely on the concept of having fluid forms. Two of them are also blue ladies! did you know there’s a blue hulk and he’s a goofy jock? i’m going offtopic, but you grasp the idea.

I’m utterly subscribed to the idea of Jake being GNC/nonbinary/genderfluid or simply slapping a big ‘agender’ on it. I give dirk shit for always running from the gay label out of fear, but jake sort of does this too, relying strongly on not being defined and doing whatever feels best at the moment. It also fits his aspect and denizen, but those are more abstract references.

and since i dont know how to better end this bit of meta, here’s a little section of Mystique, blue lady extraordinary and one of his beloved characters. make of it what you will.