you ever just think about how good dirk strider is. how relatable his gay story is. how perfect he is and how much he means and how his gayness isn’t the centerpoint of a Sad Story about how Being Gay Is Suffering, but is still integral to his personality and his arc, you ever just think about dirk fucking strider
You probably weren’t expecting an essay length answer to this question. So like let there be no doubt at all from this point onwards this is exactly the kind of content you can legitimately expect from this blog. This is who I am. I’m sorry.
Also, you’re welcome.
Yes, Dirk is a furry. And his relationship to furries shows us a lot about his parallels and similarities to one Rose Lalonde. Who is also a furry.
Let’s get into this.
Dirk is interested in furries to some extent, and finds the aesthetic appealing on some level. I mean, look at this. I can’t even count how many pictures of muscley horse dudes there are here. The dude isn’t exactly subtle. To quote Jake…
He dodges, and badly at that. To Dirk, swole bunny men represent something to hide–an interest he has that he cannot honestly incorporate into his cool, stoic, Above It All Persona. Not even through the hyper-sincere irony he tells Jane about. It’s something to hide, which means that at his core it’s something that matters to him.
And hey, you know who else is very much not shy about plastering her interests where anyone can see for her own pleasure?
As plenty of people have noted recently, there’s no heterosexual explanation for this. I’d already categorize this as falling into the spectrum of anthropomorphization we talk about as Furry–if you disagree that’s fine, though I do know furries who like this kind of thing. The point is that like Dirk, Rose knows what she likes, and like Dirk, Rose likes some weird shit.
On this side of the argument, though–showing that the characters like this furry stuff through their own characterization–Dirk gets a lot more content than Rose does. But Rose’s relationship with furry is confirmed much more intensely than Dirk’s on the other side of this argument: through their relationships to their Splinters.
In both cases, they’re happy to pretend that furry stuff doesn’t interest them at all, and part of their approach to doing so is either joking about others being interested in it or actively playing up their resentment for it. Either way, the implication they send is that they themselves are Not Interested.
This is alie, and is to be ruthlessly exploited for comedy, which Homestuck does magnificently well.
Both Dirk and Rose are very invested in seeming Above the kind of self-indulgent identity play that Furry tends to encompass. Intense sincerity of expression bothers to them even as it appeals, because the images they want to project to the people they care about is one of aloof, self-aware, competently critical collectedness. One could say it bothers BECAUSE it appeals.
Which is the exact reason Rose is so annoyed by Jasprose. Jasprose acts as Rose would without the self-awareness she uses to present only the carefully crafted persona she wants other people to see. Jasprose doesn’t think about what others think of her at all. Jasprose thinks in terms of self-indulgence.
A self-indulgence explicitly linked to their status as full-blown, unabashed Furries. Jasprose, by her very being, brings all of Rose’s hidden words and feelings to Light, not being shy at all about sharing them and indulging whatever desire is on her mind.
She mixes cat terminology with flirting, stressing her identity as someone who is a furry and loving every second of it. Davepeta even draws the distinction between her and Rose, noting that Jasprose owns who she is and acts more honestly about it.
But there are genuinely harmless ways that Arquis DOES reflect Dirk’s interest, and those are worth unpackaging. Specifically, there’s the way AR describes himself finally becoming happy.
And yeah someone could nibble with this wording and say well actually Equius likes horses so maybe its him and I actually couldn’t be less interested in trying to explain why Dirk’s character already incorporates an absolutely Furry level of enjoyment of horses so here’s his room again.
So basically Dirk and Rose are interested in furry stuff to some extent but won’t really admit it. They wouldn’t admit it to you if you asked them or anything.
I think this is really fascinating and that they share this particular nuance of characterization so completely is fantastic. Even Dirk’s double face palm and Rose’s pillow hiding feel really similar to me in the sentiment of mortified frustration it gets across.
And all this really stresses their similarities and makes Roxy’s line emphasizing how similar Rose and Dirk are hit home all the harder. I wanted to ramble about that for a while. God I love these kids what was I talking about again?
Oh yeah furries. So Rose and Dirk are both furries but neither of them would CALL themselves furries in public.
