have we ever, like. is dirk ever mean to anyone in canon? other than the breakup with jake, he never yells at anyone, ever. he’s wildly nice to roxy even when he’s pretty clearly in an uncomfortable situation or frustrated.
yeah, he’s pretty sarcastic, but i’m pretty solid that he doesn’t ever make fun of someone meanly, only ever as teasing or a joke (dirk, not the AR or bgd).
i mean, hell, he’s even vaguely friendly to caliborn, who would be pretty easy to hate.
im not going to go digging through canon for evidence, but. yeah. thoughts.
i did dig through the canon for evidence and yeah you’re right the absolute closest dirk ever comes to a mean word is saying Jake should believe in stuff more critically (which is true and Jake’s willful ignorance hurts Dirk PERSONALLY) and that Jane should be less skeptical (and we see how badly Jane’s skepticism hurts roxy) other than the time he breaks up with Jake
Dirk is literally, canonically probably the sweetest kid in the comic lmao
people have this really weird misreading of dirk because he’s pretty brusque and unapproachable in the few lines he gets in a6a1 and people also tend to attribute stuff the AR says to him (and blame him for bgd being occasionally cutting even though the comic establishes that bgd is jake’s proxy for being mean to himself)
dirk is an asshole to caliborn when time is short pre-S/U and because caliborn is a fuckwad back but during the flashback log seems to humor him, albeit treating him (appropriately) like a tantrumming infant. he’s mean-ish when the tricksters approach him but this is bookended by extreme frustration, his boyfriend ghosting him, and the AR “screening his calls” so he feels isolated only to discover everybody else was getting fucked up on alien sugardrugs.
but people have this weird attitude that his default is being mean to everybody while dirk tries to be STOIC (it’s fake) but is very rarely mean
Some really insightful shit about Rose and Damara vis a vis Scratch
Ok, that’s a genuine parallel I hadn’t noticed before and thanks for pointing it out to me cause that’s really cool and adds to their narrative. Good shit
It also…does nothing to counteract my point? Yes, you’re right, sometimes Homestuck’s parallelism is absolutely meaningful and important, I’m not denying that and never tried to. Other times it’s Homestuck using a series of shots because we know them and they look cool.
My point wasn’t “VISUAL PARALLELISM IS MEANINGLESS”, it was “Visual parallelism is one element that should be taken into context, and the context with Dirk and Jake’s relationship is incredibly intricate and complex.”
And speaking of visual parallelism…
(oh, and by the way – the fight we see during [s] prince of heart: rise up is the novice setting. folks tend to forget that, but roxy re-activated it beforehand, and jake confirms it again in his following pesterlog with jane.)
I keep hearing this like it’s some Devastating Argument every so often– You realize this only undermines the idea that we should be taking the visual parallelism between this fight and Aradia/Vriska as directly symmetrical, right? On multiple levels.
1) If this is the novice setting, then it doesn’t show us the actual problem Jake says he has with the Brobot, which is it acting “Tender”. Unless the Brobot tearing out his Heart for Jake is in line with that, which…I would actually buy lmao. So the visual language of the comic is already slightly off-kilter from the language and writing setting it up.
2) Homestuck has always played fast and loose with slapstick violence in the context of fast-paced fight scenes, but it also telegraphs it pretty clearly when characters are being seriously *hurt*. When Aradia beats the shit out of Vriska, she’s drawing a shitload of blood. Jake’s fight with the Brobot comes with a bunch of funny gags and slapstick goofs.
It’s visually intense, I’ll definitely grant you that. And if you want to put it on Hussie for making it too intense then…sure? But we’re not meant to take this goofy slapstick the same way we’re meant to take the somewhat righteous revenge Aradia takes that leads to Vriska’s god tiering, and we’re not meant to take THAT the same way as a 30 year old man stomping down a 13 year old.
I’m preaching to the choir here, I know, my point is just: I really don’t think the graphic nature of the flash is as important as the visual signposting the comic uses for actual damage being done to someone. It’s easy enough to think Brobot was pulling punches through the simple fact that it doesn’t draw blood, and humans are a lot less fragile than trolls.
