#and gay isn't mutually exclusive bc it's a spectrum

[ineffablelvrs]

btw if u see me rb posts that seem to be two different opinions. i have a reasoning for all of them and i can share it with yall just not in the tags of the post i rb bc i dont really like doing it lmao

[dingodad]

if blood/caste = troll gender, then what would that make karkat? off the top of my dome, it immediately reads to me that he would be considered intersex or trans, both even, and at a glance, narratively that feels cohesive. i dont have anything to counter this reading, just curious on your thoughts!!

generally speaking i find it kind of a waste of time to try to identify "exact equivalents" in any given fictional allegory. blood castes are very much like troll genders and i think that's the most pertinent interpretation to homestuck's core themes, but the benefit of inventing a fictional system rather than straight up saying the trolls are segregated on the basis of sex is that the analogy doesn't have to be perfect and it can be used to represent different things at different times - the hemospectrum being a gender spectrum isn't mutually exclusive with the fact that it is also an economic hierarchy, for instance. a lot of discussions about "coding" in fiction end up languishing in the shallows by ignoring this.

so in terms of what the hemospectrum "makes karkat" i don't really think of it in terms of the exact thing that he would be on earth, bc i think the story adequately communicates the broad strokes; that whatever he is, in society's eyes he believes the circumstances of his birth cause him to fall short of the expectations that come with the strict categories alternia expects all trolls to fit into. i have to assume a lot of readers picking up on this is what led to trans guy karkat being such a hugely popular headcanon (besides trans guy headcanons having simply been the most popular thing full stop for a long time), which i think makes complete sense. i also think there are clear lines to be drawn between blood colour and biological sex in the way that biology never cleanly lines up with the social expectations associated with it, and even if i'm not totally sure terminology like "intersex" applies in the same way in a culture with 10+ genders as it does in a culture with just 2, the fact that trolls have a linear "spectrum" of genders clearly lends itself to this kind of thinking.

(this kind of harkens back to a years-old homestuck discourse: a lot of readers took issue with the suggestion that, despite being called a spectrum, in spinoff stories the troll blood colours are always depicted as fitting into twelve discrete categories. but long before i even began to explore the direct intersections between gender, sex and blood colour, the logic behind this seemed clear to me: surely all trolls ARE different and DO have subtly different shades to their blood, but in order to maintain a caste system where each blood colour has its place in the social order, alternian society has to act like there are only 12 colours. this is, after all, exactly how astrological signs are assigned; you can be born on any of 365 days in a year, but for the sake of neatly dividing the population into easily-described groups, each of these days is split among 12 basically-arbitrary signs. this clear parallel homestuck draws between gender and star sign is also why i find it so hard to take class and aspect seriously.)

so even if i don't think either of your options are necessarily what karkat's character is "intended" to convey in the same way i believe caste-as-gender as an intended reading, the versatility of the caste analogy makes them both very organic interpretations. BUT TO ACTUALLY GET TO YOUR QUESTION LOL: like i said in a previous ask, karkat comes across to me as being closeted. in conjunction with his chronically unorthodox approach to troll romance and the role he plays as homestuck's introduction to LGBT themes long before "trolls are bisexual" establishes itself as a canon fact, karkat reads as "the troll version" of a gay guy hiding this fundamental "flaw" in his being because he feels it's standing between him and the all-american ultra-masculine role he sees for himself among the threshecutioners. so like i said above i don't think it necessarily has to be about his "gender" so much as it is about his relationship to expectations of gender, just as troll-caste genders exist across a whole spectrum of expectations rather than in a strict binary.