Trans Reveals and Gender Parity

[Generalrabogolfo]

this post is amazing i love you CC

[calamityCons]

Aw, you’re too kind! Thank you.

[Nep]

transman roxy got fashion style ngl

Roxy is sexy and fashionable on whatever side of the Binary they reside.

transman roxy got fashion style ngl

Imagine just having a casual hoodie with just some fancyass stupid heart glasses and shitty striderhair wannabe and calling it """fashion""".

Call me when Homestuck^2 Meat Roxy has something as good as this.

[thorondraco]

I can understand why trans vriska and trans june egbert are incongruous and certainly also pretty damn cynical. It is way too easy to categorize these reveals as post-canon attempts to earn Woke Points, which may or may not be the case. I can certainly see it with Vriska because I don’t have a strong emotional connection to her nor do i think it goes against anything she has ever done or said in the comic.

June however I have a problem with, because John was always a prime example of non-toxic masculinity. He was a boy who loved his dad openly, and his dad loved him back. He baked with his father, he played rough with him, he was excited to wear a grown up suit just like his dad, he modeled himself to his dad and in turn he became the prime source of emotional connection and the heart of the team. He was a very powerful representative of a Boy who is masculine, but SECURE in it to the point he doesn’t struggle with his identity in the comic but rather acts as a bedrock for others. He was, ironically for a character associated with the wind, a stable and nonjudgmental fixed point, who could reach out and pluck his friends away from dark paths. He did this with Rose, he did this with Dave, he did this with Jade. He encouraged them to believe in themselves and love themselves, because HE loves THEM. This portrayal of masculine-flavored friend love was a huge part of my concept of the character, so it’s tough for me to imagine June could be a plausible iteration of this hypothetical person who exists in my mind.

Eridan may not be trans, because I agree that jumps the gun. He is at the very least a questioning person who needs to do soul searching and self reflection before coming to a conclusion. In my mind, it’s likely that he will conclude he is still a boy, still wants to be referred to as he/him, but he happens to enjoy being a fabulous crossdresser and being a gender nonconforming badass no matter what anyone says. GNC is probably a label that suits him best, but he’s a fictional character.

There’s also the fact that sometimes gender and sexuality headcanons are purely wish fulfillment. There is nothing wrong with that. We are talking about people who only exist as pictures and words on the internet and a system of memories and personality that exist within our minds. They are real because we made them real, and there are infinite ways you could discard or warp or turn over or copy the character you have in mind to make yourself happy. It is a valid thing to do, because nobody is getting hurt, and it makes the one making headcanons happy.

It is different for a creative team actually connected to the source material, because these are supposed to build upon all the rules stated before. When you put out a work publicly, you come up with rules for the world the characters live in, and part of the fun is imagining and pretending that these people are real and had a life before the events of the story. Unfortunately, once you put something down explicitly in the work of art you made, the expectation and good storytelling form dictates you stick to the thing. In the words of a youtube reviewer, the audience attitude is this:

You came up with these dumbass rules and I expect you to follow them to the letter.

Now there can be some wiggle room. You could keep a part of the story deliberately vague so you don’t have any solid rules to break. You could keep something a secret and not reveal it until much later on, creating a shocking swerve and make an unbelievable plot twist that changes everything. You could introduce the superpower in-story to change reality so that any errors never happened. You could end the story entirely and then reboot it, this time with a clearer idea of what happened and what didn’t within the context of YOUR story.

When you try to say “actually this character was always secretly X the whole time!” That gets frustrating, because it breaks the rules in a really lazy way to get all the benefits of getting the audience’s attention but at the detriment of audience goodwill. This is why Gainax Endings piss people off so much. If your deep and deconstructive mecha anime ends with the main character talking to a penguin, you get angry people demanding their questions be answered. If you suddenly reveal that Dumbledore was gay the whole time, it’ll be hard for people to take you seriously and it will make those who wish for more gay rep outside of stereotypes really mad because it’s a toothless, shitty reveal.

If, as the result of a lottery, someone wished for the main source of healthy masculinity and stability were to become a trans feminine woman, and God grants that wish but makes no effort to demonstrate it anywhere, in any of the media revealed so far, and won’t even show it in the Deliberately Shitting On Canon Pesterquest... well. I hope that the transition and explanation for June Egbert shows up sometime soon.

