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Sometimes John would tie a sweater around his waist backwards like a skirt, and look in the mirror. He didn’t remember when he started doing this, but it was nice. He’d lick his lips so it looked like he was wearing lip gloss, and he’d smile at his reflection. John guessed that if he told Dave he’d probably laugh about it. Rose would probably psychoanalyze him somehow. Jade would... well, John didn’t know what Jade would do.
But he wasn’t going to tell them. See, sometimes being a boy was very hard, but John tried his best. He wanted to be the strong young man his Dad expected him to be. Those moments when he wore his makeshift skirts were his alone, moments of privacy and vulnerability. In some ways John liked that. John didn’t want to wear a skirt and have people laugh at him. They wouldn’t understand that it wasn’t a “funny thing” he was doing, crossdressing like this.
So no, he wouldn’t tell his friends. They didn’t seem to be complaining about their genders, after all. John wondered how Dave dealt with being a boy. Surely it was just as difficult for him? But John didn’t ask.
Then things got weird, and John suddenly had bigger things to deal with than the sinking feeling he got when he looked in the mirror dressed normally. There were consorts and server players, trolls and ecto-siblings, and John welcomed the distraction.
But when he met up with his friends after retconning the timeline on the meteor, he realized something had changed.
Dave started talking about being gay. Sure he wouldn’t say it for certain, but that’s what he implied. John nodded and smiled and tried to understand, but all he could think about were the gay jokes they made together and how John had found himself wearing a backwards sweater as a skirt and crying after most of them. He wondered if Dave had been crying, too.
So John just had to go and ask a stupid question about Dave and if he wanted to be a girl, and Dave got upset. “Just because he likes boys doesn’t mean he’s a girl, John,” Rose said, and John wanted to say that he knew. He knew that, he really did!
He just wanted to talk about gender, but he worried he didn’t know enough to say anything without messing up.
It seemed like during the three year meteor trip, his friends had all learned something new about gender and sexuality and John was just left floundering, lacking the words to explain himself. And it hurt.
And then they had the universe to protect, and suddenly there was no time to think. It was all motion, acting on instinct and trying not to let his friends die. It was all flying and zapping all over the place and trying so desperately to save everything he knew.
It was over very fast.
Everyone settled down into their new world, and with each other. People paired off into couples, and for the first time in ages his friends looked relaxed. He knew things weren’t as great for everyone as they seemed, but he was still jealous. Jealous because everyone else seemed to be throwing away the rules John had worked so hard to uphold for himself over all those years. Rules about gender and boys and girls.
He wished he could do the same. But he didn’t want to be a boy wearing skirts and dresses, like Dave sometimes did. He didn’t want people to look at him and see male. So he hid, like he used to when his only friends were online. He his in his house and didn’t talk to anybody.
He wanted to be a girl, he realized, floating in his bedroom one day. John cried when the thought popped into his head.
Why couldn’t he just be gay, like Dave, or Karkat, or Rose?
But then Roxy came out and changed everything. They weren’t a girl or a boy, they said, smiling at John. John could feel the nervousness radiating off of them, but it didn’t matter. The choice Roxy made to tell everyone was braver than anything John had ever done during the game.
And John’s friends simply accepted it! It was absolutely mind blowing for John. So he tried something new.
She began to talk about herself in a different way, when she was alone with her thoughts. She secretly ordered some skirts and dresses, and jegus they were so much better than backwards jackets. She bought new underwear, and bras, and she danced in front of the mirror in her new outfits when she was alone.
It was wonderful, and John felt alive.
But it made things harder, when John went to see her friends and they called her a boy. She knew she could tell them, but a part of her was scared.
She hadn’t had the words to explain herself before, and she knew she had hurt some of her friends accidentally because of that. Like when she thought retconning the timeline was what “made” Dave gay. She couldn’t help but worry her friends would think she was joking.
She was terrified that they’d laugh, and treat her dresses like a joke. It was a stupid fear, but she worried none the less.
Then Roxy came over to visit unannounced, and walked into her house to see John watching movies in a long blue dress with hair clips in her hair and padding on her chest. The two stared at each other in silence, waiting for someone to break the silence. Roxy’s eyes traveled over John’s outfit, taking it all in. John could feel her heart beating in her chest, fast and loud. It seemed to reverberate like the drums in a rock concert, and John swore she could feel the ground beneath her begin to tremble.
John was ashamed to admit she started crying, right then and there. Roxy was quick to reassure her, rubbing small circles on her back and handing her tissues when she needed them. They held John’s hand and said it was okay, that they wouldn’t judge her, no matter what.
They asked if John would like to use different pronouns or a different name, and John explained that she wanted to be a girl.
Roxy looked at John in the eyes and said something incredible. They said John didn’t want to be a girl. John was a girl, if that label fit her best. She cried again.
And if she cried even more when she told Dave and he said they should wear matching skirts to be ironic sometime, that was okay. Or when she told Jade and she offered to braid her hair. Or when Rose explained to her that she didn’t have to give up her name, not if she didn’t want to.
Because unlike when she stood in front of the mirror as a young trans girl and cried in her makeshift skirt, she was crying out of happiness now.