Yet. The thing is, this girl exists:
Give Jade like, one birthday party where she decides she wants everyone to have a furry party and draw up fursonas together, and we’re good to go. There’s pretty much no circumstances under which I doubt Jade’s power to get all her friends to stop hiding an interest they ALL KNOW DEEP DOWN they share with her but keep pushing away out of a dumb point of pride.
It’ll be great I promise someone write this fic ok thanks in advance. Anyway yeah give Jade like a year after they get to Earth C and she’ll get them all on the same page. By which I mean all, not just Dirk and Rose.
Jane’s actually the only main character who hasn’t expressed any interest in furries at any point in the story to my memory, and she’s already been willing to play around with trollsonas. Which means at some point in the context of eternity these kids are going to get the hell over themselves and draw some fursonas. And if they don’t, Jade will make sure they will.
So yeah. Every human kid in Homestuck is a furry. Also every living troll, and Callie. Probably all their subjects too frankly.
Davepeta would fucking adore Dave and try their best to help him grow and be chill and relax. I feel like Dave would be really weirded out by Davepeta though and maybe a little tiny bit jealous because Jade is with them at first and Dave doesn’t know how to let go of crushes but he’d get over it pretty fast and even if he didn’t Jade would make sure he did because. Davepeta is her datefriend and Dave isn’t allowed to be a jerk about it.
I don’t really think he would be though? It would be mostly just residual weirdness about Davesprite mingled with feeling slightly insecure that there’s now an even CHILLER MORE lax about masculinity version of him running around and what if Karkat likes them better they’re so chill and they just tell Jade about their feelings and flirt with John and oh god. Dave, Rose and Dirk might briefly bond over feeling uncomfortable with their sprite selves.
But Dave would get over it and eventually become pretty good bros with Davepeta I think and they’re probably have really good jams about Time travel and the nature of identity since they both get what it’s like and why it sucks but Davepeta would have a lot to offer there. Eventually I think Dave and Davepeta are literally just bros and Dave thinks of Davepeta less as a splinter and more as a bizzare sort of twin. Not even his weirdest twin sibling because Dirk exists.
Speaking of Dirk Davepeta adores him too??? Davepeta is over the Bro stuff, and they already hugged and made up with AR, who…actually did any of the kind of stuff that is similar to what Bro did, which Dirk did not do. So if that’s what you meant, I don’t see why Davepeta would have any reservations about Dirk. If anything they’re probably the best positioned character other than Dave and Jake to help Dirk like, work out his relationship to himself vs. his splinters and help him be happier with himself, and that’s likely what they’d try to do.
Dirk wouldn’t know how to handle Davepeta especially when Dave doesn’t like them but they’d work things out and also be chill bros I think.
so anyway someone was trying to tell me the Masterpiece was really ambiguous and didnt imply dirkjake at all because Caliborn “most tryhard straight boy” character in the comic said this stuff
I could write a lot to counter that but i dont feel like it so instead i wanted to share this beautiful memory
so lets remember Jake’s massive gay hope bubble. that he uses. to save Dirk. or to have Dirk save him if he needs it. pretty gay, Jake!
we know.
(im not even taking that line out of context this is what he’s responding to:)
[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. 3 – Fearful Heart] [Pt. 4 – Nobility]
A disclaimer before we get started:
I think reading Jake as aromantic is copacetic with the canon. Obviously I don’t share this reading–I see him as Bi and romantic–but all I’m going to argue here is that Jake deeply, truly, profoundly loves Dirk. I’m going to explain how and why he loves him, too.
But whether that love is romantic or platonic is up to interpretation, I think. You can read them as lovers or best friends or whatever shade of grey between is most pleasing to you, in my humble opinion. All I’m arguing is that the love is there. That out of the way, let’s begin.
I don’t feel the need to deconstruct Jake’s every line to determine why he didn’t mean each and every one that could suggest a lack of romantic interest. You can pretty much put almost all of them down in one of four categories:
And then there’s the one moment I actually want to talk about.
Jake says this in response to Roxy talking about feeling like it hurts to let Dirk down. The thing is, Roxy–like Dave–is a Passive player, who is predominantly motivated by the perceptions and needs of others. Of course failing someone she cares about is going to sting for her more than it would for Jake.
