Most of the people who share my sentiment on this issue are also lesbians or wlw mso no, it’s not inherent to their being lesbians. I don’t even think “you guys” are being assholes on purpose.
I think Dirkcourse is kind of innately vicious and people respond hyperaggressively to having it questioned, and that’s resulted in people literally calling me a geek and making fun of me for it, and many of those people have been wlw. I think that’s an issue when I, a queer mlm, is talking about an intensely personal mlm narrative.
I also think calling people geeks in response to talking about a canon we all love is just kind of innately childish and petty? You’ll notice I haven’t been doing it.
dude removing anything about this dirk discourse but when you called out people for making fun of you which, sure can be petty but w/e, using in your own words have responded to all this discourse with a level of seriousness and pa-agro thats honestly pretty damn wild. but you specifically named wlw for this. like, you didnt say followers of popular bloggers, or “anti-soft dirk fans” or some shit, you said you’re being victimized specifically by wlw. which isnt true at fucking all i can tell you, the wlw hivemind is not all poking fun at you for this and its not like every single person calling you “geeks” is a wlw.
i can get your passion about a narrative that resonates with you but you’ve been incredibly unreceptive to anything else people have been saying, and instead writing long exhausting essays about “the homophobia inherent in not liking soft dirk and thinking hes an asshole” (which i will NOT get into, you cannot PAY me to touch that shit or read another goddamn essay) and then accusing people who disagree with you of not listening. it’s exhausting trying to have a discussion with you or even watching others talk to you. so yeah, people are making fun of you- it’s too tiring to try to talk to someone who doesn’t listen.
Yeah, fair enough, that was poor wording on my part then. I’m not under the impression a wlw hivemind is out to get me here–again, most of the people I know sharing my frustration are wlw–but if I came off as though I was levying that accusation then I’m genuinely sorry about it. Thanks for letting me know.
That said, no one but swamp-wizard has actually talked to me about this stuff, and if he’s been finding my rhetorical approach exhausting he hasn’t let me know about it. I don’t do this on purpose. This is, as you say, something I’m passionate about–and it also happens to be one of the most complicated and tangled areas of the comic, so I don’t really HAVE another way to express this stuff easily than…putting into words. In order. Which leads to long essays.
Everyone else OPENED in response to me broaching the subject by making fun of me, and only ramped up the intensity until you, just now. I’ve been trying my hardest to be genuine and earnest about this, and I am not trying to be an asshole but it is emotionally exhausting. So yeah I was a bit too snippy about one point and mislabeled the audience I’m perceiving as attacking me somewhat, not even over the Dirkcourse stuff but over personal writing I wrote for fun. So yeah, my bad on the terminology.
As for the rest, idk, not much else to say. This all just makes me feel sad and hopeless so I’m pretty much done engaging with you. Hopefully swamp is actually approaching this in good faith and is interested in talking about it!
I’d rather not talk to the rest of you at all if your response is simply “too much work, easier to make fun of you for being a furry.” This isn’t you guys being “good progressives”, either.
I’m not trying to vague here cause god knows I hate vagueing but I want to weigh in on the current dirkcourse so here’s this. it’s addressed at all the of the dirk tag and current discourse going around.
(for reference in this post I am defining soft dirk as a dirk who has the narrative/artistic focus more on his softer or gentler traits, his love for his friends or his desperate crush on jake english, instead of his manipulative tendencies or his facade of assholishness or his need to try and be stoic 24/7. it dwells more on his intense feelings for other people and self-sacrificing over perceived elitism or snide condescension, both of which are traits that I feel dirk only plays up as part of his “coolguy” persona. the appearance part is mostly unrelated aside from some stuff about hypermasculinity we’ll get into in a second)
anyway if it’s longtime fandom cred we’re going for, here’s my experience, as someone who’s read homestuck since 2010:
it was impossible to escape abuser dirk.
people posted shit in the dirk and dirkjake tags on the daily reminding you that if you didn’t “acknowledge” how abusive their relationship was, you were an apologist. trying to counter this argument got you angry posts from various people in the group perpetuating that. you got called an apologist. accused of shouting over survivors. in the rare cases that survivors spoke up and asked to please stop getting called apologist for shipping something fucking fictional between teenagers, they were told to stop shouting over minors. they were told they needed to stop defining their lives by their abuse. they were asked why they hadn’t grown up and gotten over it. they had campaigns and crusades and mocking group circlejerks going after them for expressing a view of dirk that didn’t align with popular fanon.
