Feferi Is Problematic?

[arachnidsGrip]

So, I've heard a fair bit of claims that Feferi is problematic. But... rarely have I heard why? I've heard things here and there that basically sum up to "Oh, Feferi broke Eridan's bloodpusher and he's my favorite character so that means she's Problematique and BAD!" but that doesn't tread water?? I refuse to believe that Feferi is "problematic" on that basis alone, and I'm hoping someone else on the forums can explain/discuss/debate/whatever this.

[egg]

It depends on what you mean by problematic.
If you mean "Not PC", she's said the R-word once or twice, but so have many characters, including fandom darling Karkat (who also calls Nepeta autistic, and makes reference to a homophobic slur towards Vriska). I see it as a quirk of Hussie's early writing more than a fault of the characters.
If you mean 'bad person', well...
I love Feferi, but she's actually one of the more... disagreeable characters in the comic. For one, she believes in a world without culling or without systemic oppression, which is all well and good until you consider that Feferi completely ignores, or acknowledges but refuses to take into consideration, the whole root cause of the problem, which is the caste system, probably because it puts her in the position of power that allows her to reinvent Alternia in the first place. We see that pre-scratch Feferi succeeded her ancestor, and created a world much like the one post-scratch Feferi wanted, and while it seems superficially nice and utopian, it has its fair share of problems. Also she literally has no problem with orphaning hundreds of trolls, possibly per day, to feed her lusus. I mean, if you see it on the scale of it being for the greater good it's fine, but still...
Her treatment of Eridan is less than ideal yes, but understandable if you put yourself in her shoes. She clearly has very little romantic interest in him at all, and is leading him on when it comes to being a moirail probably because she believes she needs to pacify him. I think it's telling that when Eridan claims he's gonna go join Bec's side, she goes "YOU MUST BE STOPPED!". I think she's always viewed Eridan as a really dangerous person, even if he's clingy and hopelessly lonely. I don't blame Eridan, but I can see her perspective, even if some of her actions towards Eridan are an amazing display of blatant ineptitude towards dealing with another person, though she IS just 13.

[VASKA]

I must be old enough for slang to start leaving me behind because I always thought "problematic" was a euphemism for "racist". I read the Peixes as black-coded, but I'm not really sure if they're racist.

If you're just implying people saying Feferi is an awful person, well. I definitely think she's an awful leader, an awful friend, and an awful girlfriend.... but she's a good person in her heart, where it apparently doesn't count at all.

[Guy-Rocketram]

It depends on what you mean by problematic.
If you mean "Not PC", she's said the R-word once or twice, but so have many characters, including fandom darling Karkat (who also calls Nepeta autistic, and makes reference to a homophobic slur towards Vriska)

Andrew Hussie once said on the whole Karkat calling Nepeta autistic thing:
"Karkat APPEARS to be using ableist rhetoric here. But I'd point out that it is HIGHLY possible, if not probable, that Nepeta is somewhere on the autism spectrum. And no, that's not just me covering my ass retroactively by almost a decade, all right, wise guy?? He's not that tactful in how he mentions it, but you should give him the benefit of the doubt because the full span of the story reveals him to be somewhat Woker Than You Thought. This is all probably an act anyway, this attitude he's exhibiting. He'd probably be happy to have Nepeta on his team, considering the alternatives. And she'd be even happier, since her unrequited Karkat crush is the stuff of legend. It is not to be though. :(("
including to the commentaries so take that for what you will. You could just argue this is Andrew trying to cover himself, as he implies.

Also about Karkat aluding to a homophobic slur, that is just inacurate. On Alternia the term "fag" doesn't exist. Karkat says in response for the acronym of Future arachnidsGrip
"CCG: TOO BAD THE ACRONYM WASN'T "HAG" INSTEAD, IT WOULD HAVE SUITED YOU MUCH BETTER.
CCG: INSTEAD OF THAT NONSENSE WORD
CCG: MAYBE ITS ASSOCIATION WITH YOU WILL COLLOQUIALLY CAUSE IT TO TAKE ON A NEGATIVE CONNOTATION, WHAT DO YOU THINK?
CCG: MAYBE FAG WILL BE "THE NEW BURN!" EVEN THOUGH IT REALLY MEANS NOTHING IN OUR LANGUAGE."

