Talk:John Egbert

Re-writing Page to June

I noticed DivinerSpirit brought up some comments on another editor's talk page about the use of "June Egbert" on this page. They accidentally put the comment on the wrong editor's page, when it seems the edits came from editor Djalsk. The page was re-written as if the name John Egbert has been changed to June Egbert, and that John is the character's deadname. I hope you don't mind, DivinerSpirit, that I paste your concerns here from the other editor's page, so we can have it in the character page's history!

DivinerSpirit said on Kingstoken's talk page: "Hey, I noticed the edit you made to the John Egbert page. I don't agree with all the deletions, and I don't think it makes sense to write in June as if she's fully canon due to her not actually appearing in any official material yet (and personally I'm not optimistic for the Homestuck team to pull through on that). I was thinking a good compromise would be making a full separate June Egbert page. This would have the benefits of having June Egbert be the title of the page and keeping the old linked fics that are John-focused and not June-focused, as well as allowing more detail on the trans interpretation of her history. Let me know your thoughts on this."

While I may have been into Homestuck when I was in high school, I am very out of the loop now and may not be the best person to comment on this. However, I will say that re-writting an entire character page is no small thing, so it's probably a good idea for people to discuss this here. And I do think Spirit has a point, even if June is her name now, that doesn't erase the previous history of the name John Egbert and how the fandom transformed it. For example, the use of John/Dave will still exist historically in the fandom. All old fanart before this change would still be tagged under John Egbert, and removing the previous fanworks other editors had on here to just put a fanwork that uses June doesn't seem right. Patchlamb (talk) 03:12, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

I'd like to suggest creating June Egbert as a trope page. If the page used the character template there would have to be duplicated information and it might be confusing whether or not June is a separate character. The page could cover the development of the idea of "John" being a trans girl in the fandom, the ways the idea reacted to new canon, and how the popular idea then became something like ascended fanon.

This is just a suggestion that I'm interested in hearing more perspectives on. There are potential issues that'll arise if the name June starts to actually be used in canon materials but maybe that's planning too far ahead. --caes (talk) 03:35, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

I did a quick Google of June Egbert, and so far all I find is non-canon material and a one-sentence response from Andrew Hussie that says June Egbert will be canon (can be seen here; "When the first of Andrew Hussie's hidden Toblerones was discovered, the fan who found it tweeted that the fan theory that John is actually a trans woman named June Egbert should be made canon. Hussie responded with "you were the first to find my treasure, and so it will be done" How exactly this will affect official Homestuck media is yet to be seen.") Then, a discussion on Reddit from 2019 here was talking about it, insinuating that it happened over a year ago. Spirit said "June Egbert" as still yet to appear in anything official, and if the wiki page and reddit discussion are any indication, it's been quite a while since the initial "and so it will be done" from Hussie. Just based on my personal findings it does still seem really early to re-write the page as if John is the character's dead name, especially if the character is still going by John and he/him in canon Nov 2020. Patchlamb (talk) 03:57, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with trope pages on Fanlore, but it sounds like a good solution if having a separate character page will be too confusing. --DivinerSpirit (talk) 04:47, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Personally, it looks more like a head canon than a trope to me, just based on what I read about June Egbert. Most people have called it a head canon, and despite Word of God saying it will be canon, nothing has actually happened in canon concerning June for over a year. If we made a trope page for it I'm afraid it will eventually become canon after all, and that would make a trope page seem out of place since it would no longer be a trope.. bit of a tricky situation when it comes to how to name and categorize pages. I think I'm more in favor of just reverting this page back to the edit when everything referred to the character as John and he/him, and where June Egbert remained a sub-section in the page, where she can be discussed in relation to the fandom and any canon material present (such as Hussie saying she would be canon some day). Then, if and when the character becomes June, we could apply more drastic changes (though like Caes I'm not sure about discussing that too much in depth because that might be planning too far ahead, who knows when Hussie will actually follow through, if at all).

So far at least me, Spirit, and Caes are roughly in consensus that re-writting the page to be under June and she/her seems a little hasty. Would anyone object if I reverted the edit made by Djalsk for now? Patchlamb (talk) 17:45, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

This plan has my support. It's well-thought through and has flexibility for later developments. --MPH (talk) 18:08, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Changes by Djalsk were reverted to the previous contents, and I included the changes added by Kingstoken (which just included a new fanwork + an archive section). Whoopsie, I think I'll change the "stub" to "expand" too, since it's not necessarily a stub anymore. Patchlamb (talk) 18:30, 21 November 2020 (UTC)