I wouldn’t say this is the popular reading of dirk anymore. but the only reason I’d say that’s true is because the people driving this, the people making sure everyone knew abuser dirk was “canon,” aren’t into homestuck much anymore, aside from one or two of them. but you have to understand, this shit was inescapable. big names in the fandom lexicon, like shelby, treated dirk’s abusiveness as an obvious fact. you couldn’t write dirk meta without either dancing franticallly around the subject or just disclaiming it at the beginning with “I know dirk is an abuser,” even if you didn’t agree with it. if you didn’t do these things, you were guaranteed asks and condescending vague posts or callouts about you disagreeing.
and for that matter, the idea that it’s completely gone away isn’t even true. landofsomethingsomething didn’t even get into homestuck until last year and didn’t start writing fic until post act 7 and still got an ask demanding why she shipped dirkjake, couldn’t she see how unhealthy and bad it was? didn’t she care about the opinions of survivors?
all of this is without touching on how big masculine semi-wolverine dirk was the more popular version in fanart (especially in het, but also in slash) and how usually he looked like a miniature bro, often older than the other characters. this is without talking about how people deliberately read in the worst to everything he said, pointing to his “let’s go raiding” line with jake and shouting about how manipulative that was or him breaking up with jake as proof he was trying to force jake to hook back up with him. this is without touching on how the phrase “strider manpain” became a blanket mocking phrase to make fun of anybody who cared about dirk or dave’s feelings – complete with mocking anybody who thought dave’s selfie shit was a semi-mental breakdown (which it was) or that dirk sitting on the edge of the roof was him contemplating suicide (which it sort of was, but to be technical, it was more suicide-plus-murder).
artists left homestuck fandom because the discourse wore them out. several artists I personally FOLLOW deleted most of their dirkjake content because they didn’t want to deal with the discourse anymore and they were tired of being called apologist. one artist made a misstep with some of their art and got so bombarded by asks calling them an abuse apologist and rape supporter that they pretty much quit tumblr for weeks. several dirkjakes I know have expressed that during the 2011-2014 (or so, it depends) era they were outright afraid to participate in the fandom. even most of the popular dirkjake content producers (who I’m sure are on the list of “soft dirks”) bought into the dialogue that dirk was abusive. that’s without getting into how dudebros kicked it up, how dudebros talked about that andrew hussie only wrote dirkjake to mock slashers and “prove” to them that slash between two random dudes could never work. that’s without talking about how dudebros figured dirk, such a violent person, could only have black feelings for jake. that’s without talking about how dirk/uu people routinely either gave dirkjakes the runaround for “denying abuse” or talked about how dirk, as a gay dude, was OBVIOUSLY too hardcore and too kinky for a gentle cinnamon roll like jake. (and the “cinnamon roll jake” discourse is something I could write about 5 more posts about.)
it was inescapable.
look, I know fandom is gigantic and what you see depends on the following you curate, but keep in mind that applies both ways. just because you never saw it doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. I’m sure there were corners of fandom where this dialogue wasn’t mainstream and softboy dirk was. but in a lot of the fandom, abusive hypermasculine wolverine sideburns dirk was the only thing we saw. asshole dirk was all we could find because if you didn’t do asshole dirk, you were Problematic.
@swamp-wizard@kidgecko that’s p much it i either can’t remember or am blocked by everyone else.
Allow me to clarify the situation with Soft dirks and this whole discourse because a lot of you are profoundly misunderstanding it in your responses and I’m pretty tired of it.
None of this is about making Dirk “soft” or “cute” and you don’t have a fucking clue what’s going on if you think otherwise. It’s not about weabooifying Dirk and stripping him of all flaws, either.
Dirk still has severe issues in the “Soft Dirk” reading you’re claiming is about woobifying him. Dirk is still mentally ill, Dirk’s mistakes still hurt people (often WITHOUT his say in the matter which is the critical difference y’all keep ignoring), Dirk is still prone to hyper-isolating and closing himself off in unhealthy ways.