[egg]

It depends on what you mean by problematic.
If you mean "Not PC", she's said the R-word once or twice, but so have many characters, including fandom darling Karkat (who also calls Nepeta autistic, and makes reference to a homophobic slur towards Vriska)

Andrew Hussie once said on the whole Karkat calling Nepeta autistic thing:
"Karkat APPEARS to be using ableist rhetoric here. But I'd point out that it is HIGHLY possible, if not probable, that Nepeta is somewhere on the autism spectrum. And no, that's not just me covering my ass retroactively by almost a decade, all right, wise guy?? He's not that tactful in how he mentions it, but you should give him the benefit of the doubt because the full span of the story reveals him to be somewhat Woker Than You Thought. This is all probably an act anyway, this attitude he's exhibiting. He'd probably be happy to have Nepeta on his team, considering the alternatives. And she'd be even happier, since her unrequited Karkat crush is the stuff of legend. It is not to be though. :(("
including to the commentaries so take that for what you will. You could just argue this is Andrew trying to cover himself, as he implies.

Also about Karkat aluding to a homophobic slur, that is just inacurate. On Alternia the term "fag" doesn't exist. Karkat says in response for the acronym of Future arachnidsGrip
"CCG: TOO BAD THE ACRONYM WASN'T "HAG" INSTEAD, IT WOULD HAVE SUITED YOU MUCH BETTER.
CCG: INSTEAD OF THAT NONSENSE WORD
CCG: MAYBE ITS ASSOCIATION WITH YOU WILL COLLOQUIALLY CAUSE IT TO TAKE ON A NEGATIVE CONNOTATION, WHAT DO YOU THINK?
CCG: MAYBE FAG WILL BE "THE NEW BURN!" EVEN THOUGH IT REALLY MEANS NOTHING IN OUR LANGUAGE."

I do know all of this already, actually. I've read all the book commentary. Like I said in the sentence immediately proceeding the quoted snippet, I don't think the characters are inherently bigoted, especially not Karkat. It's a quirk of Hussie's early writing (if you've seen any of his Team Special Olympics comics, you'd see what I'm talking about), and the FAG and autistic examples were to further reinforce this point.

[Roxy]

I... i dont understand why she would be problematic. She just wants... a better place. Sure shes not to smart about how to make that better place but that doesnt make her a bad person just cause shes not smart. She has good intentions and at lesst tries to carry them out. Since when did we start calling people who want a society without ruthless murder and oppression problematic? Please.... just let the fish girl be. Shes dead anyhow

[Leddy]

Feferi is not problematic.

Considering how far up she is on the Hemospectrum, she's leagues better than any other Fuschia we've seen, especially considering actually growing up on Alternia. Her worldviews and goals are certainly... flawed, a little bit of an understatement but still, but I find that it stems more from naivety than from anything else, those extremelly complicated worldviews would be hard to expose to a Fuschia in 13 years time, especially considering what culture wants them to be. Feferi wouldn't really have any problems or see any problems with the Hemospectrum at this point because she's on top of it and not had that realization yet.

Regarding her actions towards Eridan... I think egg has a pretty good opinion on that. I feel that Feferi has always viewed Eridan as a little bit of a trouble person, being his moirail she'd likely get to see the better side of him, but at the same time be in a prime position to understand his worst. Her breaking that moirailship when she doesn't need to worry about him going on a genocide if he's not there and because he's just that overbearing is justified, and her quick escalation of "You need to be stopped!" to Eridan is also justified, what with him basically going to shill everyone else out on the Meteor more than likely and how dangerous it is for Eridan, I don't think Feferi was ever aiming to kill Eridan, moreso knock him out. Violetbloods can take a lot as long as their vitals are good.

There is also that note of her killing Lusii, considering the alternative was literal genocide of a caste, if not of all castes, was the reprecussion I find that actually for once has a pretty justifiable source for being shitty, which is unusual for Homestuck.

Considering her sitaution, Feferi is about as unproblematic as she could be.

[JakeMorph]

'problematic' is kind of a uselessly broad signifier for judging the character of an alternian. as a troll she's leagues better than a majority of other inhabitants of her universe by virtue of shaping beforus into the planet that it became, i.e. a planet that is inherently better than alternia. some people will argue that beforan society showed an ableist tendency to dehumanise the lower castes and disabled through feferi's version of culling, which would probably not reflect very well on a human from our earth, but that's ninety nine percent speculation.

