I think transfem eridan is an interesting interpretation of eridan because (though not frequently stated in the comic) she spent time crafting her identity around a dead male figure (dualscar) and the cruelty of alternia. This created toxicity, instability, and ignorant bigotry in eridan. I also think her whole deal with magic can be symbolic of a repressed sense of self or even femininity as many girl characters in Homestuck use magic. She denies magic saying it's fake and calling her magic wand a "science" wand furthering the sentiment of her repressed femininity.
Thank you anon for seeing the vision because that is indeed a good jist of it. Now, if you don't mind I'll use the points you brought up as a platform to get into them in detail.
Eridan indeed crafts a lot of her facade around Orphaner Dualscar. It's unclear if she ever had a journal of his like Vriska did Mindfang, but it's clear she was aware of his lore (for fun headcanoning: judging from Aranea's shared penchant for storytelling with Mindfang and Cronus's side music thing, I would figure Dualscar's tales were encoded musically, possibly in sea shanties or a lyrical epic). It should also be noted that in the only visual depiction of Dualscar, while Eridan shares the striped pants, jewelry, and cape, it's her scarf that is the twist on the formula. Now, in the heart of headcanon this is all but proof that it's a gift from patterned fabric loving Kanaya, and that she gets adam's apple dysphoria. But that's just headcanon. 🚬🍷
Where Dualscar and the unfathomable cruelty of Alternia intersect for Eridan is with the inherited duty of Orphaner. I think I fully agree with how Alternia made her toxic and unstable, but I will disagree on the part that Eridan is ignorantly bigoted. In my mind, the more accurate way to put it is complicity defeatist. Alternia didn't brainwash Eridan, it just broke her into accepting it because how familiar she became with the mechanisms and forces that made it unstoppable. She's not ignorant of her world's cruel nature, and any sample of her bigotry is performance rather than belief. This is still harmful overall, don't get it twisted, but it's no different than other characters hemospectrum hangups, from Karkat to Equius. Now this will be a helluva tangent, but I do promise it goes somewhere on the reading of transfem HC Eridan, while providing a lot of interpretation of canon Eridan. Because the most underappreciated detail of Alternia as a setting is that it is kind of in a cold war with itself.
"As a self-governing body, the land dwelling portion of [HIC's] empire was formidable. But her force of sea dwellers was equally formidable, and the two were kept in check not only with the threat of psychic annihilation, but their mutual hatred and distrust."
It's another thing that makes Eridan's claims of wanting to kill all land dwellers ironic and an empty threat, because in cold war fashion, any attempt to make a move on land dwellers would be met by their Mutually Assured Destruction. Yet, despite neither side being able to make a move, it's still a cold war. Even for die hard hemocasteists like Equius, sea dwellers are seen as mortal enemies that it's alright to kill in spite of normal hemospectrum conventions. This is why I previously mentioned Eridan as experiencing a form of siege mentality. I will always disagree that Eridan is a supremacist because I think the most accurate diagnosis of her genuine issues is that she's the rawest simplest form of xenophobe. Trusting of members of her own group, trusting the "other" only in that their hostility is earnest and reliable, embodying the rampant paranoia that characterized both Cold War superpowers. Plus, although her efforts are still noncommittal and performative, Eridan does make a show of seeking out doomsday devices (read: WMDs), blatantly imitating the Cold War's arms race.
So why do I bring up the Cold War? Because it relates and reinforces another thing that Eridan is associated with. (Jack) Noir. Eridan borrows a lot visually and ideologically from film noir, a genre that thrived and established itself in that post-war start of the cold war America. Eridan's best and most striking panels (IMO) are pages 3328 and 3331. You may know what I'm talking about before even looking them up they're so visually iconic. They take their cues from noir chiaroscuro lighting. Stark shadows and light, backlit silhouette, the classic trope of lighting through Venetian blinds/bannisters being evoked by Eridan's striped clothing in the one. (And being fair to all perspectives, even anti-Eridaners: take a pause from comparing Eridan to Draco Malfoy, because nobody likes HP anymore and maybe start comparing her to Sin City's Kevin. I've been called a lot of things for liking Eridan before but you could be the first to call me a cannibal) Visual language can only suggest so much though. Eridan still fits noir philosophy in spades. Nihilism, cynicism, godlessness and sin. Having nobody you can trust, angels that may be demons, black and white melodrama. Falling prey to a society that will chew you up and spit you out, make you the terrible person it wants you to be. And at the end of the day: tragic endings, friends killing friends. Eridan is cynical and defeatist. She lived in a world that despised her, put in the role to keep it that way, and gave up trying to change it. You can see in her associations that she likes her land dweller friends, but her approach is like how she sees magic. It would be nice if it were real, she'd like that, but it isn't.