This isn’t about making Dirk a hot anime boy, either! It has nothing the fuck to do with how pretty he is, the aesthetics of this branch of fanon are thoroughly secondary. I would personally fucking love greasy troll dissasociating Dirk if it’s your flavor, I want every brand of Dirk under the sun.
Where you lose me is making Dirk malicious and elitist, superior-minded and holding friends to high standards. You lose me there because that Dirk doesn’t fucking exist in the story and he’s a fake lump of bullshit you assembled out of stray pieces of the AR and a couple of Brain Ghost Dirk lines–who is JAKE’S BRAIN, not Dirk himself.
(You also lose me at the implication Dirk isn’t desperately, irreplaceably in love with Jake and vice versa which is well established and executed in the canon story we all claim to be fans of but w.e, I wouldn’t mind Dirkjohn if fandom at large actually understood and valued Dirkjake for what it is, a ship isn’t the problem here.)
The fucking perfect example of this is someone responding to the asshole STEM Dirk thing by saying Jade wouldn’t have been an asshole about STEM stuff because she would “tutor her friends” instead. You know who tutors his friends in the goddamn story we’re talking about?
THIS is what this fandom divide is, and this is why people are pissed about this asshole iteration of Dirk in fanon. It’s so prominent it drowns out the fandom’s ability to perceive Dirk as he ACTUALLY EXISTS IN THE COMIC, and the fact that it’s so pervasive is a problem for mlm people like me whether it’s convenient to your view or not.
And yeah, you’re all being fucking assholes trying to reduce all of that to just people wanting Dirk to be a Sexy Pure Woobie. That’s not what anyone in this section of the culture is going for, and it’s reductive and boring to imply it is.
People in your corner have literally called me–an mlm who relates deeply to Dirkjake as a queer narrative and hopes only that other queer mlm teens can find it as empowering as I do myself– names like this is fucking highschool for trying to point out that maybe this overly harsh interpretation of Dirk isn’t sourced in the canon but in a bunch of hyper-moralizing that self-generated years ago and mixed with a bunch of homophobic sentiment.
Yes, that is villainizing. Yes, that is homophobia. The implications here are that Dirk is malicious and/or demanding (and thus a more acceptable target for violence and mockery, like with that particular piece of art where Jake likens him to a trash can and symbolically sets him on fire for example).
The implications here are ALSO that Dirk is disattached enough from his emotions that he would be untouched by being treated cruelly or with mockery anyway. This literally leads to dehumanizing a gay character by removing his emotions and desire for acceptance from his peers, which are oh…just the core elements his entire character arc revolves around.
Not even to get into how detrimental the whole air is to Dirkjake as one of the canon ships in the comic, or the perception of Hussie’s handling of lgbt relationships at large.
I’m tagging every single person who’s been contributing to this particular train of discourse. Please for the love of god if you have a retort to this just reblog it or send me an ask. Don’t vague me. Don’t come back with another post out of nowhere that clearly answers sentiments I’ve been spreading but doesn’t give me an opening to respond.
@ me or something I’m right here and perfectly willing to have a conversation and even if I HAD the follower count to sic on anyone I don’t think anyone is being fundamentally cruel or Problematic here, that just plain old is not where I’m coming from. What on earth do you have to lose?
Either have a conversation with me about this like I’ve been begging for for months or do me a favor and stop talking over a queer dude about this depiction of queer dudes and mlm ships in fanon. ESPECIALLY if you’re wlw. I have a niche in this fandom too, and I don’t think it’s too much to ask that it be respected.
@swamp-wizard@kidgecko there’s a bunch of other people but I either don’t remember their names right or they have different mains or w.e cause I can’t @ them. Maybe I’m blocked by a few? Who the hell knows.
Wish I knew how to get this to the rest of the people I’ve interacted with about this. Information seems to get around in this circle of fandom so do me a favor and spread it around, I’m interested in hearing from everyone, including the people who have called me a geek. I really don’t care, I just want the conversation around Dirk in this fandom to evolve.