In real life, June doesnt need a “reason” or to “explain herself” of why she is herself. But June is not real, and all evidence that the audience agrees is true points away from June being a thing. Unfortunately, I am attached to John, so June will need to give me a lot more convincing before I start to feature her in my stuff. That’s really the extent of the debate, though. I like John as he is. I’d rather keep him around for all he means to me. That’s just me personally though. I have no right to demand others do the same.

The reader in pesterquest is essentially a fixfic writer who has hacked into the the Homestuck server is messily and passionately altering the story, with andrew hussie trying to choke him out and aysha and kate trying to grapple his stickfigure limbs, with the reader screeching through choke spittle "IMMA MAKING THESE KIDS HAPPY AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP ME!!!" copy and pasting over what is present with preternatural fanstrength.
And it is a bit glorious XD. But of course it needs to come to a head in some form and consequences must happen. The Reader will have to be torn away and have to do something to save his fixfic.

Course i think the writing quality is pretty competent overall so i am not using fixfic in a derogatory sense, some homestuck fixfics are pretty good if a bit misguides in intent. But it basically IS what the reader is doing.

And you basically hit the nail on the head there. These ARE fictional characters and they need to have themselves explained and explored in general. its why you have these characters to begin with, to have someone to empathize with, hate, and like with vriska both at the same time. To understand them. Especially if you start adding traits they did not have before, and worse if you aren't taking into account their prior developments and the general timeloop chaos that is homestuck. And the unique scifi/fantasy elements some of these species posses. Which i feel a lot of people end up overlooking a bit.

I thinks stuff like Roxy has worked out well but he had the advantage of having more closure on his other issues and some elements of is background that oculd lead to his questioning and realizing it. Eridan is weaker but we do know there are incarnations of himself that were crossdressed so its not implausible, but he has baggage issues like Vriska. Vriska, i think could work with that but you would have needed a new incarnation of Serket to deal that at this point.
To invoke the joke, she has many irons in the fire in terms of her mental state and personality, and adding another would be too distracting in terms of her character development. Even if they went the more reasonable route of her being transmasc, rather than retconning her sex, she has enough baggage as is and has to work through all that.

John is a tricky one. Technically speaking the main john is dead and in a mysterious way that prevents resurrection at all. That could impact any attempts to revive ore remake him if its preventing resurrection. So maybe weird shenanigans happens there?
But honestly i can't think of a single thing in John's life that would have made him repress gender dysphoria. His dad is a dad elemental that made fucking Jane a somewhat decent person in at least 2 incarnations of her her existence, so i can't see where it would originate from...

Could a positive rolemodel lead to repression? Like he wanted to be so much like his dad, but was a kid and repressed his more feminine feelings thinking they would get in the way of being like his dad? Basically like Roxy did with coffee, John stockholmed his fool self into being cisgender so he could emulate his dad. Fortunately the results were very positive for the most part.
Its kinda ridiculous but.. This is John eggbert we are talking about and he has an issue doing things to the benefit of himself. Unless they pull some bullshit like Dad egbert had some toxic masculinity going on, but non of us would buy that . Dad eggbert is the pinnacle of positive masculinity. This ain't Bro we are talking about.

[VASKA]

I think a big part of trans Vriska's appeal to me, and probably a lot of other trans people, is that Vriska would still be transfem, even if she was AFAB. By that I mean, she's kind of the archetypal essence of a lot of trans women's experiences and identity. I've had a discussion like this before, and it actually devolved into "I'm not sure if I relate to Vriska because she's a wish fulfillment version of my own issues, or if I relate to Vriska because I was exposed to Vriska as a teenager and became like her". Vriska is sure of herself, confident even in the face of her massive self-esteem issues. She reads in every meaningful way as "feminine", but isn't a girly girl in any conceivable way, she has a sort of feminity around her that isn't dependent on behaving or looking like a girl, this is a brutal, aggressive, neurotic mess of an alien who runs around in tattered black denim. Vriska has the ability to wake something up inside people. For a some people, myself included, Vriska is read as a token of body issues, and despite not really giving a fuck about her body: she's jokingly fat, she's popularly twiggy, she's got an eyepatch and bloody stump. I don't want to give out too much personal information here, especially since I have some personal issues that tend to start arguments, but Vriska has always been a lot more than a visual "transition goal" for me: for years, I've understood Vriska as *my* image of what being a woman looks like, so naturally I was happy when we got Transka.