Which is important, because as for the context…
dirk sent jake the brobot to set jake up with dirks idea of an adventure scenario – a scenario which jake IMMEDIATELY rebuffed as soon as he learned what it entailed! and when dirk cant win him over (by arguing that it will “sharpen [his] combat skills”… Hmmm🤔🤔🤔), he changes the subject.
How on earth does Dirk’s idea of an adventure differ from any other? Adventures inherently constitute a goal which may be elusive, a dangerous journey (in this case, a controlled amount of danger), and surprises and setbacks. That’s what adventure is–they include uncertainty.
How would you have designed Dirk’s perfectly morally justifiable adventure scenario to challenge Jake with? How might an adventure be designed in a way Jake at 13, who does nothing but sit in his house scared of monsters, would be perfectly comfortable with? I seriously don’t see how Dirk could have accommodated Jake’s particular “idea” of adventure.
Because Jake’s entire thing is claiming to be down for LITERALLY ANY ADVENTURE, but he doesn’t actually do so out of fear of the monsters. My point isn’t that Dirk handled this perfectly–he didn’t–but that he wasn’t imposing some random idea onto Jake he got from nowhere. He got the idea from Jake, and what Jake continually said that he wanted.
They also typically include conflict and fighting, so yeah there’s A TRAINING ELEMENT involved here. It’s just not Dirk’s primary motivator. Dirk’s primary motivator is trying to give Jake what he thought Jake wanted…because Jake told him he wanted it, not because Dirk arbitrarily decided Jake SHOULD want it.
Jake rebuffed it immediately, yeah…but Dirk turning it off would also pose a danger to Jake’s life that Dirk would then have to contend with being responsible for, and at this point Jake has been pulling Dirk to and fro with flirting and anti-gay comments for quite a while. My point is, again, not that Dirk doesn’t fuck up–just that there’s no reason to think this is some cold, calculated manipulation Dirk is pulling off to get Jake to Accept His Methods.
It’s a gay boy disappointed that his romantic overture @ his best friend didn’t work out when he pinned a lot of hope on it, and tired of talking about it because the conversation had already been hurting his feelings quite a lot.
And again, that’s still pretty shitty! Just no more shitty than Jake’s lying and willful ignorance. And the alternative–turning the Brobot off–would be shitty and terrible too, with potentially far worse consequences than Jake being uncomfortable.
We don’t have any reason to think Dirk had control over the Brobot at this point, either–and even if he did, by the present day, AR would be able to veto him since AR is Dirk but…better at computers. And more ruthless and bitter.
Gee it’s almost like Dirk committing fundamentally innocent and well-intentioned fuck ups that nevertheless leave him and those he cares about with enormous consequences is something that happens often in his arc, and that leads to him hating himself even more than he’s already inclined to.
Not that that would make Jake’s abuse not abuse, but…
you can be afraid of someone and still want them to protect you. its a very common abuse tactic.
Which would be important and matter if Jake literally ever once showed indication of being scared of Dirk. He doesn’t. Jake running away has everything to do with Jake wanting to avoid confrontation on all fronts for his own sake, he never once even mentions being scared of Dirk. Which brings me to…
We can say Jake is being honest here because of context and Jake’s continued actions providing how he actually feels.
At this point Jake has gotten what he wanted out of Jane–an admission of friendship and emotional unavailability–and confessed to something he was clearly and unambiguously nervous about–that he’s given serious thought to being with Dirk, which he literally worries will have Jane think he’s weird.
We can also assume Jake is being honest here because Jake goes on to be obnoxiously honest at Jane about all of Dirk’s myriad flaws for six months. And at no point during that does Jake ever mention anything whatsoever about feeling intimidated or scared of Dirk, certainly not physically.