Hoping to hear from you. I’m going to be reblogging posts from other people in this Dirk movement that will shed additional light on where we’re coming from. Maybe you will actually read them, I hope?
i literally sent you like 20 examples of dirk (yes dirk, not brain ghost dirk or AR) being elitist, rude, and holding his friends to high standards. just because you read those lines differently doesnt mean im villainizing his character or pretending that hes the AR, or something. youre the one whose not having a conversation because talking to you is like talking to a brick wall because apparently you think that the brobot was a romantic gesture of pure gay love and refuse to hear otherwise so thats why im not bothering to have a *~formal argument~* with you and instead making posts about how ridiculous this situation is. sorry for calling dirk a STEM major. i mean he is one and im not actually sorry, but
also weird of you to say “stop speaking over qu**r MLM” when keegan himself is a gay trans dude. hes right there. this has nothing to do with you being a gay man and everything to do with you being a loser who thinks jake turning into a werewolf and knotting dirk is the greatest love story of all time
Yeah I just answered you debunking all that stuff, I can only respond so fast dude. I’m not hardheaded about this, I’ve just spent a ton of time going over the canon and there is a story surrounding not just Dirk but all the Alphas that is as intricate as, say, Vriska and Terezi’s–and it’s going ignored in favor of an established narrative.
And you’ll note I said especially. Swamp-wizard’s been the only person in this circle who’s been at least consistently talking to me about this stuff, though I haven’t heard his responses to all my arguments. I have no beef with him currently–even if he disagrees with me ultimately, he’s open to having a conversation. You’ll note though that there’s plenty of wlw calling me a geek and making fun of me over this, and yeah, I think that’s an issue.
Not really gonna bother answering that boring petty stuff about the werewolf shit. Yeah I think furries are hot and making fun of them isn’t progressive or new lmao, you’re not going to embarrass me.
theres no evidence of dirk being an asshole. None. Theres no evidence of dirk being an asshole.
he literally sent a robot to beat up his crush and knocked him out cold and we all know how jake feels about that (extremely uncomfortable a la aranea and crockercorp jane’s treatment of him)
Oh good, we’re finally having a conversation.
I’ve written essays extensively deconstructing these points, so let me do it again here in resume. I cover most of this in the single essay I did most recently but I also cover tons of it with more nuance across the other essays I’ve written on both Dirk and Jake, so I’ll post the Dirk ones here and hyperlink the rest of this with the latest one to back up my points.
And Jake’s final word on the Brobot is that he thinks it’s EXCITING, not uncomfortable, and it’s something he says in confidence to Jane as opposed to when he’s engaging in social back and forth with the AR. It’s also something Jake appreciates about Dirk, because he goes on to prove he loves Dirk specifically as someone he believes in to keep him safe.
Even so, the Brobot is a fuck up, but it’s not DIRK’S fuck up–it’s a MUTUAL fuck up. Dirk didn’t get the idea that Jake would like going on a tough, challenging adventure from nowhere–it’s all Jake would ever talk about. If Dirk is this ruthless mastermind invested in training his friends to be ready, then why isn’t Jane’s guardian robot designed to train her?
Hey check it out it’s almost like you’ve got all these ideas in your head about who Dirk is that have everything to do with the fandom narrative around him and nothing to do with the comic! And it’s almost like assigning Dirk all this outsize responsibility and agency reduces the complexity of what Roxy, Jane, Jake and the AR all do to make matters more complicated and hurtful for all of them!
It’s almost like that’s exactly what I’m talking about 😀
Feel free to retort these points, since I am as always invested in making sure I’m actually right in reading the canon this way. If you can prove I’m inherently misguided about this I’ll happily recant every position.
Otherwise, this fandom narrative is subsuming one of the most heroic and positive depictions of gay romance and gay coming of age heroes ever put to fiction, and it’d be a good idea for a queer centric community to reconsider it’s approach. Or at least get the chance to.
you know it’s possible for dirk strider to be a sweet, sensitive boy who cares about and loves his friends more than anything and also kind of a huge asshole
Yes, which as you noted, Vriska pulls off. Ditto Terezi. If fandom didn’t respond to Dirkjake the way they do to Vrisrezi, I’d be fine with it so long as the Dirk and Jake they weren’t responding to were the ones actually depicted in canon.
But it’s not.
Point me to like a single time in the canon Dirk ever acts like a huge asshole. I’ll wait. It doesn’t exist, but I’ll wait anyway, and when you inevitably pull something from Brain Ghost Dirk or AR I’ll explain how Dirk’s agency is not theirs and their words are not words that Dirk himself would say.