Edit: I put my thoughts into the mouth of others, fixed that

[egg]

If I'll be honest here, the problem doesn't lie with characters being called trans exactly, at least not personally for me. It's due to how shoddily Homestuck actually handles 'canon', despite desiring that word to be devoid of meaning. I know it's possible, because the SCP Foundation did it, but this is not really the way to go. I admire the idea of giving fans a voice in your work, but elevating them to a position of authority over your comic's canon still requires some form of canon to function, a base with ideas that remain unchanging. And, in all honesty, I'm not sure if the attitude perpetuated by those who now have that power over the comic is necessarily conductive to the idea of canon no longer existing. And I believe it becomes especially frustrating if you just hear that a character is this or that now because some guy found a lucky toblerone, and now your own ideas are invalid to the eyes of other people, and even possibly the ones that are in charge.

It has always felt to me like the atmosphere is more "I want my headcanon to be canon" as opposed to the "all headcanons are equally canon and valid" thing that continues to be stated as something that is being attempted here. But it's not successful at the moment, and with the current model most likely never will be. Because there's no attempt to give every fan an equal voice. There's no Paradox Space anymore, the damn writing team literally ignores every platform except Twitter, including this place, there's no attempt to decentralize canon anymore, just making even more shit and saying "well u can just ignore it if you want and pretend it didn't happen!" which they surely know is not how that works at all, there aren't even attempts to create a Creative Commons license. Christ, you don't even need that, you can just follow Touhou Project's example, which is a video game series owned by one man that has its own fanmade anime. And while Homestuck is more plot heavy than the Touhou franchise, this could still be done by creating material made by fans that contradict with other materials, and yet stating that they are of equal importance.

For now, the only way to feel like you have a voice in this community is by finding a toblerone (doable but extremely difficult especially if you live in certain areas like South America), which even then seems to guarantee very little unless your toblerone wishes align with those of the fanbase, and to be part of the writing team, which is definitely not possible for the regular fan devoid of connections to these people. For the love of god, decentralize your fucking canon and nobody will be mad over anyone being trans because then they can just headcanon anyone as anything and be happy about it because they know no one has an authoritative voice above theirs. The SCP Foundation did it, and one of the people in the HS2 writing team wrote for it, so why the hell can't you also follow its example and just let people make stuff?

[Shitpost Lizard]

I debated whether or not to throw this into unpop opinions or here, but I didn't want to derail unpop opinions with more of these discussions.

I feel like the comic handles the subject poorly. Not because of established characters becoming trans, but because it feels like they got this idea into their heads, and then prematurely blew their load about it.
It misses the mark on its potential as a characterization element, in a story that's so focused on the psychology of its characters.

We don't get to see Roxy, Vriska, John, or whoever else come to terms with the idea that they're unhappy with their biological sex or presentation. (John's admittedly still up in the air though.) It's just "BAM there it is".
And yes, I understand that this is the case with people in real life, but this a character-centric story, so it would be nice to actually see it happen. To give us the ability to emotionally connect with the process involved in questioning something like your gender identity.
And yes, I know that's a note trans people can already relate to, but good storytelling is making it so that everyone can relate to it. Showing, not telling.

Alternia had an extremely harsh, classist, eugenics-type culture. Personally looking at the disparity between expressing a new identity within the highest classes (Eridan) and the privilege that comes along with that kind of position would be super interesting contrasted with... say... Vriska (closer to the middle), and her coming to terms with the idea that Alternia is gone and she doesn't have to give a shit anymore and is free to explore her own gender identity.

Like there's a lot you could do with that, and it's kind of disappointing that the potential is wasted on rushing the ideas out too quickly.

[JakeMorph]

I don't understand what people mean when they want to see Vriska "come to terms" with her transness when the entire point of it in her Pesterquest episode was that it was in the past. She was already a girl when Homestuck started. A character centric narrative does not necessitate that EVERY part of a character's life be explored.

I can understand similar complaints about Roxy, though I don't necessarily agree.

[Shitpost Lizard]

I don't understand what people mean when they want to see Vriska "come to terms" with her transness when the entire point of it in her Pesterquest episode was that it was in the past. She was already a girl when Homestuck started. A character centric narrative does not necessitate that EVERY part of a character's life be explored.

Not "coming to terms with being trans," but coming to terms with the fact that she's not bound to Alternia's shitty empirical rule anymore, and can do what she wants with herself and her presentation. We're talking about a society that kills people for having the wrong blood color, and sometimes just for funsies because they're too low on the spectrum.

It would have to retcon canon, granted, but I'm saying it could have been handled way better than just tacking it on the character and being like "Yeah, that's a thing now."

