Heyy It’s me again. So I was wondering, we know that jake has to hate the brobot right and was already abused enough by it, so why did it have to touch him? (I think you and someone else said that the brobot touched jake and I’m saying this because I don’t want you to be like “the brobot never touched jake you perv”) Does it have to do with what you said about jake feeling uncomfortable about his body? (Man I hope I don’t embarrass myself)

You’re not embarrassing yourself, this is a pretty common idea people have about Jake and the Brobot. That said, I disagree with basically everything about how this question is framed. Which imo, is good news for you, because it means the stuff you’re upset that the Brobot did is not actually a problem–if you decide to believe me, anyway.

If not, I welcome follow up questions on the matter.
Let’s break this down, starting with one statement:

Jake doesn’t hate the Brobot.

This line. This “id rather deal with the monsters” line has caused me so many headaches, because people looove to quote Jake venting his irritation at Jane here completely out of context and take the statement at face value.

The thing is, we know what happens when Jake has to deal with the monsters instead of Brobot. What happens is Jake basically doesn’t go outside at all. On Jake’s 13th birthday, we’re told Jake pretty much just pretends to adventure all the time without actually going out much–no surprise, since he mentions growing up afraid of the monsters.

When he’s 16, by contrast, he treats going outside like an annoying chore. And while you chalk that up to Jake getting better at adventures across three years…

He still relies on Brobot to save him, so. He’s not that much better. It’s also made pretty clear Jake appreciates Dirk’s help and protection, and considers him a net positive in his own life.

And in fact, Dirk saving Jake through the Brobot over and over again is the only narrative justification we get for why Jake believes in Dirk’s ability to save him strongly enough to summon Brain Ghost Dirk.

Jake also makes it pretty clear that he A) Loves to wrestle and B) Ultimately likes the Brobot. He says it’s annoying sometimes in the same block of text where he says he finds it exciting, and that it makes his life feel like more of an adventure.

And when Jake is actually deep into the sexual objectification and abuse in his narrative, when he’s actually terrified and overwhelmed and feeling sexually threatened–

He says he wants to go back to “when all i had to worry about was being tackled by a feisty robot.” (PS: Hey he mentions wanting to go back to his pumpkin patch. Which is literally canonically the name for Dirkjake as a ship. Homestuck truly never ceases to give.)

The Brobot is being distanced from, and set as a highly preferable alternative to, all of the sexual violence being directed at Jake from Crockertier!Jane. Which strongly implies that the Brobot was not complicit in making Jake feel unsafe in this particular way.

So that’s some of the evidence in the “against” column. What is it that people base the idea that the Brobot sexually assaulted Jake on?

This single quote where AR references the Brobot’s “robogrope”. The grope is important, because this is the ~*Verifiable explicit text*~ everyone leans on to prove the Brobot was definitely literally groping Jake.

The trouble here is that the AR is actually well-known to be overly lascivious and sexually/romantically aggressive towards Jake. The AR is also a 13 year old boy with a flair for the dramatic. I am not really inclined to take the AR’s descriptions about the Brobot as the final word, especially since the description Jake himself gives is much more innocent.

Jake himself describes the Brobot, to the AR, in the exact same pesterlog where AR delivers his robogrope line. Jake does not describe groping, or sexual assault, or feeling objectified,uncomfortable, or manipulated–complaints he readily levies at AR himself, when AR actually behaves that way, btw.

No. Jake describes the encounter as “tender”. And that’s a pretty particular word to use. Not just because the definition of tender:

“showing gentleness and concern or sympathy.”

has literally nothing to do with sexual or predatory behavior–and in fact suggests its opposite. But because Tender has rather notable usage in Homestuck itself, as in…

Yeah. The word “Tender”, in Homestuck, most notably relates to Caliborn’s particular brand of tepid-ass sugar porn. Which means that as far as Jake himself is concerned, the Brobot’s treatment of him has a lot more in common with this…

…than with the kind of behavior displayed by Aranea, Crockertier!Jane, or the AR. It’s nice that Jake happens to be the one main character who’s casually implied to be subconciously omniscient, so you can easily make the argument some part of him literally knows about this.