That has nothing to do with Jake’s capacity for love, it has to do with the fact that Jake is selfish. It has to do with him regretting his self-absorption. Jake does love, and he loves intensely–he loves enough to die for it, which is pretty much as intense as it gets. He’s just deeply, deeply selfish about it.
And I love that selfishness about Jake. Because it turns all doubts about whether Jake loves Dirk back to ash in one fell swoop, in one single, brilliant, shining moment.
In this moment all of Jake’s plot threads come together–his sexual abuse and lack of agency, his growing fear, his certainty none of his friends wants him anymore, his selfishness and fantasy indulgence AND Dirk’s desire to live up to Dave’s image and be helpul to Jake are all built up into this one single, spectacular moment.
A cinematic moment. A moment with deep philosophical implications.
Everything about Jake and Dirk’s narratives builds up to this. Dirk’s desire to live up to Dave and Jake’s inherent selfishness are complementary, symbiotic forces. I mentioned earlier that when Dirk’s lamp and Heart Light up and overflow he performs incredible, unbelievable acts whilst rushing to Jake’s side.
And when Jake is Lit up by Aranea, removing his agency as a person COMPLETELY while also making him the brightest object in the sky, Jake manages to find a way to turn his power against her. And what he chooses to create reveals everything about his character.
Because what he chooses to do is call Dirk to his side, to protect him and keep him safe from his perceived threat.
Jake’s feelings for all of his friends have nothing to do with them and everything to do with himself. He’d rather die than live in a word without Jane, and that’s why he saves her–not because he thinks he owes it to her for past slights. The same is true of the way he wants to be with Dirk.
All of this is textual by implication. Dirk’s line:
”I am Brain Ghost Dirk. You kissed my boyfriend. Prepare to Die.”
No shortage of people have pointed out how Jake seems to see himself as or end up in the positions of sexualized and marginalized female protagonists, but I think there’s a cause to be made Jake’s “arc” draws from this specific one–Buttercup–above all others. Buttercup’s romantic dynamic with Westley is simple: She issues requests to him, and he responds “As you Wish.”
This As you Wish is an explicit I love you, and the power of love is put forth as the source of Westley’s power and endless competence and ability throughout the entire story. It doesn’t matter what needs to happen, Westley finds a way to do it. And he does it because he believes in their love.
Buttercup, however, struggles to hold on to her faith that love can overcome all things possible and wavers in her commitment to living for it, ending up nearly trapped in an unwanted marriage. Buttercups’ arc is resolved when she chooses to believe in love even at risk of dying, promising never again to hide what she truly desires–Westley.
Jake perceives Dirk as his Prince Charming, an idea that could also be described as a Knight in Shining Armor.
This is the essence of Jake’s fantasy, and we know that’s what it is–a fantasy– because when Caliborn threatens to kill Dirk in the Masterpiece (which the Credits suggest we’ll soon see once again), Jake responds by shifting his and Dirk’s fundamental power dynamic–once again Lighting Upwith loveto save Dirk by delivering Caliborn his destined serving.
Jake’s victory ends up giving Hope to all those opposing Lord English, but Jake himself doesn’t give a shit about that.
And on Dirk’s side, this dynamic ultimately validates the idea that he became everything he wanted to become by emulating Dave through a bit of understated environmental storytelling.
What’s more, this bit of environmental storytelling also prompts us to consider looking back towards the early Acts with the Beta Guardians with a bit more of a serious eye–the darkness of Mom’s House and Bro damaging the symbol of Dave’s Self begin to take on heavier tones, for example.
What’s more, it gives us more reason to be excited for Hiveswap, through virtue of the fact that it demonstrates Hiveswap’s care and attention to detail with regards to Homestuck as a whole.
The shortform is this: Grandpa’s manor has three rooms, each lit by one of the Alpha’s colors and filled with items linked to them, and the Distinguished Houseguests in his Grand Foyer each link to one of the Alphas as well.
