[Author’s Note: This is a repost of Love, Faith and Fantasy–my piece on Jake and Dirk’s character arcs and the relevance of Knights and Pages in understanding them. I thought breaking it up into chunks would make the content more accessible, and give me room to flesh out each argument. Thus there will be some updates to the content. Hopefully this will mean more people can easily approach it!]
[Pt. 1 – Knights/Pages – Service and Ownage]
[Pt. 2 – Faith and Fear] [Pt. 4 – Noble]
[Pt. 5 – As You Wish]
So we’ve established that Jake– as a Page of Hope, the Active Serve Class– has a well-grounded and consistent habit of being self-serving by choosing to believe whatever is easiest for him in face of clear evidence to the contrary.
We’ve also established Jake has a habit of inspiring his friends into helping him, or outright asking them to–often while talking up his friendships and making attempts to make them feel good about themselves, stressing how much he believes in and appreciates them.
So now let’s revisit his relationship with Dirk, and try and see if understanding this changes the core conflict between them. Fandom commonly understands this conflict as being about Dirk being willing to push his high standards and agenda onto Jake, to Jake’s detriment. I believe the reality is more complicated, and also more satisfying.
So how does the Prince of Heart feel about his Page, exactly?
Let’s find out.
We get exactly one pesterlog with Dirk and Jake, and in my opinion, it is the single best pesterlog in the entire story of Homestuck.
For those who need a refresher: The log I will be quoting from is a memory from Jake’s 13th birthday, the day Dirk sent him the Brobot and confessed to being from the future. I think it’s a lot more indicative of their relationship than any logs between Jake and the AR, or anything Brain Ghost Dirk says, for a simple reason:
This is Jake and Dirk actually talking to each other. No proxies. And this is what Jake’s mind remembers and calls back to after spending his entire session up to that point…trying to reach Dirk.
And it’s only after Jake remembers that he’s dreaming that Brain Ghost Dirk adopts the sassier approach–which Jake says reminds him specifically of Hal, not Dirk himself. Jake personally draws a distinction between them.
The first thing worth pointing out is that Dirk doesn’t buy Jake’s Hothead Adventurer persona at all. Don’t get me wrong–Dirk takes Jake at his word when Jake talks about liking adventure and fighting and all of his interests, but when Jake tries to talk himself down intelligence-wise, Dirk flips his rhetoric to compliment him.
And when he brings up Rose’s book series, Dirk opens by asking if Jake’s read it. When Jake dodges and tries to lean on not being able to understand it (and asks Dirk to help him keep the secret–more of his hiding stuff to spare people’s feelings), Dirk ignores the comment and launches into a diatribe on the book’s underlying themes–knowing Jake will follow every word of it.
This perception into Jake’s true nature links into Dirk’s role as a Heart player–Nepeta similarly saw right through Karkat’s angry bluster and unpleasantness into the deeply emotional and gooey Heart underneath.
And when Jake leans on his dumb (and coded straight) adventurer’s persona to deliberately avoid letting his conversation with Dirk skirt too close to gay territory…
Dirk actually snaps at him, coming off pretty critical. It’s important to note this conversation takes place while Dirk is in the process of sending Jake the Brobot, a project he’s worked on for months and which we learn was meant to be a romantic gesture on Dirk’s part, judging by the ‘tender’ comments. So it’s safe to assume the dude’s got romantic thoughts on his mind right now.
And fairly intense ones, too: The Hal describes his memories about feeling for Jake as ‘heavily arresting’ periods of remembering ‘conflicted, incipient preteen episodes’ on the subject. This tells us that the episodes were getting started before Dirk was 13, that they involved conflicting emotions, and that they were intense enough that Hal is still essentially prey to them at times–even removed from their original biological context.
Understanding how much Dirk is thinking about romance here gives this log an entirely different tone, especially because he brings up sexuality again soon after snapping at Jake, only to once more be shut down–and with Jake taking ‘gay’ as a mean-spirited pejorative, no less.
Soon after that, Jake says something that could be read as flirty and Dirk immediately jumps on it, escalating things to thinking about actual physical proximity. When Jake points it out, Dirk gets flustered and quickly changes the subject. He then starts talking DOWN how capable he is–a sharp contrast from later Dirk talking himself up in front of Jane. They talk some more, the conversation turns to Dirk doubting his own ability to make the AR, and…
The first is that Jake explicitly notes that he appreciates Dirk being helpful–being of service. The second is that Dirk is clearly and transparently moved.
Dirk’s denizen is Yaldabaoth–an intrinsically evil Creator God–, and his issues center entirely around believing he’s in some way inherently bad or damaging to his friends.