Let us see it happen. Let us see it evolve.
Saying "We don't have to see every aspect of a character because the story is character-centric" could be applied to a whole lot of stuff in the comic that was present in the comic.
And I'm not calling it absolutely necessary.
But I do consider it a massive waste of storytelling potential.

[eldomtom2]

@egg

You said literally everything that I wanted to say on the subject of canon in Homestuck.

[pfeffer-29]

Everyone listen to egg. Egg just explained why the way canon is handled now is exclusionary, not inclusive, and they did it in a succinct and articulate manner.

[calamityCons]

Firstly, #standingOvationForEgg

Secondly, I just remembered that when it comes to queer interpretations of characters, characters like BQ, PM, and Snowman have a trend of being unknown gender-wise or assumed male, then revealed to be women and not being a big deal amongst themselves. As well, all the felt are men and they’re canonically “super gay,” if we can trust Aranea. And if MSPAR is a carapace themselves, then we may be able to conclude that the “game constructs” of Skaia are genderless in some respect, or that their concept of it has the potential to be truly alien rather than analogous to human social norms.

And finally, we’ve spoken a lot about the trans reveals in the title, but I’m wondering about the gender parity and the gendered classes of Skaia. The absolute rule of two genders in equal number, no exceptions, and the idea of having classes tied to gender even in the name (Prince, Maid) I’m wondering if these facts make the whole basis of Skaia behind the times genderwise. Is gender parity actually a thing that must happen in every session, not just the four we’re privy to? Is it a conclusion that Calliope came to from misinterpreting what information Rose was able to glean, which was censored by Gamzee?

One of the big draws of Homestuck, imo, was its more up to date sensibilities regarding gender parity and gender roles. Mom Lalonde wasnt so good at being a housewife and was much better at being an alcoholic biologist. Dad Egbert was a businessman who cooked and cleaned and was never reluctant to shower his son with love openly. Bro was a very extreme example of toxic masculinity and the complexity of dave trying to fit in Bro’s shoes, etc. When the genders of the characters had to be half women and half men, that made it easier for Hussie to make engaging and stereotype-bucking characters like John. This was also present in Problem sleuth, where the sex workers were featured as powerful sources of magic and grit and stuff. I mean hell, Nervouse Broad was one of the most proactive characters in Problem Sleuth, and she was the “female alter ego” of the loopy and mostly useless Pickle Inspector.

With modern sensibilities and understanding of how gender and sexuality works, it would definitely be a blatant retcon because, as PungeonMaster said, it breaks an observable rule of Homestuck: All Sessions have Equal numbers of Men and Women. Now that we have characters breaking those rules, it puts more things into question than it should.

[ThePungeonMaster]

Everyone listen to egg. Egg just explained why the way canon is handled now is exclusionary, not inclusive, and they did it in a succinct and articulate manner.

Yes, this. I've tried to explain before just what is wrong about the way cannon is being handled now, but what egg said did it the most justice.

[thorondraco]

If I'll be honest here, the problem doesn't lie with characters being called trans exactly, at least not personally for me. It's due to how shoddily Homestuck actually handles 'canon', despite desiring that word to be devoid of meaning. I know it's possible, because the SCP Foundation did it, but this is not really the way to go. I admire the idea of giving fans a voice in your work, but elevating them to a position of authority over your comic's canon still requires some form of canon to function, a base with ideas that remain unchanging. And, in all honesty, I'm not sure if the attitude perpetuated by those who now have that power over the comic is necessarily conductive to the idea of canon no longer existing. And I believe it becomes especially frustrating if you just hear that a character is this or that now because some guy found a lucky toblerone, and now your own ideas are invalid to the eyes of other people, and even possibly the ones that are in charge.

It has always felt to me like the atmosphere is more "I want my headcanon to be canon" as opposed to the "all headcanons are equally canon and valid" thing that continues to be stated as something that is being attempted here. But it's not successful at the moment, and with the current model most likely never will be. Because there's no attempt to give every fan an equal voice. There's no Paradox Space anymore, the damn writing team literally ignores every platform except Twitter, including this place, there's no attempt to decentralize canon anymore, just making even more shit and saying "well u can just ignore it if you want and pretend it didn't happen!" which they surely know is not how that works at all, there aren't even attempts to create a Creative Commons license. Christ, you don't even need that, you can just follow Touhou Project's example, which is a video game series owned by one man that has its own fanmade anime. And while Homestuck is more plot heavy than the Touhou franchise, this could still be done by creating material made by fans that contradict with other materials, and yet stating that they are of equal importance.