This would be way less of a problem if Dirkjake was given the weight in the fandom it deserves–but hey, it doesn’t. It is easily and by far the most overlooked and misunderstood canon ship, and all of the reasons why tie back to Dirkcourse.
This image of Dirk being the fandom dominant one hurts mlm and people who could draw a much clearer and more empowering and positive narrative from Dirkjake by obfuscating and confusing their perceptions of it. That’s a problem, in my view, and I don’t really think I’m out of line in speaking out about it.
I think there is one point where Dirk does act like an asshole, actually, although it’s incredibly brief.
Remember that at one point in the story, he considers destroying an independent, sentient copy of himself in what would be an act of outright murder.
He doesn’t do it, of course, and that’s what makes his character so good. He doesn’t kill the AR, but he could have, and easily. He actively chooses the path of not murdering someone who is a nuisance, a thorn in his side, and an imperfect reflection of himself. That choice is what makes him interesting. It’s what makes him not Bro Strider. It’s what makes him a good person.
It’s so telling of Dirk’s character that the only person he’s really capable of being a true asshole to is himself.
you know it’s possible for dirk strider to be a sweet, sensitive boy who cares about and loves his friends more than anything and also kind of a huge asshole
Yes, which as you noted, Vriska pulls off. Ditto Terezi. If fandom didn’t respond to Dirkjake the way they do to Vrisrezi, I’d be fine with it so long as the Dirk and Jake they weren’t responding to were the ones actually depicted in canon.
But it’s not.
Point me to like a single time in the canon Dirk ever acts like a huge asshole. I’ll wait. It doesn’t exist, but I’ll wait anyway, and when you inevitably pull something from Brain Ghost Dirk or AR I’ll explain how Dirk’s agency is not theirs and their words are not words that Dirk himself would say.
This would be way less of a problem if Dirkjake was given the weight in the fandom it deserves–but hey, it doesn’t. It is easily and by far the most overlooked and misunderstood canon ship, and all of the reasons why tie back to Dirkcourse.
This image of Dirk being the fandom dominant one hurts mlm and people who could draw a much clearer and more empowering and positive narrative from Dirkjake by obfuscating and confusing their perceptions of it. That’s a problem, in my view, and I don’t really think I’m out of line in speaking out about it.
dude you are projecting a whole fuckin bunch of fandom shit i never said onto me
like the idea i have to “prove” dirk is an asshole is absurd on its face because that’s a subjective value judgement about a person and not like. a thing you can ‘prove’ with cited evidence
dirk strider is the kind of guy who if i met him. i would think he was interesting but also kind of a huge asshole. you don’t feel the same way. there’s nothing for either of us to ‘prove’ here
it’s not that deep
The issue being: The image of Dirk as a huge asshole is not only the dominant one, but also one that does active harm to his depiction in fanon and people’s understanding and enjoyment of Dirkjake.
Every time I reblog one of these posts with the point that fandom’s ideas of Dirk aren’t based in the actual story Dirk that exists in the story of Homestuck, it gets taken personally. I’m not projecting fandom shit you never said onto you.
I’m pointing out all of these depictions of Dirk exist within the context of said fandom shit and reinforce it, and reinforcing it is a detriment to mlm people and to the fandom right now, frankly.
If you don’t want to get into Dirkcourse, fine. But don’t drop a Hot Take backing up this massive fandom culture problem and then act shocked when I approach it. If this doesn’t matter to you then great but it does matter to me and I want to make things better, both for myself as an mlm and for other teen mlms who could benefit from Dirk and Dirkjake like I did.
@swamp-wizard@kidgecko that’s p much it i either can’t remember or am blocked by everyone else.
Allow me to clarify the situation with Soft dirks and this whole discourse because a lot of you are profoundly misunderstanding it in your responses and I’m pretty tired of it.
None of this is about making Dirk “soft” or “cute” and you don’t have a fucking clue what’s going on if you think otherwise. It’s not about weabooifying Dirk and stripping him of all flaws, either.
Dirk still has severe issues in the “Soft Dirk” reading you’re claiming is about woobifying him. Dirk is still mentally ill, Dirk’s mistakes still hurt people (often WITHOUT his say in the matter which is the critical difference y’all keep ignoring), Dirk is still prone to hyper-isolating and closing himself off in unhealthy ways.