He most complains about him talking too much and being clingy and needy and unable to relax and believe Jake actually wants to spend time with him. Basically if at any point it was established Jake actually was scared of Dirk, then yeah, I’d say there’s merit to questioning that line. There just isn’t.
I’d also say Jake being scared of the Brobot isn’t really that well-founded! Jake mostly voices frustration and impatience at having to waste his time, not discomfort at fighting the Brobot–and where there IS discomfort, it has to do with it being “Tender” and figuring out Dirk’s feelings and AR’s aggressive romantic propositioning.
Even beyond how he TALKS to people, Jake’s adventure through the island simply doesn’t have the sense of anxious tension that Dave’s wandering through his apartment does. Jake is mostly pretty blase about the whole thing, and when Brobot shows up he’s framed as happy to see it–where Dave is worked up and anxious and notably distressed and increasingly so literally from moment one.
jake concedes all of janes criticisms of the brobot, but defends it with this scrappy adventurer persona hes set up for himself that we KNOW is bullshit. “sometimes when i walk through the jungle im sweating bullets […] but its like every day is more of an adventure”. his eagerness to make excuses is startlingly reminiscent of daves defense of his bro from acts 2-3.
it’s interesting how you cut out the bit where Jake says he thinks the brobot is exciting here let me put that full quote here cause i like it:
GT: Which sometimes is annoying and sometimes when i walk through the jungle im sweating bullets wondering if its going to pounce on me outta nowhere. GT: But theres actually something kind of exciting about that its like every day is more of an adventure.
Which matters because there is proof Jake is being honest here. The key detail here is Jake’s language. Jake isn’t talking about his adventurer persona here, he’s talking about his own feelings. Jake is as obvious and transparent about his front as Dave or Karkat once you know what you’re looking for, it’s the difference between:
GT: I consider you to be a lovely lady of the highest caliber and i really think any gent worth his salt would be a huge bozo to let the chance to go steady with you slip through his fingers.
and
GT: I guess if it was going to go this way… GT: I kinda pictured something different? GT: There was stuff i wanted to say. GT: To the real him i mean.
Jake is complicated, but he’s not any more inscrutable than Dirk. You can figure out what he actually means with some attention to detail.
jake does not like the kind of sneak-up-behind-you-and-snap-your-neck ninja bullshit dirk likes.
This stuff literally never happens in the comic. All the Brobot does is play fucking hide and seek and show itself when Jake needs to be saved from a goat monster. Dirk framed it that way–he’s not the best salesman–but we have no clue if the Brobot behaves this way ever, since it…never does. and in any case, everything I said above.
To whatever extent Jake was (understandably) put off, he grew into it. So it was a fuck up, but not one that did him serious harm–lasting or otherwise.
dirks insistence to roxy that jane will believe everything in due time, that they just have to wait (for dirk to open her up to the possibility of the fantastical truth) isnt doing anything to help.
i cant say that dirk being open and honest would have made jane instantly believe either, but his indirect puppetmaster bs (complete failure though it may be) sure as hell wasnt the right way to handle things. dirk had so much faith in his (totally nonexistent) ability to manipulate people into becoming their best selves that he completely ignored the healthiest and most obvious solution of “just be open with your emotions numbnuts”.
I don’t think Dirk tries to manipulate Jane into believing stuff at all, and I don’t think there’s any reason to think so. He literally tells Jake to do whatever he wants re: Jane, he just thinks she’ll think she’ll being fucked with. Which doesn’t exactly jive with this idea of Dirk as being this obsessive control freak:
TT: Jane is… TT: No. I haven’t. TT: I’ve dropped some hints and tested her willingness to believe something like this. TT: It’s just not going to fly. It’s way too much drop on somebody all at once if they aren’t receptive. GT: Hmm. True but it seems a shame to keep her out of the loop. TT: Well, tell her whatever you want. She’ll likely think she’s being fucked with. TT: Personally, I wouldn’t bother trying too hard to convince her. There’s no point in alienating her. TT: Some day she’ll be ready to believe things.