[MinskLit]

The fact that Hussie uses the R-word and some other hard language is one thing, but the reason he did the bit about the acronym of Future arachnidsGrip being an insult is because if he hadn't acknowledged it, it still would probably have been noticed by the majority of people, and commenting on it was supposed to show that it was just a quirk of the format. The moment Hussie decided to call Present Karkat PCG, it was already fated to happen at some point.

It's tragic, really

[burnt2ashleys]

Feferi is a character? Damn, that's crazy, haha.

[egg]

I figure a lot of people hate her not because she's a bad person, but because of her treatment of Eridan as OP said and Eridan is that person's favorite character. And, the reason why people tend to prefer Eridan as opposed to Feferi is admitted by Hussie himself.

Spoiler

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what seems fundamental to her profile is just a basic sense of averageness. This isn't me throwing shade at her, it's just how she's supposed to be. Kind of a regular kid who gets excited about regular kid stuff, doesn't have a wild, ostentatious personality or glaring defects like most other trolls. She's an average, fun-loving kid leading the life of the least average kid on the planet, and she wants to make the best of her situation, whether it's inheriting the throne (where she would bring peace to the planet) or saying goodbye to the world and playing the game (which she knows will happen, because her lusus told her it would). Like Aradia, Feferi is okay with a lot of things, but she slides through adversity easily with the power of enthusiasm rather than apathy. The only other character I can think of with "averageness" as a built-in feature of her profile is Jane. Who is also a Life player, and an heiress to a different throne (occupied by, yet again, the Condesce). Returning to the idea that most of these characters tend to be composites of various constituent building-block personas, or platonic ideals of certain character types, we appear to be isolating another ingredient here: Janeness. Or Feferiness, depending on how you look at it. I'm more inclined to see Jane as a distillation of a rough idea that began here, since that's the pattern which keeps playing itself out over this Hivebent reread.

Not only was she written with this in mind, a large draw of Homestuck's characters is that have they some kind of hidden complexity or insecurity that we don't know about that gets prodded at and explored by the story. Both she and Eridan have similar word counts, but a lot of people prefer Eridan because he's a small baby who did nothing wrong (I'd like to say that I also like Eridan, and recently defended him on his thread) and Feferi is a cake witch who trampled on his feelings without (apparent) justification. She's a 13 year old, guys, one that's the only one of her kind and is the only troll on Alternia who could be considered to be at least somewhat pampered, living in a giant underwater castle and with everyone afraid of talking back to her lest they be murdered (if only they knew). Sure, I could say "why not just establish a democracy instead of the Beforan system, Feferi, u dumb nerd!!" but in reality Feferi's never had the ability to think about and conceptualize a different system, even if acknowledging the caste system as the cause of it all is way easier like I said in my previous post.
I'm of the argument that Eridan and Feferi really needed more time before just flat out dying, and that Doc Scratch did everything wrong.

[Leddy]

Egg, i love the majority of what you said but that 'Eridan did nothing wrong comment is objectively wrong.

Even if you call him attacking Sollux self defense, he still had no reason to actually kill Feferi instead of knocking her out, and beyond that more importantly... without ANY provokation from Kanaya in that moment, Eridan destroys the Matriorb and murders Kanaya. Perhaps the morally worst decision in the comic up until this point. He isnt even influenced or fucked with like LE or Doc Scratch, even in retrospect.

Give as much of a pitfall as you like for Feferi and Sollux, and even for wanting to join Jack Noir, but you are not going to tell me that he did nothing wrong as long as that bit of the story exists.

Other than that I can agree largely with egg except for that bit above and saying Feferi trampled on his feelings without reason. Which I will refer to what I said above in my first post.

[egg]

.

You misinterpreted. I never said Eridan did nothing wrong, my implication is that other people think he did nothing wrong. That's why I added the disclaimer in parenthesis.

[Leddy]

.

You misinterpreted. I never said Eridan did nothing wrong, my implication is that other people think he did nothing wrong. That's why I added the disclaimer in parenthesis.

Than woops that was really stupid of me, I was reading that on Mobile and missed those parenthasis, I guess it still serves as an explanation for why that argument is... odd

[Auntie]

As has all been covered, "Feferi problematic" tends to boil down to two things- her relationship with Eridan and her view of culling. I never really got the whole deal with being upset about her over her relationship with Eridan? Eridan was never that good of a partner, and the relationship was an abject failure, which is... fine? I think there's a lot of overanalysis of the moral implications of a 13 year old ending a terrible relationship.