This isn’t about making Dirk a hot anime boy, either! It has nothing the fuck to do with how pretty he is, the aesthetics of this branch of fanon are thoroughly secondary. I would personally fucking love greasy troll dissasociating Dirk if it’s your flavor, I want every brand of Dirk under the sun.
Where you lose me is making Dirk malicious and elitist, superior-minded and holding friends to high standards. You lose me there because that Dirk doesn’t fucking exist in the story and he’s a fake lump of bullshit you assembled out of stray pieces of the AR and a couple of Brain Ghost Dirk lines–who is JAKE’S BRAIN, not Dirk himself.
(You also lose me at the implication Dirk isn’t desperately, irreplaceably in love with Jake and vice versa which is well established and executed in the canon story we all claim to be fans of but w.e, I wouldn’t mind Dirkjohn if fandom at large actually understood and valued Dirkjake for what it is, a ship isn’t the problem here.)
The fucking perfect example of this is someone responding to the asshole STEM Dirk thing by saying Jade wouldn’t have been an asshole about STEM stuff because she would “tutor her friends” instead. You know who tutors his friends in the goddamn story we’re talking about?
THIS is what this fandom divide is, and this is why people are pissed about this asshole iteration of Dirk in fanon. It’s so prominent it drowns out the fandom’s ability to perceive Dirk as he ACTUALLY EXISTS IN THE COMIC, and the fact that it’s so pervasive is a problem for mlm people like me whether it’s convenient to your view or not.
And yeah, you’re all being fucking assholes trying to reduce all of that to just people wanting Dirk to be a Sexy Pure Woobie. That’s not what anyone in this section of the culture is going for, and it’s reductive and boring to imply it is.
People in your corner have literally called me–an mlm who relates deeply to Dirkjake as a queer narrative and hopes only that other queer mlm teens can find it as empowering as I do myself– names like this is fucking highschool for trying to point out that maybe this overly harsh interpretation of Dirk isn’t sourced in the canon but in a bunch of hyper-moralizing that self-generated years ago and mixed with a bunch of homophobic sentiment.
Yes, that is villainizing. Yes, that is homophobia. The implications here are that Dirk is malicious and/or demanding (and thus a more acceptable target for violence and mockery, like with that particular piece of art where Jake likens him to a trash can and symbolically sets him on fire for example).
The implications here are ALSO that Dirk is disattached enough from his emotions that he would be untouched by being treated cruelly or with mockery anyway. This literally leads to dehumanizing a gay character by removing his emotions and desire for acceptance from his peers, which are oh…just the core elements his entire character arc revolves around.
Not even to get into how detrimental the whole air is to Dirkjake as one of the canon ships in the comic, or the perception of Hussie’s handling of lgbt relationships at large.
I’m tagging every single person who’s been contributing to this particular train of discourse. Please for the love of god if you have a retort to this just reblog it or send me an ask. Don’t vague me. Don’t come back with another post out of nowhere that clearly answers sentiments I’ve been spreading but doesn’t give me an opening to respond.
@ me or something I’m right here and perfectly willing to have a conversation and even if I HAD the follower count to sic on anyone I don’t think anyone is being fundamentally cruel or Problematic here, that just plain old is not where I’m coming from. What on earth do you have to lose?
Either have a conversation with me about this like I’ve been begging for for months or do me a favor and stop talking over a queer dude about this depiction of queer dudes and mlm ships in fanon. ESPECIALLY if you’re wlw. I have a niche in this fandom too, and I don’t think it’s too much to ask that it be respected.
@swamp-wizard@kidgecko there’s a bunch of other people but I either don’t remember their names right or they have different mains or w.e cause I can’t @ them. Maybe I’m blocked by a few? Who the hell knows.
Wish I knew how to get this to the rest of the people I’ve interacted with about this. Information seems to get around in this circle of fandom so do me a favor and spread it around, I’m interested in hearing from everyone, including the people who have called me a geek. I really don’t care, I just want the conversation around Dirk in this fandom to evolve.