Here are the rooms in sequence:
Take a look at the fireplace–it’s got Derse colors on one side, and Prospit colors on the other. On the Prospit side, you’ve got a Blue Lady–matching Jane, who Jake liked to trade posters of blue people with– and an alien species with horns on it’s head, also wearing a suit–matching Calliope.
On the Derse side you’ve got a Mummy, matching Roxy both by sharing both Jake and Roxy’s interests in bodily preservation, and through the fact that Roxy’s planet includes Pyramids. There’s also the wordplay between the words Mummy and Mommy, if you’ll allow me to stretch a little.
And then we have a Knight, representing Dirk. This dynamic answers a question that didn’t even need asking–why the Knight sitting on the Derse side of Grandpa’s house wears a suit suspiciously similar to one of Dave’s most well-known ones.
It suggests an explicit linkage of the idea of Knighthood and the idea of Dave, and suggests that this is the imagery that comes to Grandpa’s mind when thinking of Dirk. In one way, you could view this as Dirk managing to destroy his own thematic legacy in Bro and succeeding at living up to Dave’s thematic image instead, at least in Grandpa’s mind–a sort of ultimate implementation of his Prince of Heart role.
This existentially validates Dirk, setting him apart from his Splinters and rendering him unique in the context of the Dirk Strider ultimate self–at least in the eyes of the boy he loves. And, well. Fuck? That’s beautiful to me.
And just for the record, this is a connection that has held true across not only the entirety of the Homestuck, but through Hiveswap as well, with a Knight standing right in front of a smuppet in Grandpa’s garage:
Which suggests to me that WP has approached Grandpa’s memories and the Alpha’s arcs with the same attention to detail the comic itself gave them, and makes me extremely confident in what’s to come. Hopefully now you are too. Hiveswap’s attention to detail speaks to the quality of the story they’ve crafted, and we should all be excited beyond reasonable belief, in my humble opinion.
Conclude.
So that’s it. That’s pretty much all my evidence for this reading of Dirk, Jake, Dave, and the wider story surrounding them. I look forward to hearing your responses. Personally, putting this together was revelatory for me.
I hope it was for you, too. If it wasn’t quite, I hope you want to talk about it and keep track of the ongoing conversation I hope takes place here as a result.
If you like my writing and have a buck to spare, you could also really help me out by enabling me to focus on putting more of this content out there through pledging on Patreon. Doing so will also give you access to my private community of enthusiasts trying to advance new and interesting readings of this wonderful property.
[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. 3 – Fearful Heart] [Pt. 5 – As You Wish]
So now that we know that Knights are defined by service to others, and now that we have a clear reading of how badly Dirk wanted to be of service to Jake, it’s time to veer off a bit.
In this section, we’ll take a look at how hard Dirk tries to live up to Dave’s mythological role (while still very much carrying out his own), and see how that affects our reading of his character. We’ll also take a look at how Dirk is treated by–and feels about–the rest of his friends.
Dave is the only character who ends up acting as a server player for more than one person, and Dirk on some level tries to emulate Dave’s effect on the game the first chance he gets.
He fails at this, Miserably. But Hal, who is also a Dirk trying to emulate Dave, succeeds. By the end, Hal take’s over as EVERYONE’S server player, even Dirk’s. He even takes Dave’s text color during the process AND takes charge of–his words–metatemporal mechanics.
Dirk’s failure–and Hal’s success–in this regard established, let’s refocus a bit and note the nature of Dirk’s relationship with all of his friends by the time they start playing.
To make matters worse, we learn Jake essentially toyed with Dirk’s heart with jokes he–fitting into Jake’s general pattern of behavior–never confronted Dirk to correct, although he correctly deduces it left lasting damage on Dirk’s feelings.
Partly as a result, he views Jane as a competitor with an unfair advantage. Her complete ignorance about his sexuality doesn’t help matters, so he can’t talk to her.
All the while, Roxy is actively and willingly pressuring him into romantic interest in her and directly comparing him unfavorably to Hal for his lack of romantic reciprocation. And Hal not only harasses Jake and positions himself as a better friend to Jane (this particular act I do not view as malicious), but uses Dirk’s very insecurity about failing Roxy against him.
