#June Egbert as a genderbent is not trans

[davekat-sucks]

John/junekat better or worse than Davekat?

John x Karkat aka Johnkat aka Communism is better than Davekat.

[gabersupermurder]

TRANSFEM SUNNY WOOOO!!!

Yeah :))) thanks for giving me an excuse to ramble about her (you will regret this)

Basically I got the idea while playing Omori Sandbox for Roblox and I rped with a girl Sunny (who was definitely just supposed to be genderbent but I just went "It would be cute if she was trans") and I got the idea that she started to realize maybe she wasn't a guy when she met Aubrey again and got Severe Gender Envy

I imagine that she's in early HRT if she's even been able to buy it at all yet (</3) because she's 100% broke, and accidentally made her look a bit like Mari if she didn't know how to take care of herself with the design (I'll send the commed design in the reblog)

And overall she makes me really happy in the same way that June Egbert does :)

[triptychgardener]

I've always been kinda curious about what the precise origin point was for June Egbert. Like I know it was a largely collective thing birthed from the source material, but nontheless I remain curious at the exact inflection point at which June Egbert, more specifically June as a transfem interpretation of John Egbert, became "a thing" so to speak. So I did a little digging, though I am not a researcher, I am a woman with limited patience. This mostly started when I was scrolling to the back of the (new!) June Egbert tag, and found something odd! Previously, all the earliest fics were from 2019, but lo and behold, there was a SINGLE fic from back in 2017!

It's actually just a very well done, short, bittersweet work about June being alone on Christmas! Now this was notable, as I would (historically, as a modern person with limited experience in the fandom pre uhhhhh this year) consider the big Inflection point to be the Toblerone Discovery! Obviously for that tweet to become a thing, the concept was obviously floating around beforehand, but that's the moment when it started get floated into pseudo-canon spaces. But I was curious if I could find anything before that time! Sadly, my results came up relatively sparse. The most I could find was some pages that were clearly NOT from before then, and a couple of curiosities! First off was this very cute art by CallMeYukari on Deviantart! But, it's supposed to be Egbert's descendent. Nontheless, very cute.

Also, this was just a fun little tangent, I got a couple of bandcamp pages which showed up, which turned out to just be a reviewer who had June Egbert Is Valid as a blog title.

But I knew that the best place to search would be Tumblr. Fortunately/Unfortunately, the June Egbert tag is Fucking Enormous, and I do not have the patience nor the nohow to journey back to the beginning. But you know what isn't quite as large of a tag? Joan Egbert, which appears to have been (afaik again) a pretty commonly used name for a fem version of John! I scrolled back as far as I could, which was abouuuut 2013! Now obviously, here we come back to a bit of a conflict! Which is that, there is actually a lot of girlbert content! Buuuut most of it tends towards Genderbend and Rule 63 stuff rather than trans stuff specifically, which ain't really what we're looking for! Though I was finding transfem John stuff as far back as 2015, and likely earlier if I was more thorough, most if not all of it went under Joan! There's still a few more recent posts that use Joan, which is quite fun to see!

Here's an example of a trans Joan post by the way.

But! Lo and behold as I scrolled to the bottom of the tag:

A mention of June! Granted, it is again specifying a genderbent, not transfem version, but this is the earliest I was able to find on a cursory glance. So that was my little shallow dive into history! If you have more detailed information or wanna do your own digging, feel free to share more!

[almost-casey]

its still genderbend.... even if shes 'trans'.... youre changing johns gender... thats what genderbending is

Hold on doll I think you have a small lil misunderstanding of what genderbending and trans hc's are, and the difference between the two! Hold on ill try to clear it up

So, first of all, a genderbend (or genderswap or... cisswap((thats a whole can of worms in itsself))) almost always takes place in an alternate universe. In this au, all of the characters are genderbent, and that means that both their body/sex and genders are changed to what the creator views as the "opposite" of their canon gender. Often times this means sexulization of very feminine/masculine bodies, but not always. The most controversial aspect to this change is the way that the swap equivilates gender and sex, which is fundamently (tho often unintentionally) transphobic. This au also often assumes that all characters are cis, which is not necessarily true(and is indicative of an unconcious aversion to trans characters)

So genderbends are a change in the sex of a character, which is thought to mean a change in gender, which is transphobic.

(Personally, genderbends and the like have never really bothered or offended me (mainly because i am cis), but I still have the consciousness to avoid interacting with such scenarios, because I understand the harm that they can do to those who are sensitive to such things.)

Now, trans headcannons! First of all, we examine the name: its a headcannon. Which means that, by all accounts, trans hc's are simply an assumption of a characters gender identity based on multiple factors :canon implications, unintentional parallels with trans experiences, or simply the projection of trans viewers. This hc assumes that the character has always been trans, not within the realm of an au, but within canon itself. Now, most times, the headcanon keeps with the characters "canon" gender (a boy character being a trans man, or vise versa), but in June's case, many viewers have been finding parallels with her journey and that of a trans woman, which is why the june headcannon has gained so much traction. Its not some willy-nilly genderbend, it is simply an observation of her cannon experiences and coming to a logical conclusion that she is trans.

So trans headcannons are are a combination of observation and projection, meaning that the canon character is assumed to be trans.

Now, I'm not saying that you have to think that this character is a trans woman! Thats the beauty of headcannons: they are an interpritation of the story, and thus everyones' are different. I, for one, love june egbert, and I really enjoy the headcannons! But I also enjoy others too, like trans man john egbert, or cis john egbert, I just enjoy the character regardless of gender identity! And you can interpret them however you like :)

I hope that cleared things up! If you have any questions ill be happy to try and help answer them :D

Don't reblog

[davekat-sucks]

I feel like the one thing Homestuck has improved on since postcanon was Junescourse.

2019 had June fans harassing people who headcanon John as transmasc or John/June as cis. Transphobes would harass June fans and leave mean comments on June fanart. June fans would to a point insist that June is canon and not liking that made you transphobic.

4 years later and June fans and John fans stay to themselves and like the fanart with the headcanons they prefer.

I feel like Homestuck^2’s pause caused this. It was supposed to make June “canon” (even though postcanon is outside canon, so June would not even be canon, more subjectively canon) and so John couldn’t be “canon” anymore to June fans, not even headcanon lest you be called transphobic.

I hope this new era of “like what you like I don’t care” stays the norm for the rest of the fandom’s existence.

And I’m glad I’m not a guilty gear fan. People are still arguing over bridget’s gender when you shouldn’t care. No real world impact will come from a video game character becoming a trans woman rather than a feminine male.

The Junecourse did lead to a point where an actual trans person was harassed for not liking June as trans. The modern generation would not believe the people they want to defend or push for more representation, would disagree with them. But I do agree we can at least go back to like what we like and respecting others for our preferences. If someone sees John as John and not June. That's fine. If someone takes the June headcanon as trans. That's fine too. If someone sees it as a genderbent, it's fine too. If someone sees June Egbert as a child of someone like JohnVris, JohnRose, Roxygen, Johnrezi, etc. that's also fine.