Dirk doesn’t tell her stuff because he doesn’t want to alienate her. And even then, he uh…he does. He’s plenty open with his emotions. And he’s sweet about it, too:
TT: Jane, soon you’ll believe what I’ve told you. TT: You’ll believe it all. TT: It’s just a shame that believing will take something so coarse as seeing, for a girl as sharp as you. TT: Critical thought can lead one to accept the unlikely, just as much as dismiss the impossible.
Dirk isn’t relying on manipulating Jane to get her to believe stuff. He’s relying on the simple fact that eventually Jane is going to have to face the facts of all their lives anyway, because she’ll have to play Sburb. He correctly deduces the core of Jane’s identity–just as he deduces Jake is smarter than he wants people to think he is–and picks up on the fact that Jane will believe things once she directly experiences them.
This is fundamentally accurate, since waking up on Skaia is when Jane starts immediately coming around. Even so, he literally goes out of his way to tell Jane he thinks she’s smart, and that she’ll believe the things he’s been telling her.
Dirk is pretty up front about lavishing his friends with praise and pointing out what he sees as things they do that are problems, but he doesn’t really do much about the latter. Where Dirk bottles shit up is concerning any way that their problems might directly hurt him, because Dirk is too busy hating himself to even consider begrudging any of his friends any actions they take.
if dirk wants jane to be less skeptical and more trusting, and dirk wouldnt be pleased to hear jane say she likes the auto-responder, isnt the natural conclusion to reach that dirk lets jane engage with the auto-responder under the pretense that its him, and is upset that she can tell the difference?
Given everything I pointed out above?
Literally no, since his primary issue with AR is always, consistently, that he hates Hal conflating their personalities. A conclusion that puts Dirk randomly at odds with his primary character dynamic thrust with AR in order to make him more manipulative is not the natural conclusion–it’s a possible one, but you’d have to prove it to me.
I might have missed one or two points but I think this covers the main stuff. I’ll take another look tomorrow and see if I have anything to add but i gotta get to bedz
i feel like a lot of times my opinion of autoresponder is…the opposite of what the biggest view on him is? he is absolutely manipulative, and a lot of people could say this is dirk at his worst, (2nd worst) but the way i think about it more is actually.
autoresponder is dirk in his worst environment. autoresponder is a dirk who woke up one day, unfortunate enough to have been the splinter that was trapped in a computer until the foreseeable future. autoresponder is a dirk that woke up one day, and the only connection he’d ever had to other humans had been functionally severed.
the very people that kept dirk from being bro are the very people autoresponder LOST, and it was to another version of himself, coupled with all of those people he’d cared about not so subtly establishing that he was just a fake dirk.(just like another unfortunate orange strider, though davesprite had the benefit of other people insisting that he WASN’T the fake dave, and he was his own seperate person. autoresponder barely even got that, with constant reassurance from his crush that he was, in fact, Not Real.)
i won’t deny autoresponder was manipulative! not at all! but i just feel. bad for him. he’s an unfortunate dirk, that at 13, lost all meaningful human interaction he’d ever had, his bodily autonomy, and his future. and the worst part, is he was subject to another version of himself.
i can’t blame him for being like that, i really can’t.
I figure it’s past overdue that I said some things about how I think about Hal, especially if I’ve flown the coop as far as talking about Vriska, so here hope you don’t mind but you said this was ok to reblog
If anything I see Hal as a heroic/tragic character, Tragic in the sense of being ultimately Heroic but having a classic Greek flaw (in his case, his inability to grow up because he got stuck in a computer.), which is fitting since Greek stuff/Greek philosophy is both Dirk and Hal’s primary interest.
He strives to live up Dave’s image in his own way and succeeds as a Prince of Heart in a completely different (and sadder) way than what Dirk does.
I know I keep referencing the Epilogue lately but part of me hopes Davepeta will find a way to swipe Arquius out of LE, too, because unlike Gamzee and Caliborn who chose to be evil and horrendous Arquius made a legitimate heroic sacrifice that I think deserves to be remembered fondly and if possible narratively rewarded. I just don’t have a clue how likely that is.