Okay okay, the Cold War, film noir, what the fuck does any of this have to do with transfem Eridan? The paranoia. The constant lingering doubt of who can be trusted with a secret. The hiding of true selves and identity. Sympathies for the "other side" having to be suppressed or hidden, disguised. Lest you be accused. Or, if those sympathies have evolved into identity, caught and outed. How all the suppression of the self takes its psychological toll. So yeah, it has a depressing amount to do with her.
Paranoia arc over. We've already gone over magic as a symbol for the ideal versus the "real." Homestuck is even less shy as using it as a symbol for the innocence of childhood, as seen mainly with Tavros clinging to his childish innocence. So, it's certainly no stretch that it can represent repressed gender, in a way a combination of those two. The ideal being the innocence of a childhood raised the way we may have wanted, versus the reality of the one we receive and in which innocence is lost and dysphoria is present. Again, Eridan's approach to magic is wishing it's real, but being resigned to its unobtainability. Wishing magic was real. Wishing that she could trust her friends. Wishing that she had a choice in who she is. But knowing that magic is fake. Knowing that land dwellers hate sea dwellers. Knowing that her destiny is taking up the mantle of the Orphaner.
Homestuck is a whole mess of character parallelism and foils, and Eridan does indeed parallel with a lot of girls, especially when it comes to magic. To start with the obvious: There are almost too many Rose-Eridan parallels to count. But just to demonstrate from their intros alone: One is a dabbler in Freudian psychoanalysis and the other is Mrs. I-have-a-psychological-complex and am definitely a Freudian mess of I kill mother and father figures for a living. And don't get me started on the W fridge. She shares a little parallel with Jade, a Witch, by embodying the harpoon gun side of the riflekind. For fellow trolls, Eridan is often less parallel and more foil especially for Kanaya and Feferi, but that's a whole other story. Though considerably less "magic," Meenah somehow shares more character design DNA with Eridan than Feferi.
All cherry picked alpha kid parallels do come with the asterisk that they all share DNA with the dead trolls but Roxy is notable because so many of her parallels with her dancestor end up doubling up with Eridan too, the most significant being the love of wizards. Since noir featured so heavily in this post, I'd also be remiss to not point out that Jane is associated with hard boiled fiction, which is earlier than the later noir but they're fairly similar genres, sharing a lot of tropes and themes. Also because I think Jane's skeptical, cynical hard boiled detective connections are an often overlooked part of her character that people should appreciate more. She's more than just baking, people.
With the transfem reading, the entire deal with there cherubs becomes a whole other thing. But, the jist really speaks for itself. Magic, wandkind, childhood innocence, femininity. Living reality, riflekind, emotional stuntedness, masculinity. I'm going to avoid saying anything definitive about the author because it's just not my place, I don't know them personally, and tbh I trust them about as far as I can throw them. However, to put it frankly, the cherubs could be seen as the smoking gun of "having hangups with how an upbringing killed the feminine aspect, villainizing the masculine and idealizing the feminine through the symbol of magic and just don't pay attention to how the author self insert dies accepting that magic isn't real." Like, FUCK, that's goddamned motherfucking gender, baby. But look, is that projection? Hell yeah that's projection but as a reading of the fiction it's not that much a stretch.
I want to also end off with the symbolism that could've been if the retcons were done differently and in a way that allowed the dead trolls to live (y'know, the way it probably should've been). Karkat could've fulfilled his thing of being the second coming of gnostic Jesus by enlightening his team to see their respective truths, and for Eridan it would be seeing that she can Hope and accept magic. An egg being allowed to incubate and hatch, rather than destroyed. A more productive form of bottom surgery. Transition from prince to princess.