Culling is one that, sure, you could say that's problematic, because it's a catchall word that covers everything from outright bigotry to bad taste. She has an incomplete and patronizing view on how to best help others, because she's the wealthiest, most privileged child in the world. Literally.

That said, I feel like a good chunk of "things her culling system would totally have" are more... headcanons than anything said in canon? Granted I don't remember all of Homestuck, nobody does, but I feel like Feferi often gets put down for the sake of raising up boys in the cast. Eridan's an obvious one, but I also see a number of headcanons about the Beforan system and how someone's fav dancestor boys were so horribly mistreated. Which is fine really, but that's a lot to project onto an alternate universe 13 year old version of the empress when it's not even canon.

So to sum up, yeah she's problematic because that's an umbrella term. Is she that bad? I don't personally feel so, and it seems to me that being a fairly ordinary young girl put her right in the path of the bus.

[JakeMorph]

it's absurd that people include the way she treated eridan among defects to her character. we remember eridan wanted to commit genocide and admitted to only entering one quadrant with her so he could convince her to move into another one right

[thorondraco]

As has all been covered, "Feferi problematic" tends to boil down to two things- her relationship with Eridan and her view of culling. I never really got the whole deal with being upset about her over her relationship with Eridan? Eridan was never that good of a partner, and the relationship was an abject failure, which is... fine? I think there's a lot of overanalysis of the moral implications of a 13 year old ending a terrible relationship.

Culling is one that, sure, you could say that's problematic, because it's a catchall word that covers everything from outright bigotry to bad taste. She has an incomplete and patronizing view on how to best help others, because she's the wealthiest, most privileged child in the world. Literally.

That said, I feel like a good chunk of "things her culling system would totally have" are more... headcanons than anything said in canon? Granted I don't remember all of Homestuck, nobody does, but I feel like Feferi often gets put down for the sake of raising up boys in the cast. Eridan's an obvious one, but I also see a number of headcanons about the Beforan system and how someone's fav dancestor boys were so horribly mistreated. Which is fine really, but that's a lot to project onto an alternate universe 13 year old version of the empress when it's not even canon.

So to sum up, yeah she's problematic because that's an umbrella term. Is she that bad? I don't personally feel so, and it seems to me that being a fairly ordinary young girl put her right in the path of the bus.

To note Kanaya, she believed that Feferi had all the best intentions but was not to be trusted to be given control. A running theme with the Lifebound has to do with control it seems. When they are put into a situation where they have no control they try to claw for control, often with some good intention. Nanna for example clawed for control of her own life, and vengeance. But then the Empress vanished. She abandoned that desire for control and simply lived a normal life thereafter.

When given power they end up getting immensely ambitious and go kinda nuts, wanting everything to go right and to be stable. It is implied that Beforus was very oppressive but in a very different way. An Sjw type dystopia. Especially as it does seem that trolls are naturally aggressive, though definitely not to the degrees enforced by Alternia since like, all of them have mental disorders living there.

We see a similar situation with Jane now. Unlike Nanna, who clawed out of the empress's control and built something with her own hands to counter her, Jane is given power by campaigning. In fact Dave states she isn't even a good businesswoman cause, as she is one of the Gods of this world, peeps are stumbling over each other to appease her. She is being given stuff, not earning it.

Meenah and the Empress seem to be somewhat different. Feferi and Jane want to enforce stability, while Meenah and the Empress want to wreck how things are for their own vanity and ambitions. The empress being even worse as she has zero interpersonal connections to keep her grounded and she has flown off the handle so far it would take eons to return to it. For as bitchy as Meenah is she still cares about her social circle and those that become her friends. In her own way at least. She is rather Vriska like. Except she has never maimed anyone intentionally. Though she used similar tactics to try and toughen her friends up for the challenge ahead.... And she literally gets beat to death by a Rusty for her troubles. Just like Vriska!

[VASKA]

Meenah and the Empress seem to be somewhat different. Feferi and Jane want to enforce stability, while Meenah and the Empress want to wreck how things are for their own vanity and ambitions. The empress being even worse as she has zero interpersonal connections to keep her grounded and she has flown off the handle so far it would take eons to return to it. For as bitchy as Meenah is she still cares about her social circle and those that become her friends. In her own way at least. She is rather Vriska like. Except she has never maimed anyone intentionally. Though she used similar tactics to try and toughen her friends up for the challenge ahead.... And she literally gets beat to death by a Rusty for her troubles. Just like Vriska!