No surprise, then, that he’s drawn to Jake specifically because Jake has faith in him as someone who can do good. This moment of confidence–Jake appreciating Dirk’s help and confiding his faith in Dirk’s ability to do what he’s set his mind to–leads directly to the creation of the AR.
It also happens to be the moment Jake and Dirk come the closest to just admitting their feelings for each other. Alas, it veers off into the future talk.
Jake believing him about the circumstance of his life is important to Dirk, too–much as Jane NOT believing Roxy is important to her.
So much so that the moment reverberates three years later, as Jake dreams about it, through Brain Ghost Dirk delivering a line that is actually unique enough to jar Jake out of the memory–essentially, Dirk’s feelings slipping through the Ghost to wake Jake up to his reality:
Brain Ghost Dirk implies Dirk thinks Jake’s faith is impressive, further undercutting the less relevant reasons Dirk gives Jane for letting Hal hassle him.
So this could be one of the most moving things Jake ever says to Dirk, and it comes at a time when his emotions and romantic feelings are already running high. Which makes it a real shame what happens next.
Jake reacts horribly to the Brobot’s design…
…Which Dirk responds to with a question. Jake spends most of his life up until now talking up his love of fights, challenges and adventure, so Dirk asks for clarification. He then asks Jake to trust him, trying to sell the idea–but Jake makes it pretty clear he dislikes it.
Which is why I really can’t parse him changing the subject as some cold-blooded act of manipulation. This conversation has been a rollercoaster for Dirk–he’s been built up, torn down, and sent a ton of mixed messages.
The big romantic overture he had planned blew up in his face, and he can’t really do anything to fix it without exposing Jake to the danger of the monsters again. Dirk wants to be done by this point, I think, and I would be too.
And the tragedy is? I don’t buy that this was Dirk imposing some Training Program on Jake out of his personal perspective that Jake needs to improve. At this point, I’d need a strong argument to convince me of the reading. It leaves too big a plot hole, and there’s a more obvious canonical explanation for it anyway.
Because if Dirk was willing to unilaterally impose training on Jake because he needed to be stronger, then it begs the question:
Why not the same functionality for Jane? Are we putting it down to some completely canonically unaddressed misogyny? Jane is in as much danger as any of them, and far more unprepared. If he felt that strongly and was that willing to control, does it really make sense to think he’d stop short of training her personally to ensure their success?
Consider the alternative possibility:
That when trying to romance his best friend, Dirk approached the situation logically. Jake talks about loving adventure all the goddamn time. Dirk knows he doesn’t actually do any adventures.
But he believes Jake that he wants to. And he wants to be helpful for two reasons, one being winning Jake’s appreciation and romantic affections. The second we’ll talk about later.
The solution? Simple.
Set up an elaborate scenario in which Jake can experience all the adventure he wants–while also keeping him safe from monsters. Essentially, Dirk is trying to enable Jake to actually start living out his fantasy in a safe environment, and Jake inspires in Dirk the desire to help him in this way through Hope for romantic reciprocation.
Dirk isn’t interested in controlling Jake English at all. He’s trying to Serve him.
Which he succeeds at! Over the long run, Jake does indeed grow to view the chase as an adventure, and admits to finding the whole experience of the Brobot kind of exciting in confidence with Jane. I’d have to hear explanations if someone wanted to square this with Jake perceiving it as abusive, personally.
Hence why Jake levels up when he’s trounced. Jake got owned, sure–but he was also getting served, as in he got the adventure experience that he wanted. Note, by the way, the butler imagery–which for the most part recurs continually centered around Jake and Dave.
Which makes these lines Dirk delivers three years later, directly to the audience:
Straight up lies. It’s Dirk hiding from his hurt and confusion by destroying his own perceived fuckups with his fabricated Stoic Coolguy Warrior persona–the same way Jake hides from his own by burying them under his beliefs.
In reality, all Dirk wants is to try to make what Jake wants possible. Which is very fitting, because there’s only one thing Dirk wants more than Jake himself. As we just established, what Dirk wants is to be believed in. To be valued and wanted. To be of service, to be necessary, to be good. And specifically…
To be like Dave Strider. Next time, we’ll talk about Dirk’s desire to live up to Dave’s image, how he really feels about his friends, and how all of this affects his relationship with Hal.
This series has been a passion project, but also a side project to my youtube series aimed at welcoming and explaining Homestuck to new, incoming Hiveswap fans. If you find yourself trying to make it easier for a Hiveswap fan to understand what Homestuck is about and how it connects to the game, I hope you think of me.
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See you again soon, everyone. Until then,
Keep rising.
Flying through Storytelling 