yeah you’ve pretty much made me feel comfortable shipping dirkjake. I used to feel weird about it, like Rose shoving her wizard fic under the bed. But you pointing out how non-abusive their relationship is(which is not the first time I’ve heard the not-abusive argument but is by FAR the most cohesive and informed) made me feel like its a ship that can work bc Dirk isn’t actually that brand of asshole, and can be Jake’s prince. And fuck if that isn’t cute to say.

that’s pretty much how I felt for years until I actually really dug back in and took a long, hard look at the comic after being presented with different views by some really good friends 🙂 It makes me really happy if I’ve been able to help other people the way they helped me because…this story matters to me. Like, a lot? And I think it’s worth celebrating.

rosemary is probably the most important pairing to me in canon because it helped me through a lot of realizing i was gay and liked girls and just was very positive for me but as a relationship they also dont have a ton of issues and as ive gotten older dirkjake has been like the next level of interesting important gay ships to me and its helped me work through a lot of my own personal feelings on being a lonely weird gay teen and i love them for that

im getting so many nice asks about dirkjake being good for people and im literally on cloud nine right now

I feel like dirk and jake would recreate iconic movie posters as “ironic” (we know its not ironic dirk we know you love this cheesy stuff just as much as jake) christmas cards they exchange with dave and karkat trying to one up eachother in ironic cheesiness but they are just really cute

This is absolutely true and dovetails hard with my thoughts that Jake would conscript Dirk into co-cosplaying pretty much anything Jake got too invested in, including such pairs as:

Finnpoe

Shinji/Kaworu

Utena/Anthy (Dirk gets to be Anthy because Jake wants to be his prince this time!!! he really just wants to wear the booty shorts)

Juri/Shiori (Dirk gets to be Juri this time so that way Dirk can be his prince proper like. Also Jake hopes up an ending where they’re happy)

2B/9S (from Nier: Automata. Jake is 2B the sexy combat android because literally of course he is. Dirk is 9S the cute nice hacker boy because he’s in love with 2B and WILLING TO KILL FOR HER and Jake knows exactly what he’s doing and Dirk is owned) (( An awesome artist named merupuri did some excellent drawings on this subject) (which i originally misidentified as having been done by @geejaysmith who is still rad as hell)

Gon/Killua (Dirk doesn’t even protest this one, Gon/Killua vibes with Dirk and Jake so hard they watch it and look at each other and cry in bed for like a full night. Watch Hunter x Hunter it’s so fucking good oh my god. Those boys are gay)

The list goes on but you get the idea

I was always a little unsure of how to feel about DirkJake, especially because of Dirkcourse, but seeing your analysis of their relationship and them as individuals I am now not only a dedicated fan of the pairing but also a fan of Dirk and Jake as characters.

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HELL YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HELL FUCKING YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ive had so many conflicting opinions on dirkjake for so long because i ended up getting into a lot of fandom discourse stuff having not read the comic in its entirety in years and i sat down wanting to really figure out how i felt about dirkjake and what i found was a messy relationship that neither of them could really talk about and just honestly some of the best written most relatable gay teen angst ive ever read and i love your writing on it and im glad i can like dirkjake

ME TOO Dirkjake was so important to me when I was a messy gay teen angsting about gay teen things and the fact that antis almost ruined what is honestly like, one of the best mlm relationships ever put to fiction fills me with resentment. But that’s okay because here we are on the other end and not a single anti has yet come forward to refute even a single one of my points despite my consistent asking and Dirkjake is great and I am so happy I’m getting all these nice asks telling me how great it is, i’m happy ;w;

You’re literally the reason I ship DirkJake bless you send kisses

i just unlocked the ability to go super saiyan 3 because of this post. my house is devastated but i can fly now so thanks anon

I think the best argument for jakes feelings for dirk is brain ghost dirk because after everything theyve been through with their breakup and everything else about brain ghost dirk being fairly accurate to jakes personal fears and other things about whats currently going on with dirk he calls jake his boyfriend which is essentially what jake still wants after everything it shows that thought their relationship was messy they have a possible future and i love that

Yep, pretty much. People don’t seem to pick up on it but, like, yes Jake is abused! Jake is abused by Hal (who Brain Ghost Dirk reflects much more than he reflects Dirk himself as Jake…literally says), by Jane, by Aranea…

He just isn’t abused by DIRK, and when the chips come down Dirk is literally presented as Jake’s ANSWER to all this abuse. Dirk makes Jake feel safe, ergo, when Dirk is around Jake doesn’t feel as threated, which is why them being together is directly correlated with Jake comfortably doing sexy ads and shit on Earth C (at the age of 19 at the earliest which some people also seem to have missed.)

Homestuck DID deal with Jake’s abuse, it just dealt with it in a way that didn’t fit people’s preconceived narrative. You can argue about the nature of the execution (I know a lot of my friends would’ve wanted that laid out with more dialogue, and I can’t help but agree at times) but the symbol language is pretty clear: Jake’s discomfort is a problem for him when he can’t rely on Dirk to fix it. Jake does not consider Dirk one of his aggressors. Jake loves his boyfriend who he wants to call him his boyfriend.