This interpretation also happens to actually make sense from Dirk’s perspective, since Dirk was explicitly eager to draw Caliborn’s *TENDER* porn with himself and Jake. So there is actually canonical basis for Jake picking up on some of Brobot’s behaviors meant to convey “Tender”ness.

It’s just that only implies the Brobot was being cutesy, romantic, and caringly chaste–the kind of shit Caliborn likes. “Brobot rubbed a rose tenderly on Jake’s face while singing ghostbusters” is literally closer to the truth than “Brobot sexually assaulted Jake”, since again–and this is important the important bit:

Jake’s relationship to the Brobot did not include feelings of being sexually assaulted. (Here’s a link to a way longer essay on this subject I already wrote ages ago, btw). That is entirely a projection of the fandom’s, based on the words of a character who is not Jake. It’s fanon.

So where are all my drawings of the Brobot’s wrestling giving way to the chastest, most caring, cutest displays imaginable, fandom? TIA. Dirkjake is canon, Homestuck is good, and I GUESS this is my 4/13 post because dirkjake remains my favorite thing about it.

Happy 4/13, everyone!!!

bro showing up would be fuckin great because even though he is possibly brainwashed and definitely unfit for parenting he’s still my favorite guardian? he’s just so fascinatingly terrible. some things tho: dirk still has smuppets, so those aren’t on bro, those just seem like a dirk thing. Saw’s a cal thing probably yeah. but dirk also sends jake the strifebot, & yeah jake asked for someone to rumble with, but there’s like this go hard or go home thing both dirk and bro show in “training” matters

Jake didn’t just want someone to tumble with, he wanted adventures. Which is what Dirk set out to provide. I’ve written several essays on this. I don’t feel theres any evidence Dirk was as motivated by imposing training on Jake as he was by trying to give Jake what Jake LOUDLY said he wanted.

If it was about training: Why not train Jane with lil seb, too? She was in as much danger as Jake, would also have to play the game, and was WAY less prepared than Jake was to begin with. So see, Dirk as this ruthless trainer figure just doesnt add up to me at all.

Also Jake likes the brobot, it’s AR he actually had a problem with and Dirk wasn’t in charge of AR.

Also Dirk likes smuppets but smuppets aren’t….nefarious? Theres nothing problematic about smuppets as long as they’re not forced on a child along with snuff films, they’re just silly vaguely phallic puppets he likes lol. Know who else likes smuppets? Jake and Grandpa. Pa’s keeping an absolutely huge one stuffed in the basement–its in the background.

Bro has one distinguishing interest from Dirk, and it’s also the evil nefarious one: SAW. There’s little reason to ascribe it anywhere but to Caliborn.

no, i was thinking of dirk. he built brobot and everything AR did was done with dirks authorization

Ah. Sorry for putting words in your mouth, if that’s what I did–I was kind of wired yesterday and I don’t remember my exact wording too well, so I’m worried I mighta come off that way. Kinda forgot this is a view people still have, honestly.

Suffice it to say, I feel you’re incorrect. AR was explicitly not acting with Dirk’s authorization, since AR explicitly screens/blocks all of Jake’s messages to Dirk after the very first one that Dirk reads. And Dirk wasn’t even able to keep up with the circumstances leaving up to Unite Synchronize–his entire narrative is him being overwhelmed by the amount of information he has to process and unable to keep up. It doesn’t make sense to attribute Unite Synchronize to anything but AR’s design, especially since Dirk lays the events squarely on AR’s shoulders–despite being inclined to assume responsibility and self-loathing for anything he perceives as his mistakes–and AR not only doesn’t deny it, but actively takes credit for it.