For now, the only way to feel like you have a voice in this community is by finding a toblerone (doable but extremely difficult especially if you live in certain areas like South America), which even then seems to guarantee very little unless your toblerone wishes align with those of the fanbase, and to be part of the writing team, which is definitely not possible for the regular fan devoid of connections to these people. For the love of god, decentralize your fucking canon and nobody will be mad over anyone being trans because then they can just headcanon anyone as anything and be happy about it because they know no one has an authoritative voice above theirs. The SCP Foundation did it, and one of the people in the HS2 writing team wrote for it, so why the hell can't you also follow its example and just let people make stuff?

Decentralizing it would just turn it all into a confused hellhole of conflicting opinions and views and people fighting over what is the proper canon. It would be a shitshow and a horrible idea. BECAUSE there is a centralized story as is.

We are also not supposed to beef at the whatpumpkin staff.. And yea Kate has some bad takes but it doesn't mean she is going to implement them into the story. She has her headcanons but unless the entire staff and Hussie agreed to add them, they won't be adding them. And maybe, just maybe, Kate is professional enough to be able to determine which of her ideas can or cannot be implemented in the story without conflict.

[thorondraco]

Firstly, #standingOvationForEgg

Secondly, I just remembered that when it comes to queer interpretations of characters, characters like BQ, PM, and Snowman have a trend of being unknown gender-wise or assumed male, then revealed to be women and not being a big deal amongst themselves. As well, all the felt are men and they’re canonically “super gay,” if we can trust Aranea. And if MSPAR is a carapace themselves, then we may be able to conclude that the “game constructs” of Skaia are genderless in some respect, or that their concept of it has the potential to be truly alien rather than analogous to human social norms.

And finally, we’ve spoken a lot about the trans reveals in the title, but I’m wondering about the gender parity and the gendered classes of Skaia. The absolute rule of two genders in equal number, no exceptions, and the idea of having classes tied to gender even in the name (Prince, Maid) I’m wondering if these facts make the whole basis of Skaia behind the times genderwise. Is gender parity actually a thing that must happen in every session, not just the four we’re privy to? Is it a conclusion that Calliope came to from misinterpreting what information Rose was able to glean, which was censored by Gamzee?

One of the big draws of Homestuck, imo, was its more up to date sensibilities regarding gender parity and gender roles. Mom Lalonde wasnt so good at being a housewife and was much better at being an alcoholic biologist. Dad Egbert was a businessman who cooked and cleaned and was never reluctant to shower his son with love openly. Bro was a very extreme example of toxic masculinity and the complexity of dave trying to fit in Bro’s shoes, etc. When the genders of the characters had to be half women and half men, that made it easier for Hussie to make engaging and stereotype-bucking characters like John. This was also present in Problem sleuth, where the sex workers were featured as powerful sources of magic and grit and stuff. I mean hell, Nervouse Broad was one of the most proactive characters in Problem Sleuth, and she was the “female alter ego” of the loopy and mostly useless Pickle Inspector.

With modern sensibilities and understanding of how gender and sexuality works, it would definitely be a blatant retcon because, as PungeonMaster said, it breaks an observable rule of Homestuck: All Sessions have Equal numbers of Men and Women. Now that we have characters breaking those rules, it puts more things into question than it should.

So far they haven't in fact broken that rule at all. Even if we have characters that transition, we have to remember that sburb in a machine basically, program of amoral pragmatic implication and implementation. So a mechanical force like this would focus in on the Sex rather than the gender. So long as the numbers even out, one male to every female and one female to every male, it would work. It would only take into account gender if the story to be told has that character's arc dealing with that.

Its why there is a ghost of a transgender Eridan out there. Its likely the whole timeline he came from was doomed by him making the choice to transition, just as all of those god tiers were doomed despite trying to be the best they could be. And just if there are stories out in paradox space about a character who is supposed to to go through that transition and doesn't there would be cisgender ghosts of that individual.

Something that does that is NOT gonna be even slightly PC about sex and gender at all. No siree. And basically for a MAJORITY of human beings on our planet gender and sex and interchangeable terms. With Sburb it can function if the emphasis is on the sex of the players alone.

With Vriska, let's face it, our only evidence of 'canon' transfem is a candy bar, a dude who was going to try and ask for a trans karkat initially, and allusion of it in the pesterquest, when the Visual Novels were almost always upfront with this kinda stuff. Kate has made the claim herself but in a trollish way and the claim was not supported by the other writers of whatpumpkin. And in a pgenpodcast i remember listening to, Kate was asked it directly and she basically said Vriska was "metatextually transgender' or something along those lines. Rather than just a straightforward yes.

