#jevil dess spamton similarities feeding my brokencode found family brainrot

[transesyourgranddukes]

SUPER LONG RAMBLING I WROTE DUE TO that link to the villains section of the hays code wikipedia article at the end and your point about Dess wanting to find ppl like her in the form of queer representation , which made me think back to the secret bosses and how they're characterized

so far they have been shown to be queer in some way + antagonistic to the main trio + linked to the figurative devil and have their own (fallen) angel/demon imagery . they and the rest of the darkners are “meant to serve lightners” , and with how lightners interacting with dark worlds represent people interacting with fiction , darkners are fictional characters meant to help/represent people

queerness in jevil being implied to have a relationship with seam (who is nonbinary) , and spamton trying to get himself a new body (trans coding) along with being confirmed mspec

not to mention their ties to the holiday family

particularly noelle , who is smiled at by the devilsknife and finds spamton's garbage dump place to be nostalgic

notably , Noelle , a queer character , finds comfort in those two (except for spamton during weird route , aside from the obvious influencing-the-killing-spree-by-you-and-your-childhood-friend-is-BAD , it is also a case of heteronormativity being imposed upon her by him through the thorn ring and his comments about her and kris . but that's another conversation)

jevil and spamton are people who have been outcast and failed by society in some way, left to rot in jail or abandoned to live in a garbage can , which could resonate with dess, who is ALSO alone somewhere horrible and cold and lonely (going off of her being in the code) , and whose disappearance could be read as her running from the town that she feels has failed her as a queer person and trying to make her own freedom (like jevil claiming he is free in his cell)

additionally the act of disappearing could be her rebelling(?) against and running from the expectations set upon her (like spamton trying to prove he can make it big without being puppeteered. although dess presumably had more positive expectations, expectations are still constricting to the ppl they affect)

tldr: dess , in a similar way to her sister but for a different reason , could possibly find comfort in the secret bosses through how they parallel her own issues with herself and her environment , akin to a queer person finding comfort in queer characters that reflect their own issues/situation

here’s a loosely speculative and rambly queer reading of dess that i sort of accidentally wrote just now. enjoy ?? ?

the more i think on it the more i think like. yeah noelle might very well be canonically a transgirl. as a lot of people have speculated, we might get the subtext when the mayor and dess are revealed to be does without antlers — we have the “horned girl and her sister” line, and it does seem a little odd that the story is so far withholding information on the mayor or dess’s appearances. and aside from the confirmation just being dope as hell on its own merits, i also think it might matter in relation to dess’s possible conflicts as a metaphorically queer person in a small town, maybe specifically with her mother

because the thing is, queerphobia literally doesn’t exist in utdr’s universes as far as we can tell. it doesn’t make sense for their mom to be angry with dess for being trans, gay, or GNC, because being those things isn’t considered rebellious or deviant in this world — it’s perfectly within the range of normal. it fits within her mother’s worldview. noelle is a trans lesbian and as far as we can tell it’s perfectly fine; their mom probably wouldn’t be upset either way if dess continued to be her daughter or came out as her son or as her nonbinary child. the mayor herself is gender-nonconforming — a tough, powerful woman in a position of high authority who can punch a man so hard that he blacks out.

but that doesn’t mean there can’t still be queer-flavored conflicts — perhaps a parent upset with her child for pursuing hobbies and passions that she thinks are inappropriate for her, that aren’t in line with what she understands or respects; for not dressing or behaving or growing up in the ways she thinks her children should. a parent angry with her child for not following rules that, in her mind, are in the child’s best interests to follow — rules that she thinks should protect dess from a world that just Wouldn’t Be Kind To Someone Like Her. a parent feeling personally attacked when her child chooses a new name for herself, rejecting the one she gave to her. a parent feeling hurt and abandoned when the person her child chooses to be in the world isn’t the person she expected or wanted.

to very briefly speculate on specifics: consider the possibility that, while rudy and noelle only ever refer to dess by her chosen name, the mayor may insist on calling her “december.” and, while it does make sense in-universe for someone to suspect the worst from dess’s vanishing, consider the imagery of a parent possibly considering her young adult child “dead” after that person made choices for herself that she found frightening and confusing.

noelle, while arguably just as “queer” as dess (see her quiet fascination with the weird and strange, and her desire to be closer with both susie and kris, both characters who, aside from being literally queer, are also very metaphorically queer in their own rights) might be avoiding this conflict by essentially “closeting” herself around her mom — minimizing herself as a form of self-preservation (for example, stifling her emotional outbursts while playing video games so her mom doesn’t know she’s playing them). this is of course oppressive to her, as well — it’s simply that noelle has traditionally prioritized her safety, while dess may have prioritized her liberty. dess, while perhaps not literally queer like noelle, is metaphorically “out,” and while being out has its own rewards, it may have cost her their mom’s sympathy and respect.

none of this is to preemptively demonize the mayor — we haven’t even met her yet — but to speculate on a possible character flaw that could reasonably have driven dess away, and may be redeemed over the course of the story. the mayor may need to redeem herself before dess can, or is willing to, return.

and i don’t think it’s just her mom. i think her mom, as the town’s mayor, might be in part representative of dess’s relationship to the town itself — a small, insular community that dess feels limits her choices and opportunities, especially as a young adult with big dreams. we know she dreamed of taking noelle to the big city someday.

…something i think about a lot is the line about dess wearing asriel’s jacket — how classically Straight and heteronormative that imagery is. to be clear, that’s not in any way meant as a knock on the legitimacy of dess and asriel’s relationship itself (i have some more nuanced thoughts on dessriel, and the value it has thematically or whatever, that i don’t really think are really relevant here. but i don’t think dessriel is in any way bad LOL), nor does it mean that i think asriel or their relationship is necessarily heteronormative in the literal sense (asriel himself is arguably GNC from the little bit we currently know about him).

it’s more that the framing here seems to emphasize how traditional and exceedingly “normal” the relationship was considered to be, something that may have been at odds with dess’s interests and ambitions as a young, “queer” person. asriel is quite literally the boy next door — sweet, nice, non-threatening. they grew up together; their parents and little siblings are close friends. they’re a boy and a girl in a perfect narrative position to date — hiro and mari — so of course they did. who else would she have dated? pizzapants? meangirl bratty? i could see her feeling boxed in to that option, among so many other options she felt she never had a real say in. asriel may be a great boyfriend, healthy and stable and exceedingly normal, but who’s to say she wanted “normal”? what if she wanted something queer?

if we think about why dess might have run away, why she would have wanted to escape, and why she might have found the fantasy of the dark worlds so captivating that she lost herself to them, i think this could be one way to read into it. dess is — at least metaphorically — a young, queer person, lonely and existentially bored in a small town that cares about her but, from her perspective, doesn’t seem to really understand her, doesn’t give her the option to really be who she wants to be. maybe she just wanted to find another queer person like her. and, who knows — maybe she did.