22/11/2017 19:00:49 ¶ ●

## Homestuck and furries

One thing I really like about Homestuck is its treatment of furries. Like, not just that it has them, and celebrates them being who they are and drawing strength from it, though it undoubtedly does that, but also its sheer variety of characters who can all be plausibly described as furries, yet are completely different from each other in their approach to furrydom.

For starters, let’s look at Jade. Jade thinks that dogs and wolves are really rad, and kinda wants to be one. She admires their powerful sense of smell, their powerful bodies, their soft fur. She thinks they’re beautiful, and shows a deep affection for her pet/guardian Bequerel. She does not show any particular interest in fursuits, because she doesn’t want to dress up as a dog, she wants to be a dog, and a fursuit would allow her to mimic almost none of the qualities she so admires. For Jade, furrydom seems to be above all about the power trip. Indeed, when she ascends to doghood, her transformed state has very limited animal traits, just a pair of ears really, but in return she gains access to the animal traits she most admires, like an absurdly powerful sense of smell, soft furry ears, and the ability to channel the unfettered energies of an incomprehensibly vast extradimensional ball of fire. Just like dogs do.

Nepeta, on the other hand, never shows all that much sign of wanting to be a cat. She loves cats, she roleplays as one on the internet, she wields cat claws as a weapon, she hunts wild beasts and dresses up in their pelts. She does all these things, and she clearly enjoys them, but shows no sign of Jade’s desire for transformation, and doesn’t go on about how great they are. Animals are just a part of life for her, and while she loves them she doesn’t place them on any kind of pedestal.

Then there’s Equius, with his, er, fine art and his, let’s say sweaty reaction to it. Something something the only transformation he desires is for one of his adored and beloved sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet musclebeasts to step on him, killing him instantly.

Judging by the pictures in his apartment, Dirk has a strong interest in fursuits and related gear, and probably some kind of desire to either be or be with either some sort of anthropomorphic animal, or a dude in a fursuit, or both, or all four. Hard to tell, he keeps a bit quiet about that side of himself, regarding it as embarrassing.

Rose has a squid girl desktop background. There’s probably something to that, given how incredibly ridiculously gay she is (she has arguably flirted with every single girl she’s ever met who wasn’t her mother, for one). She also seems to be really into becoming a catgirl, though like Dirk, the non-catgirl version of herself rejects this as embarrassing.

Jake isn’t into furrydom in your traditional sense (afaik) but he shows a strong interest in the Na'Vi from long-forgotten blockbuster hit Avatar, fantasizing about being one and about being with one, not to mention dressing up as one.

There’s a staggering number of different approaches to the same basic concept on display, a dazzling variety of ways to interpret a single basic notion, a notion known as Furry.

And that’s without mentioning Calliope, Cronus, Horuss, Meulin, Dave, Vriska, or Terezi.