Ok, you’ve talked about how dirk would feel about jade/john and how much he would love them (i wouldn’t mind hearing more about that too tbh) But! how do you think he would feel about rose/dave (like, wow, are those really my kids? the hero dave strider is my son? everything good about them must have come from roxy no doubt) so, yeah, headcanons about dirk interacting with others, please?

You nailed a good part of it. I think Dirk and Dave are pretty well-charted by the canon, but basically I think Dirk would be inclined to look for Roxy in both Dave and Rose, which would be easy with Dave because he takes after Roxy hard anyway. So there’d be a lot of hangouts and the degree to which Dirk can satisfy Dave’s need for emotional openness probably relies on how much Dirk’s issues with the Alphas are sorted out, because Dirk uh…really really hates himself. Especially by canon endgame. Which brings us to Karkat.

I feel it somewhere in my heart that Karkat catches wind of the Alphas’ emotional turmoils through Dirk and immediately sets about fixing all of it because nu uh, fuck no, fuck that shit Karkat has dealt with ENOUGH romantic turmoil and he’s not having any of this bullshit teen drama in his ultimate reward. As a result Dirk immediately would die for Karkat on command even if he wasn’t already inclined to do so for Karkat being The One Dave Loves anyway. This is cool because Dirk and Karkat have a fucking lot in common!

There’s the being subjugated by the Condesce, the intense self-loathing and being convinced they destroyed relationships by the sheer nature of their beings, the intense and vicious arguments with versions of themselves…there’s a lot to bond over. It’s cute. I want more of that. All of this has the added bonus of making Dave basically the happiest fucker alive in the multiverse on top of Karkat and Dirk just being…really good influences on each other. Karkat can help Dirk out with relationships! Having the approval of physically hypercompetent Dirk could do a lot to reduce whatever angst about his own battle skill Karkat has left! There’s so much there ;_: I love them.

Where things get a lot MORE interesting is with Rose, almost entirely because seeing Roxy in her is…

going to be a lot harder.

On top of that, Rose is curious and inquisitive, like Dirk is. And she’s particularly interested in Dirk’s oddities. Traits she could really question and dig into:

Rose hasn’t really lost her interest in psychotherapy, I think–but Dave has definitely chilled out a lot and stopped trying so hard after he started dating Karkat.
Like Terezi, Rose enjoys the hell out of a dude trying to be cool who has something to hide. Which makes Dirk “perfectly stoic, taciturn to the max about everything” Strider pretty much the perfect fucking target.

So early on there’s definitely a lot of Rose teasing Dirk and doing her psychoanalysis thing at him, which could make for some absolutely stunning dialogue. Probably a lot of calling him “Dad” or “Father”, too, god I love Rose Lalonde. And Dirk like, he sees himself in Rose a lot and that might make him more defensive and critical of her than most…but I think it’s more likely that what he sees of Roxy in her and what he knows from Rose’s history (she was effectively the closest thing he had to a Mother figure, too–it’s just not a legacy he chose to lay claim to) would force him to reckon with the fact that someone can have a lot of Dirk-like traits and still be fundamentally…you know. Good.

I think over the long haul Dirk and Dave would end up feeling like twin brothers to each other, balancing out the weird dad-son feels into something wholly unique. Same goes for Dirk and Rose, but Dirk would uniquely value Rose’s insight and he’d probably be likeliest to go to Rose for advice or counsel out of anybody…especially if they ever get to know each other well enough to figure out they share a proclivity for self-loathing and assuming outsize responsibility without relying on their friends.

Jake can make Dirk FEEL good about himself, but Rose could probably put into words exactly why he is objectively good, and Dirk would appreciate that. Rose, meanwhile, would appreciate someone who can keep her grounded in herself and her own strengths and flaws when she gets too wrapped in her own head to talk to people…even if I also think Dirk doing so would piss her off.

They’d be good for each other basically. And Dirk would get ripped on hard enough to actually break his stoic facade, which I think is a marvel we all wish to see.

Why do you think Jake was running away from Dirk and complaining about him? I just can’t imagine what was happening in his head to do such things, also I have a hard time believing that Jake loves Dirk romantically although I want to. I’ve been reading your analysis and I’m still not sure.

So remember when this was going on:

While Grandpa was off doing…fucking this:

Jake’s fundamental problem is the same as Grandpa’s: Escapism. In Grandpa, that misery and desire for escapism seems to grow into outright delusion–the guy seems plain old not that in touch with reality.

That’s how Jake operates when he has problems he doesn’t like and he doesn’t want to do better. Jake runs away because Dirk is needy and suffocating–the dude ain’t perfect, and he’s not any better at talking about his problems than Jake is because he likes to pretend they don’t exist by subsuming them into his (fake as shit) hypercapable persona.

But Dirk was needy and suffocating in the first place at least partly because Jake had already hurt his feelings pretty badly several times over, and led Dirk to believe he was most likely straight. Jake is aware of this!