Think we don't give the Whatpumpkin staff enough credit here. That or hussie is keeping them toeing the line but let's say whatpumpkin writers analyzed the whole thing properly. And the best way to do the tobrelone wish (though we don't know how major they really are), was this vague allusion. Cause they realized what we realized. It is so difficult to implement and it wouldn't be really telling the story. Contradicts other elements of homestuck. 100% the alpha timeline preventing the story from changing without destabilizing the timeloop, to say it in a in universe sense.

What they do with June who knows... John is kinda dead. Maybe that is involved in some way?

[VASKA]

she basically said Vriska was "metatextually transgender' or something along those lines.

I actually think this is the important part of Trans Vriska, its basically what I was getting at in my breakdown but i feel like that language is a little more succinct

[thorondraco]

she basically said Vriska was "metatextually transgender' or something along those lines.

I actually think this is the important part of Trans Vriska, its basically what I was getting at in my breakdown but i feel like that language is a little more succinct

Basically even if she is not transgender in the story she has a lot of experiences and traits that connects her to people dealing with both gender dysphoria and general discomfort with oneself. Which is probably more important than anything, that she has traits to connect to. Cause then people can connect to each other through her.

Its weird that she divides people in her own life or gets ostracized but can unit people in the real world.

[MorganMustDie]

Basically even if she is not transgender in the story she has a lot of experiences and traits that connects her to people dealing with both gender dysphoria and general discomfort with oneself. Which is probably more important than anything, that she has traits to connect to. Cause then people can connect to each other through her.

I think there's very much something to be said here, Vriska always struck me as a character that just had her GENERAL identity issues re societal roles, living up to her ancestor, maintaining a reputation, etc. These are the kinds of things that would be relatable to anybody who has experienced any kind of identity crisis throughout their life, most definitely including trans people, so I can definitely see how a trans reading of Vriska is plausible, helpful, and easy to back up

but I think the issues Vriska faces are applicable to a great deal of non-gender based identity struggles as well, and people who relate to Vriska on THAT metatextual level have just as much a right to have their interpretations heard as people who are in the trans Vriska camp. I personally have always found Vriska's story from the perspective of "how would a teenager develop an identity in a hyperviolent society," and I related to her struggles of finding one's self, keeping up appearances, and doing regretful things for your image, which I think Hussie told really interestingly through Act 5. I didn't once consider a trans reading, though I see how those who have experienced dysphoria might, so to me she will forever be just an emotionally fraught girl struggling to follow in her ancestors footstesp

she be interesting like that!

[egg]

Decentralizing it would just turn it all into a confused hellhole of conflicting opinions and views and people fighting over what is the proper canon. It would be a shitshow and a horrible idea. BECAUSE there is a centralized story as is.

You would be surprised at how stable communities with a decentralized canon can be, as long as it has a base to work off of. Take the Slenderman fandom, for example, which only died when it began to be associated with real life atrocities.

Is it a conclusion that Calliope came to from misinterpreting what information Rose was able to glean, which was censored by Gamzee?

My opinion on this is really that Calliope (and cherubs in general, as I am inclined to believe) mainly thinks in binaries and was influenced by Caliborn's masculine posturing, which is something that later influences their decision to go non-binary in the epilogues.

[thorondraco]

Decentralizing it would just turn it all into a confused hellhole of conflicting opinions and views and people fighting over what is the proper canon. It would be a shitshow and a horrible idea. BECAUSE there is a centralized story as is.

You would be surprised at how stable communities with a decentralized canon can be, as long as it has a base to work off of. Take the Slenderman fandom, for example, which only died when it began to be associated with real life atrocities.

Is it a conclusion that Calliope came to from misinterpreting what information Rose was able to glean, which was censored by Gamzee?

My opinion on this is really that Calliope (and cherubs in general, as I am inclined to believe) mainly thinks in binaries and was influenced by Caliborn's masculine posturing, which is something that later influences their decision to go non-binary in the epilogues.

That is kinda because slenderman doesn't have story at its center. Scp foundation, creepy pastas, touhou and other such things a basically Concepts and settings rather than a story that has been told already.
Homestuck of course has potential for that kinda shenanigans but the reality is it has a central story already. And generally fans would want to affect this central canon too if they had the chance to leave their mark. Rather than just figure out their own sessions in universe.

if Scp did 8in fact have a central story peeps would clamor over leaving their mark on it however haphazardly.