

my reading of them, headcanons, etc
okay, now we're getting into the REAL heavily opinionated stuff. no more academic persuasive essay speak. hear me speak straight from the heart for the first time. i FUCKING LOVE PILLOWCASE. not only do i ship them, not only are they my OTP, but i am VERY passionate about how i depict them... though i can't exactly be picky. i love any and all rodstro content! however, i definitely have some biases. some cherished headcanons and indulgent ideas.
for one, they're WOMEN!!!!!! TO ME!!!!!! they define butchfemme as i know it. my hyperspecific headcanons are as follows:
- transgirl lesbian femme astro, she/her (maybe some sleepy/starry neopronouns... on a fun day...)
- butch (stud) lesbian rodger, she/he
they were meant to be women. you just have to trust me on this one. cue my magical switching of pronouns.
when i say they define butchfemme, i mean it. butch and femme were subcultures that emerged during the rise of homophobia in the 1940s. butch refers to a lesbian who presents and acts in a more stereotypically 'masculine' sense, whereas femme is more stereotypically 'feminine'. while it may Appear heteronormative as a concept at first glance, identifying as butch/femme actually revolves around deconstructing and subverting heterosexual stereotypes. butch in specific is defined by some as a uniquely lesbian masculinity. as much as i'd like to co-opt this entire section to talk about butchfemme, i'll have to implore you to do further research if you're interested instead!
i think this can tie in HARD if you just walk with me and consider the potential of female rodger: rodger being depicted as a woman in the cartoon and later pushing back against the femininity forced on her after she was given life.
astro definitely has more canon substance, in this regard! she is arguably one of the most feminine (or at the very least androgynous) of the canonically male cast, not unlike glisten, cosmo, and blot. she's pushing on her gender identity in the entirely opposite direction. all of this is VERY important to me, especially when you consider the times at which gardenview was supposed to be operating. it allows for a trans4trans interpretation of their characters as well, which i am also exceptionally biased toward.
segueing into another one of my favorite Pillowcase Ideas: a huge part of 'butchfemme' is the idea of both of the subcultures harboring and protecting eachother. while it can be literal, it's arguably more accurate to consider it both a protection of the sacredness of one's identity as a lesbian and a harboring of their partner's truest self. i think the idea of astro and rodger not only being eachother's safety but having the uniquely and unequivocally lesbian experience of only the other truly understanding their identity.
why?
rodger and astro are two characters i've shipped since waaay back when i first played the game the week of its release. i'm willing to bet that i was one of the first to make fanart of them and one of the first to consider pairing them together in general. the post's age is shown by the link to the rox document... lord.
pillowcase was decently popular back then, due in part mostly to the lack of other male characters to pair astro with (people LOVE yaoi. me technically included... even though THEY'RE GIRLS I PROMISE) and presumably because astro's focus episode features rodger. which is still one of the reasons that i fight SO hard for them and that i firmly believe pillowcase was robbed. vee and shelly's past and future episode poster is what kicked off shellevision because people looked at the poster they shared before shelly was even in the game. it's also worth noting that it happened on a lesser scale with dandy and shrimpo as well! small tangent, sorry. pillowcase in front of everyone's eyes and they don't even know it
a lot of the pillowcase (known more commonly as rodstro and telescope then) shippers either reasonably stopped creating because of rox's place on the team, or eventually moved on to other pairings that better fit the dynamic they had been projecting onto rodger and astro. which i'm decidedly kind of salty about. i'm autistic and gay enough that if i pick a pairing to like, i will hold onto it until i get metaphorical rope burn. i picked pillowcase because almost immediately upon joining, i saw myself in astro. and was enraptured by rodger even faster.
the way i've depicted myself for YEARS looks incredibly similar to astro. being nonhuman, the color palette, fashion sense and crescent moon face he's depicted with are all things that eerily aligned with ME. down to the crescent being on the right side of his face. so it wasn't long at ALL before i got into that familiar mindset of "that me :)". it does go a little deeper than that, but i don't feel super confident spilling all that on a dandy's world ship bible. So
rodger captured my attention in a very homosexual way. you could've probably predicted that. i do have a type, and he happens to align with it Very Well. so naturally, it made sense to pair them! i think a lot of folks ship particular pairings for that exact reason. not to mention the other canon substance they have as well.
though i cared about them a LOT, i didn't find myself making any works that surrounded them often. part of that was me just not drawing very much in general, but i digress. it wasn't until around march of last year that i started getting REALLY bad. pillowcase disease, if you will. conveniently, it also coincides with when i happened to meet a very wonderful woman.