As for the Brobot, Dirk certainly did build it, but that’s not really comparable to what Vriska does, and it’s questionable how much it lines up with Dammek currently. Mainly because Dirk was explicitly trying to give Jake what Jake very loudly, very boldly said he wanted, and as it turns out Jake demonstrably likes the Brobot–it’s AR he was frustrated with in canon for the most part.

I wrote several essays on this already that can be found here, so you’re free to read that and agree/disagree at your pleasure. Regadless, I consider the “Dirk was abusive/toxic to Jake (and depending on who you ask, AR)” reading little more than bad, outdated fanon.

miss-serket:

Dave and Jake’s cases of (physical) abuse have parallels. Understandable given who they were both dealing with.

From [s] Prince Of Heart: Rise Up and [s] Dave: Strife

I’d feel a lot better rebloggin this if I didn’t feel like it was setting up a lot of false parallels between Dirk and Bro that feed into the endless pile of misconceptions about the plot that is Dirkjake abuse discourse, so I’ll settle for reblogging it (because I like visual callbacks and Dave’s abuse narrative) while also jotting down my thoughts in shortform here.

Well. Shorter form. I dunno if I can really do short.

The rough gist of it, though, is this:

Jake’s situation with the Brobot isn’t remotely parallel to Dave’s situation with Bro in any way other than to contrast off each other. And presenting them as 1:1 correlations does a disservice to both narratives.

There’s a couple of angles to untangle these narratives from, but I’ll focus on the most important: The victim’s feelings in each case.

Simply put, Jake doesn’t feel about Brobot the way Dave feels about Bro. Dave is scared and anxious throughout the lead up to the Bro fight. Jake is mildly annoyed by the Brobot at worst, and we get shown direct evidence that the Brobot is a net plus to his state of mind:

When Jake is 13, before the Brobot, he talks about adventuring a lot but never actually does it–preferring to hide in his jungle globe out of fear of the monsters. When Jake is 16, with the Brobot around, Jake is comfortable enough adventuring outside that it’s barely even noteworthy to him. Given that the Brobot has to save him during the escapade, it’s not really implied that’s due solely to the increase in Jake’s competence.

Now add to this that while Jake perceives Brain Ghost Dirk as intellectually derogatory and romantically lascivious/objectifying (both behaviors we see the AR but not Dirk act out at Jake), in physical terms, Jake sees BGD as a protector and defender, as a presence of comfort and safety–as shown when he literally summons a BGD calling himself Jake’s boyfriend (Post breakup!) to protect him when he loses all agency, and…

Yeah. Jake wasn’t bothered by the Brobot enough to undermine his view of Dirk as someone who would keep him safe and stop him from being hurt, which makes it hard for me to buy that his fight with the Brobot was traumatic on anywhere near the level of Dave being forced to fight his actual parent and guardian.

It’s also noteworthy that Dave hates fighting, while Jake liking to roughhouse is practically one of his main character traits. In fact, the very dynamic between Brobot and Bro is different because Strifing with Bro was something Dave never had a say in, whilst Dirk made Jake the Brobot in response to Jake constantly talking about liking not just roughhousing, but adventure, which the Brobot is designed to set up.

It is not Dirk roughly imposing a training agenda from on high–it’s Dirk misinterpreting the signals his best friend was sending him because his best friend was telegraphing a persona that was not actually him.

To whatever extent The Brobot DID bother Jake, though? Dirk wasn’t in control of it in the first place–the AR was, and there’s no reason to think Dirk could really do anything about it. The AR is as competent as Dirk, only moreso with the benefit of cyber-omniscience. There’s no real way for Dirk to out-compute the AR in order to somehow lock it out of controlling the Brobot.

At this point I’m stoppin cause I’m not about to re-write all four of my essays on this subject in a single tumblr post but yeah Dirk and Jake’s situation is way more nuanced and complicated than Bro and Dave’s situation.

Jake was abused, but by the AR and later Jane, Dirk was if anything also a victim to the AR with some shitty rationalization methods, the AR was a victim to it’s own traumatic circumstances, etc. etc.

In resume Dirk and Jake are the best characters in Homestuck.