Yeah Dirk and Hal are the same person on a level, and they tell us interesting things about each other and their relationships to themselves. I just don’t think their actions and choices should be conflated, because their actions and choices are different every step of the way.
I just really don’t get why one would want to reduce both characters’ complexities and relationships to one another in favor of a reductive “all splinter iterations are the same exact person” argument. It shortchanges both of them and how far they have to climb and the different struggles they’re presented with, imo?
There’s only one truly, completely evil Dirk splinter out there, and that’s Bro. I just don’t think AR’s bitter rhetorical banter–banter Dirk never reproduces and that he actively, intensely resents–should be the fanon basis for Dirk’s character.
I also think casting either as ruthless masterminds is mischaracterizing Dirk by a considerable margin and Hal by a not insignificant one. Both versions of the dude are better than fandom thinks, and while Hal did some incredibly terrible shit to Jake AND Dirk that Dirk very much did not do, there were still severe extenuating circumstances to Hal worth considering.
Dirk grows into a far worse person when he’s cut off from other people, yeah, but that’s not due to some Intrinsic Evil on Dirk’s part–or on Hal’s. It’s a running theme through the entirety of Homestuck. It’s not just Dirk that finds salvation in friends–it’s everyone. And everyone is more of an asshole, crueler and more possessive, meaner and more short-sighted, for the lack of having people they care about.
Hal’s “abusiveness” or “cruelty” as I see it is mitigated somewhat by the fact that his existential situation is so deeply, truly, PROFOUNDLY shitty, and that there’s not even a fair target for it (not even Dirk because Hal wasn’t even given the satisfaction of being planned, his sentience was an accident), but it’s also kind of cruelly OUTSIZED because at the end of the day Hal is really just…a 13 year old with way too much knowledge, which turns into way too much power.
Hal is as cruelly warped as Grimbark Jade or Crockertier Jane, basically–shortchanged of any relationships or honest, equal expression to others, all he has is the depths in himself. He grows completely in touch with his abilities, awareness of the universe, and his Aspect but ends up totally isolated as a result as well.
Alright, I’m noticing some discrepancies between what I think and what you’re pointing to so maybe its worth clearing those up.
which is why i described dirk as a “prime contributing factor”. it wasnt solely his fault. but hes also not blameless, which, again, is what im getting at here.
Yeah but of course Dirk is a contributing factor, he’s one of four kids and they’re all pretty much inextricably contributing. I don’t know anyone who thinks Dirk is blameless–I just know people who think he got as much as he gave, and that the bad he gave is way overstated in proportion to the other Alphas.
an approach which dirk (at the beginning of his arc, as i specified in the op) explicitly agrees with, in his very first pesterlog!
It’s more complicated than that, and really I don’t know why you would assume what any characters say early on is the definitive statement on the feelings of any Homestuck character. Like. This is Homestuck. Come on.
Dirk tells JANE he agrees with that approach, rattles off a number of other reasons, and then says it’d be fucked up to stop Hal and that he owed it to Hal to let the program run as long as possible.
You could conceivably imagine Dirk growing out of the other shitty reasons he gave, but if he did, he would still feel obligated to let Hal have his way also. That’s a problem without an easy moral solution Dirk has access to, which is what he struggles with right up until he almost kills Hal.
Also by this point in the narrative Jane has also already talked to Jake, who explicitly points out that Dirk doesn’t like Hal, and wouldn’t like that Jane loves him.
and we can infer, based on what we know “jake should be more like jane” entails, that jane is/has been on the receiving end of the auto-responders mind games.
We can’t infer any such thing, because Dirk is clearly and demonstrably not in control of Hal in the first place. That’s the entire point of Hal. Even if he was, how would Hal messing with Jane’s head make her LESS skeptical? That doesn’t make any sense?
This besides the fact that Dirk is voicing an observation that he doesn’t act upon at all, he’s also voicing an observation that is…literally correct.