But Jake would, in all things, prefer to resolve his conflicts in a way that doesn’t require him to acknowledge or address any way he might have possibly fucked up or hurt his friend’s feelings. That’s why neither of them can make actual progress on improving their relationship–Jake is as willfully ignorant about the core of their issues as Dirk is willfully burying them to keep up his front. And neither of them will likely talk about how Jake really felt about Brobot or about the whole AR situation for that exact same reason. Jake is busy immediately trying to forget any of that existed or could, in fact, have been parsed as a problem. Dirk is terrified of hearing Jake’s real answer.

My friend Sburb (who I mysteriously can’t tag?? sorry about that) made a really good point about Jake’s planet–Xenon. Xenon can be used as an anesthetic, numbing one’s perception of the world, and that lines up with Jake’s modus operandi perfectly. It’s not that Jake doesn’t like Dirk, but that he is deeply terrified of confrontation and numbs himself to any possibility that may require it. Like, it’s no mistake that Jake’s innate sense of happiness and ignorance ramp up in intensity PRECISELY to match the most depressing thing he’s confronted with–Erisolsprite. Jake knows how miserable and angry Erisol is on some level, but acknowledging that would be really sad and require Jake to do something probably uncomfortable! So he doesn’t, and he pretends there isn’t a problem instead. Like. Really aggressively.

After like SIX MONTHS of enjoying Dirk’s company despite all these issues on BOTH their ends, long past the point when people who weren’t teenagers who don’t know what they’re doing would have sat down and said “Ok there’s definitely a problem here, let’s talk about it,”–yeah, all these underlying problems stress Dirk out enough that he gets to be too much for Jake and he runs away. Where he goes right on thinking about Dirk all the time, subjecting Jane to long rambles about him, and when Caliborn comes calling Jake spends his time making comments like this:

Which is A) Trolling Caliborn to some extent and really fucking funny, I love you Jake, B) Indication that Jake is now a lot more comfortable positioning himself as mlm than he was when talking to Jane, and C) That last one is obviously a reference to Dirk that Jake is making intentionally. Jake is, again, sharper than he’s given credit for. He knows what classpects are and he’s spent six months in a session where there’s exactly four of them. Even while running away, Jake is still making comments about Dirk that would absolutely be flirting if he were talking to the guy himself, and still largely thinking positively about him.

Jake running away doesn’t reflect his feelings for Dirk. It reflects his obsessive need to avoid confrontation, and his willingness to believe anything he can tell himself to avoid it.

Hey! Since I really like your interpretations/analyses of HS, I wanted to ask you what you thought about aromantic Jake? I saw a lot of people saying that it was practically canon, but even if I find the headcanon nice, I’m not entirely convinced ?

I consider the Homestuck characters’ greatest strength to be that they can function as essentially umbrellas of representation. There’s some characters who’s identities are pinned down sexuality wise–Dirk is gay, Dave is bi, etc.

John? I can see compelling readings that John is straight, ace, aro, acearo, or bi, or any incredibly personal combination thereof. Hell, I’ve seen people argue John can be gay, though it’s not a reading that’s been made convincing to me just yet. This is because the power of any version of representation John gives to people is derived from John having had compelling, resonant experiences that vibe with people of that group–not an explicitly defined label. This is true even of Dirk and Dave, by the way.

This leads me to arguing the devil’s advocate a bit and suggesting the impossible: As much as I’m frustrated by it because I want those conversations badly myself, it…might be a good thing we didn’t get that Dirk and Jake conversation in canon? Because it’s hard for me to imagine how it could’ve been written without tipping the scales either way towards reading Jake as romo or aro personally. And I think it’s a good thing that you can read it either way! I wouldn’t want to lose that.

Like I wrote in my latest Jake essays, I think you can read Jake as aromantic and have it be copacetic with the canon. All we really KNOW about Jake is this:

A) He’s had experiences with vibe really hard with aro people, and that can be read as an aro awakening of sorts. Because it was such a painful awakening for him though, I find it hard to accept that that’s DEFINITELY how he would 100% feel about himself once he figured things out. There’s ambiguity there, is all I’m saying, even though I definitely think reading

B) He loves Dirk an obscence amount, like, Cosmic World-Rending Reality Tearing Love is what we’re talking about here (whether platonically or romantically) and considers him both a best friend and an unfailing protector, and pretty much wants to spend his life with the guy, as seen through….Jake in Credits, spending his life with the guy. And Jake, tearing reality’s logic to pieces to get Dirk to be there protecting him from Aranea.

Jake trusts Dirk! He likes fighting him! He likes looking sexy (so long as Dirk is around and he’s safe!)! He likes building robots together!

Whether that’s an aromantic love and Dirk is his best friend forever, or a romantic love and they’re romantic partners too, seems like…beside the point to me. Either way I think it’s a really positive depiction of how aro or bisexual people can live and form strong connections, and I wouldn’t want to take that way from either group.

I tend to read Jake as romantic, because I’m a romantic queer dude and that vibes with me more. But I also like that there’s room to play with the ambiguity, you know what I mean? I don’t think one reading of Jake is more valid than another and I don’t think it changes a ton about Jake’s relationship with his loved ones and peers, so why not give as many people as possible something to be happy about and relate to?