me, banging pots and pans together at 3am: dirkjake! is! not! abusive! they! are! just! some! teens! that! fucked! up! it! is! not! that! deep!!
i would say it IS ‘that deep’ but the way it’s that deep pretty solidly establishes that Dirk and Jake’s dynamic isn’t abusive.
Jake is abused–by the AR. Iirc, Dirk is abused by the AR too, btw. And AR is trapped in a horrible situation through no fault of his own due to the nature of his existence, as is Dirk, because he has no moral or practical way to control the AR. The fault here is the AR, but even with him there’s extenuating circumstances.
It’s not even some teens that fucked up due to factors any teens would deal with. It’s teens that fucked up due to a freak accident landing them in an impossible philosophical/emotional quagmire.
Dirkjake is super deep. It explores questions of philosophy and identity and what it means to value someone and what ethical action is, and the aesthetics of the entire relationship are couched in both boys’ primary interests–action movie tropes and philosophy, respectively.
It’s also not abusive. I really wish people would take the time to untangle the deeply complex dynamic that’s actually at play with the Alphas instead of trying to render it a simple, boring, black and white thing. Hussie’s storytelling during that section straight up deserves better imo.
i completely agree with everything you said, but i meant the dynamics of dirk and jake specifically, and a lot of the miscommunication between the two that resulted in a lot of people crafting this bizarre idea that dirk is a Dangerous Manipulative Gay ™ trying to abuse poor innocent jake
like what i meant is the whole subject of the relationship being abusive is not that deep, not their dynamic- the reason i said they were just some teens who fucked up was because they were thrown into a wildly fucked situation, then decided it was suitable to start a relationship in this wildly fucked situation, and proceeded to completely disregard not only the others emotions but their own.
yes dirkjake is a very complex and well written pairing but a lot of people have spun it into this strange, as you said, black and white relationship where dirk just tears jake apart (also everyone seems to ignore dirks own emotional trauma lol??)
(but this post was written for the sole purpose of angrily vagueing about hate posted in the tags lol)
Yeah, we p much agree completely. And hey I basically got that vibe initially anyway so I’m sorry if I gave you a different impression (which reading it now I kinda think I did, and yikes, sorry about that if so! My grasp on tone is not always the best.)
I actually only pitched in because I liked your post quite a bit, and because I also had said rhetoric in my head from the tags 😛 I wasn’t really frustrated with you if I came off that way, though tbh I am glad to see you respond if only because…I want to see more talk about Dirkjake that considers them more positive always, and in that sense I’m glad abt this.
But yeah we completely agree, I’m just sorry now if my mix of agreeing with you and being kind of frustrated with the approach fandom takes to the ship ended up sounding antagonistic to you in specific!
It wasn’t with you at all, in fact I ended up making my own post in the tag simply because I wanted my voice heard directly in that sphere of thought.
Flying through Storytelling 