Jane’s ignorance and skepticism does great emotional damage to Roxy, who literally goes on at length about it directly to Dirk. Jake’s willful ignorance (which he frames around believing whatever is convenient to him) does enormous harm to both Jane AND PERSONALLY TO DIRK, including Jake making comments that make Dirk feel isolated and potentially judged for being GAY, not to mention romantically unreciprocated.
That’s serious shit to do to someone even if you’re only doing it because you’re a clueless 13 year old, and it shouldn’t be disregarded as part of Dirk’s character especially since…we have evidence that stuff bothered him.
you can chalk up the fact that we never see jane being played by the ar to bad writing (hussie admitted in one of his tumblr q&as that he struggles in writing jane, although those are now offline), or a deliberate choice – because jane says she likes the ar, shes not affected by it in the same way jake is, and so we would learn nothing important about her by seeing her reactions with it.
but i think your theory that dirk intended it specifically as a bodyguard for jake is flawed, too. because he made jane a bodyguard – lil seb – but lil seb didnt “stalk [her]” and “strike when [her] guard is down”.
As I pointed out up there I’m pretty sure I can chalk up Jane not being played by the AR to the fact that AR playing with Jane doesn’t make any sense at all, and AR’s mind games have nothing to do with Dirk’s thoughts or goals because he doesn’t control him anyway.
I don’t really see a reason to put anything on “bad writing” when there’s a perfectly coherent explanation that is backed up by later canon events sitting right here.
You’re missing my point with the Brobot, too.
1) It’s not that the Brobot wasn’t a fuckup. It was! But it was a mutual fuckup born of both Dirk and Jake’s mistakes, because…
2) The Brobot’s goal isn’t JUST to be a bodyguard, you’re right. It’s just also not to provide training, although it includes that function too.
The Brobot is more specific. Its purpose was to set Jake up with an adventure scenario, and Jake’s quest to hunt it down is framed at one repeatedly. Adventures prior to the point it was sent were something Jake always talked about loving but never actually did, because he was too scared of the monsters.
Dirk wasn’t trying to impose training on Jake–he was trying to help him live up to his fantasies of himself. The motivations there are significantly different.
Which again, doesn’t make it not a fuck up. It just turns out to be a relatively happy fuck up, because Jake actually likes the Brobot in the end anyway–so much so he internalizes the image of Dirk as a protector so strongly he believes in it above all else when the chips come down.
As for Jake complaining about the the Brobot, he does most of that in the context of arguing with Hal and wanting to hurry along his adventure. Notice how he admits to liking it and thinking it makes his life more exciting and adventure like when he’s speaking in confidence with Jane, and actually being honest.
The situations are parallel to Tavros and Vriska, because homestuck likes being self-refential and setting up parallels…more often than not to subvert them. There being some visual parallels–ESPECIALLY with flashes, which usually cheat to be more efficient to produce anyway–doesn’t mean there’s a 1:1 correlation between all the morals and power dynamics in a situation.
vriska and dirk (at the beginning of their arcs) are both people who take “the ends justify the means” to its logical extreme
theyre both people who grew up from infancy under incredibly adverse circumstances and, instead of acknowledging that that adversity traumatized them, recontextualize their coping mechanisms and survival tactics as “strength”. vriska tells herself that her lusus turning her into a child soldier and constantly dangling the threat of death over her head made her a smarter, stronger, more cunning person. dirk tells himself that growing up isolated from any human contact and being forced to fend for himself against the elements and assassination attempts by the condesce made him capable, self-sufficient, and mature.
they think that adversity made them strong – pressure makes diamonds, steel sharpens steel – and that they are their best selves. and they love their friends (yes, even vriska – look at the way she talks to aradia or terezi), and they want whats best for them. specifically, dirk and vriska want what they think is best for their friends, regardless of their friends actual wants or needs. dirk and vriska think that adversity is what made them strong, so in order to empower their friends, dirk and vriska will be that adversity.