I don't think that's the best (whatever best even means in a story as abstract and vague as Homestuck) way to read the Peixes. I do think the Condesce was meant to have sympathetic traits, and Alternian was certainly orderly- it was so strictly ordered that it was an authoritarian nightmare, but the Alternian empire was certainly well-ordered, with each troll having their place, no superfluous or unnecessary members of society (on account of all the culling), the efficient, if tedious, tangle of bureaucracy implied by the legislacerators. It could almost be said that the reason Alternia was such a hell planet is because the Condesce was too orderly and stable.

I do also think the Condesce has very positive, personal feelings about Alternia, she's just too unhealthy as a person to be able to act on those feelings in a rational way. I may be wrong, but in Act 6, after she conquered and flooded earth, wasn't she mentioned as crying in pain and desperate to revive the trolls? Even though her approach is twisted beyond all recognition, I do think she has some kind of bizarre, obsessive interest in the well-being of her subjects, the same way Meenah cares about her friends but shows it by fucking everything up.

[thorondraco]

Meenah and the Empress seem to be somewhat different. Feferi and Jane want to enforce stability, while Meenah and the Empress want to wreck how things are for their own vanity and ambitions. The empress being even worse as she has zero interpersonal connections to keep her grounded and she has flown off the handle so far it would take eons to return to it. For as bitchy as Meenah is she still cares about her social circle and those that become her friends. In her own way at least. She is rather Vriska like. Except she has never maimed anyone intentionally. Though she used similar tactics to try and toughen her friends up for the challenge ahead.... And she literally gets beat to death by a Rusty for her troubles. Just like Vriska!

I don't think that's the best (whatever best even means in a story as abstract and vague as Homestuck) way to read the Peixes. I do think the Condesce was meant to have sympathetic traits, and Alternian was certainly orderly- it was so strictly ordered that it was an authoritarian nightmare, but the Alternian empire was certainly well-ordered, with each troll having their place, no superfluous or unnecessary members of society (on account of all the culling), the efficient, if tedious, tangle of bureaucracy implied by the legislacerators. It could almost be said that the reason Alternia was such a hell planet is because the Condesce was too orderly and stable.

I do also think the Condesce has very positive, personal feelings about Alternia, she's just too unhealthy as a person to be able to act on those feelings in a rational way. I may be wrong, but in Act 6, after she conquered and flooded earth, wasn't she mentioned as crying in pain and desperate to revive the trolls? Even though her approach is twisted beyond all recognition, I do think she has some kind of bizarre, obsessive interest in the well-being of her subjects, the same way Meenah cares about her friends but shows it by fucking everything up.

I remember her trying to revive the trolls but not her crying in pain or anything. Though it is possible that at that point she had gone rather insane from isolation.

Also literally, no, Alternia was an unstable cesspool of chaos that was only held together via Doc Scratch's intervention. Its even possible the rebelloins only failed because of his interventions and the Handmaid's.

[aspiringWatcher]

I... i dont understand why she would be problematic. She just wants... a better place. Sure shes not to smart about how to make that better place but that doesnt make her a bad person just cause shes not smart. She has good intentions and at lesst tries to carry them out. Since when did we start calling people who want a society without ruthless murder and oppression problematic? Please.... just let the fish girl be. Shes dead anyhow

I'd put it this way:

Good intentions are not a guarantee of benevolence.

The system Beforan Feferi installed on her planet is not really pleasant to live in, given how Latula (who can't smell - a relatively non-impactive condition, IMO) would be culled and excessively coddled under it, i.e. treated as if she needed to be taken care of.

Porrim also mentions how the ruling class is predominantly male despite the empress being a female troll, so write that down too, probably? I remember something about Porrim's dissatisfaction with the system not caring what the subjects think about it?

She wanted to take care of the weak, sure, but she... doesn't care what the people she takes care of think. (Sollux seems a bit unnerved by her attitude when they're dating.) In other words, while she might genuinely care about others, she thinks her standards are universal and she...doesn't see them as equals.

Oh, and: throw a zebruh into Beforan crucible and he'd feel right at home there.