And while Hal claims to be on Dirk’s side in the Jakestakes, Dirk is pretty much right to be suspicious of his intentions:
So essentially, Dirk has no one to talk to about his sexuality and gets ignorance or cruelty on all sides with regards to it.
Is it really reasonable to demand of a teenager to come forward to his best friend–who he last heard voice rejection of the very CONCEPT of gayness–not only to admit his sexuality and explain how it factors into his alternate self’s abusive behavior, but also to confess or try to talk around his soul-searing, cosmic romantic love for the guy?
And that is what it is, make no mistake about Hal is either getting carried away with feelings he says are distant and diluted for him, or confessing the full form of those feelings on Dirk’s behalf. But the feelings are there, and they are cosmic in scale.
Heart is the aspect not just of love, but of any intense attraction between two or more people, and thus shipping. At first, these elements may seem disparate, but they’re more connected than they seem.
After all, what do you do if you ship two characters? If you think they’re in love? Typically. they’re shown as close together as possible, trading attention and feelings. Placing their souls in proximity to one another’s and implying a give and take between them.
Dirk’s Prince of Heart role does reflect how he destroys his relationships, but not the way most people think. It’s not that Dirk is willing to erode the selves of his friends to fit into his molds, but rather that Hal positioning his Self between Dirk and his friends undercuts Dirk’s ability to reach out and trust their perceptions of him, and even stops him from being able to tell where he begins and Hal ends.
At the same time, Dirk’s intense fear of rejection keeps him away from broaching his problems with Jake the same way Jake’s fear of disappointing others stops him from broaching his–Dirk’s Love getting in the way of honesty as much as his constructed Persona.
And yet, despite the unhelpfulness or outright cruelty Dirk’s friends put him through, largely because of his sexuality…
Save for the trickster log–which he recants–Dirk never once even thinks to consider his friends as aggressors towards him. His instinct is to assume he’s somehow failing them instead. Just like with Jake, Dirk sees into the core of all of his friends, and what he really sees at the end of the day is this:
Dirk thinks Roxy is noble. He sees her as she really is–as one of the Nobles of the session, as they ALL are, seeing right past their flaws and mistakes and straight to the shining hearts of their intentions.
Again, Roxy’s not even the one he wants to be with romantically, and we saw the intensity of how he feels about Jake. He wrote Jane entire books and sent her personal bodyguards crafted out of heirlooms taken from the Bro Dirk essentially shapes himself in the image of. What would he have to say about the two of them, if asked?
Dirk’s problem is his perception of his friends’ nobility leads him to erasing all their hurtful behavior, and the hurtful behavior he sees Hal commit on his behalf–which Dirk views as being his own actions, despite the fact that he never does anything about it for the exact same reason he stops himself from killing Hal–stops him from seeing any nobility within himself.
Dirk’s response to all of the complicated ways he’s been hurt in trying to manage the Hal and Jake situation as ethically as possible by all of his friends is to internalize responsibility for absolutely all of it. It never even crosses his mind to hold Jane or Jake or even Roxy accountable. Only his own self, and Hal as an extension of it.
It’s some pretty sad shit! Dirk conflates himself with Hal and views all of Hal’s actions as literally his own, despite the fact that they were carried out without Dirk’s agency of desire. And much of the fandom has taken the worst that Dirk has to say about himself at face value, in a way that simply hasn’t happened for…say…what Jake says about himself after the retcon.
So it’s a good thing, then, that Jake ultimately reciprocates Dirk’s feelings…and has a completely different view of Dirk than the one Dirk thinks he has.
How does Jake’s view of Dirk intersect with Dirk’s desire to live up to Dave’s image? And might it help resolve Dirk’s existential crisis of self-loathing?
If you like my writing and have a buck to spare, you could also really help me out by enabling me to focus on putting more of this content out there through pledging on Patreon. Doing so will also give you access to my private community of enthusiasts trying to advance new and interesting readings of this wonderful property.
[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!]
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
If you like my writing and have a buck to spare, you could also really help me out by enabling me to focus on putting more of this content out there through pledging on Patreon. Doing so will also give you access to my private community of enthusiasts trying to advance new and interesting readings of this wonderful property.
Flying through Storytelling 