of course this fails because dirk and vriska 1. are stupid children, and 2. lack the social graces or understanding of interpersonal relationships to know when theyre pushing someone past their limits. the only real difference is that vriska is hyper-empathetic, whereas empathy for dirk is a learned skill – vriska has explosive episodes of rage that shes immediately consumed with guilt over, and dirk hurts people because he cant really understand when theyre expressing unease or discomfort
and they both have arcs that revolve around this architecture of strained, broken relationships and inflated egos crumbling around them. all of vriskas friends turn against her. dirks emotional inaccessibility is a prime contributing factor to the trickster clusterfuck. vriska, who thinks that she can handle everything, is killed by terezi in order to prevent a doomed timeline. dirk, who thinks that he can handle everything, is functionally neutered for the entire condesce/aranea conflict when jade teleports him to the furthest reaches of space.
post-retcon homestuck has a lot of flaws (ive written about this extensively before) and one of them is that while dirks arc gets a satisfying resolution, vriskas doesnt. dirk comes face-to-face with his own worst case scenario, how his mindset and behavior has the potential to damage people irreperably, and resolves to make amends and change. (vriska), when divorced from the environment of constant stress and violence that defined her childhood and shaped her as a person, opens up, lets herself be vulnerable, acknowledges her own flaws and shortcomings and ultimately reunites with the terezi from her native timeline. vriska prime doesnt have these same revelations about herself – yes, vriska prime and (vriska) are the same character, and (vriska) exists to show vriskas true nature and potential for introspection and self-awareness, but vriska prime is still exhibiting the flaws (vriska) overcame all the way through the end of homestuck. vriska comes SO fucking close to having a satisfying resolution, swerves, and misses it. thats the fault of bad writing, though.
ultimately though theres more than enough evidence of vriskas character to make her sympathetic and forgivable – more than dirk, even, id say – it takes a certain special kind of cognitive dissonance insist that one is guilty and the other is innocent
While I agree that Vriska is a complicated, nuanced character with a lot of terrible abuse in her past, I do disagree with this point:
“Ultimately though theres more than enough evidence of vriskas character to make her sympathetic and forgivable – more than dirk, even, id say – it takes a certain special kind of cognitive dissonance insist that one is guilty and the other is innocent“
You mention that Vriska has a lot of episodes of rage followed by remorse, but does that really excuse the things she does in these periods of rage? Yes, she had a terrible childhood, but she also inflicted a great deal of pain on others, which she never truly apologizes for. She does make an effort to apologize to Aradia, and Terezi makes it very plain that they’re cool, but Tavros? She paralyzed him and emotionally abused him throughout the entire story. Even discounting that she kills him (you could argue in self defense), she taunts him with his own severed legs while fighting him.
Rage and mental illness do not excuse abuse of others. They can explain it, but they can’t excuse it. Yes, Vriska is a victim in a lot of ways, but she’s also a villain in the truest sense of the word – she turns other people into her victims.
Nevertheless, (Vriska) made a lot of effort to change the things about herself that led to her abusing other people. I like (Vriska) a lot. Main timeline Vriska, though, has never been forced to examine her flaws or apologize for them. It’s clear that Vriska avoids any type of introspection, and is afraid it will make her weak. To complete her arc, she’d need to learn that it’s OK.
Dirk, on the other hand…he isn’t really guilty of much besides simple miscommunication. He and Jake both fail to communicate with each other – the result is that Dirk’s insecurity over whether Jake actually likes him makes him overbearing, and Jake’s failure to communicate that, yes, he does in fact like Dirk but needs some goshdarned alone time sometimes and that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to be with Dirk anymore means that Dirk ends up pursuing him relentlessly. His darkest deed is to almost murder a brain-clone of himself, but it’s important that he decides not to do it. If he had, then Dirk would have probably been destined for a Just death in the end, because it would have been an unjustifiable act of murdering a defenseless person (regardless of how annoying AR was to Dirk). This is why I think he gets more breaks than Vriska – he has shown himself capable of resisting the urge to do a bad thing, Vriska has not.
The trickster arc is a result of all of the Alpha’s issues – Dirk’s self-hatred, Jake’s lack of faith in himself, Jane’s resentful self-sacrifice, Roxy rightfully feeling under-appreciated for her attempts to keep them all together. I don’t really see how it’s anything to do with Dirk specifically.
I’m pretty busy rn so I appreciate someone else writing what I wanted to so I don’t have to. This, basically.
I think Vriska is a fascinating, nuanced, compelling and deeply sympathetic character. Hell, I think she’s redeemable, if Homestuck is as good to her, (Vriska), and Ghost Tavros as I hope it will be.
There is also not a world in which she’s morally equitable to Dirk. There’s no cognitive dissonance here–just an awareness that just like Vriska and (Vriska) are different characters who went on different journeys and are at different places in the narrative, so are Dirk and Hal.
Hal being the character who actually DOES take “The ends justify the means” approach you’re talking about. The only time Dirk even remotely does anything that seems like doing so is sending Jake the Brobot, and that has little to do with satisfying Dirk’s ends and everything to do with enabling Jake’s.
Don’t really disagree about the ways Dirk fucks up, though–just the degrees. Dirk never sets out to train a kid and make him stronger (again, if that was his motivation, why not train Jane too?) and he certainly doesn’t then break his legs and kill him when he fails to rise to his expectations.
Hal coerces and manipulates Jake in a lot of uncomfortable ways, but Hal is Hal, and Dirk doesn’t like what he’s doing so much that Jake knows about it and Dirk talks to Hal way more angrily and viciously than he ever does to any of his friends.
Dirk DOES need a “redemption” narrative…on about the level of every Alpha. Hal is the one who takes things to abusive extremes, and he gets a rawer deal than Vriska as his redemption because he sacrifices himself to becoming a shitty homoerotic puppet hulk asshole.
Conflating these characters’ identities to this extent is the actual cognitive dissonance if you ask me.
Here’s the first of the Class essays, where we go over the most intense Active/Passive dichotomy, putting these Classes on the furthest ends of the spectrum.
The Key Verbs for these classes are Destroy and Create, covering Princes and Bards & Maids and Sylphs, respectively.
Quick disclaimer so I don’t get anyone’s hope’s up: This essay doesn’t include much discussion of Jane Crocker! Not because she isn’t relevant, but because I actually ended up writing this entire series because I needed to lay out my thoughts on Maids so I could get around to writing my essay about her.
I’ll be linking to my Jane post at the end of this essay once it’s up, and this essay is pretty much required reading for it! So I think it’s worth checking out if you’re interested in her anyway.
As for the rest, I just hope you enjoy. The other two essays are already written, and I’ll be posting them over the next two weeks!
They are available in their entireties for my Patrons, so if you can spare me a buck a month you can get these early if you decide you like them enough. Higher reward tiers will let you invite friends to the Discord so they can read them too!
Feel free to @ me, reblog or send me an ask with your thoughts on these first two essays. There may be some things I can’t answer as they will be answered in later posts, but I might use those as inspiration for what teasers to release from sections of the next two essays over the course of the week.
You can also feel free to talk to me in the Hiveswap Discord where I moderate and cry about Homestuck. I’m very interested in seeing how my thoughts stand up to scrutiny, so don’t be shy!
Definitely yes and it would probably result in pretty bad conflict, but if Jake gets told about the Bro stuff then he won’t. It IS possible that given time/centuries Dave will eventually be comfortable with wrestling and roughousing, but I doubt he’d be interested in full-blown sparring like Jake and Dirk like to do. I do think sparring is an interest Karkat could pick up provided Dirk and Jake were encouraging and patient about it though!
DirkKat for astraliminal’s birthday, because this is the part of the pairing that always hits me hardest when I think about it. I didn’t mean to go overkill but I started sketching and this happened. TuT Hope you like it, dear! Happy birthday!
Flying through Storytelling 