Hoping to hear from you. I’m going to be reblogging posts from other people in this Dirk movement that will shed additional light on where we’re coming from. Maybe you will actually read them, I hope?
ok, i was gonna respond to this post directly but i cant because arc has apparently blocked me lol, so ill paste what i wrote here
i mean ive been active in this fandom since 2011, LONG before dirk
was even a character (and, more tangentially, when fandom by and large
liked bro and the reading of his treatment of dave as abuse didnt have
much traction), ive been on board for as long as dirk strider has been
there, and “demonization”…. has never, ever been the majority fandom
opinion of his character
because people LOVE striders! people have
loved striders for years. people love strider manpain. negative
opinions of the striders have always been very much in the
minority, and while dirk gets it a hell of a lot worse than dave he is
still generally pretty well liked. dave gets more love and fan-content
than any of the betas and dirk is neck-and-neck with roxy for the
alphas. the reading of dirk as a sexual predator is pretty soundly
rooted in homophobic sentiment about gay men but its not a very popular
reading
and even back at the beginning of act 6, back when people
only called him d or di or bro, back when people jumped the gun and
wrote fanfiction where his name was “dick” and then had to backtrack and
edit a couple months later, people were making soft dirk fic and art.
and i know this bc that was the time i was MOST involved with homestuck
fandom and most actively consuming content. i tracked the brojake tag,
back when it was called that. there were fics and art about dirk being
sad and tender and pining hopelessly after jake in the months between
the start of act 6 and dirks formal introduction. and people continued
to produce fics and art about dirk being sad and pining for years, even
and especially after they broke up. there has literally never been a
shortage of soft dirk content for as long as hes been a character! soft
dirk has always been fanon!
because fandom is always very kind to male characters,
especially when theyre young, especially when theyre conventionally
attractive, especially when theyre white (or, in the case of homestuck
characters, easily read that way). look how many people still go to bat
to defend eridan or gamzees character even though theyre UNQUESTIONABLY
evil/abusive/bigoted. i dont want to like, understate the fact that
people do read dirk as sexually predatory specifically because
hes gay and i dont want to understate how fucking heinous that
interpretation is, but its never, ever been fanon. soft dirk has pretty
much always been the norm
I like literally couldn’t care less about the tumblr conflict here but I will say I’m genuinely happy for you if that was your experience of Dirk in fanon–but it is in no way objective, nor an accurate representation of my own in Tumblr fandom space as a teenage lgbt dude. I’ve been here since 2010, and I’ve been an active member of the fandom for the entirety of that time, so here’s my experience:
Dirk discourse ran artists I liked out of this fandom. Dirk discourse made me doubt myself and made me feel shitty for relating to Dirk AND Jake while I was figuring out my feelings while falling for my best friend, and Dirk discourse ruined my ability to coherently understand the canon for YEARS–and not just where Dirk was involved but with all the Alphas.
Homestuck fandom was an absolutely massive space back during the height of Dirkcourse, so it’s entirely possible we just ran in different circles and saw different experiences of the fandom. To call Dirk’s demonization is palpably absurd to me though, because my experience was that that reading of Dirk fucking dominated.
And even among people who LIKED Dirk, it still seeps in! The aftereffects of that reading of Dirk still have a MASSIVE effect on how he’s read in fandom TODAY.
Dirk is demonstrably one of the sweetest kids, he has nothing but kind words for Jake when he talks to him, thinks the world of Roxy (and tells her so) even AS SHE SEXUALLY HARASSES HER, and never thinks a single lousy thought about Jane either other than “yo uh maybe you should be less skeptical” which, you know, he knows how miserable it makes Roxy so he kind of has a point.
There is no part of the Dirk Strider canon experience that squares with Dirk calling people idiots or being an elitist prick about literally anything. Every Dirk that shows up acting that way in fandom is a bizarre conglomerate of AR and Bro wearing Dirk’s skin.
I get that this is a complex narrative but my experience living through fandom and growing up alongside these characters was NOT that people were genuinely trying to understand it, but that moral purity tumblr politics chose an interpretation of events and largely ran with it, severely harming the fandoms’ perception of the absolutely critical nuances in the comic.
Which is how we now have people believing Dirk is interested in controlling his friends (give me one section of the comic where this happens), or that Jake wasn’t in love with him and only dated him out of obligation, or that Dirk is hypercritical and holds his friends to high standards(again name a single time)…Dirk does literally none of these things. He has the potential to, sure. And chooses not to deliver on it every time.
It’s why people now say you can only ship Dirkjake once Dirk “realizes he was abusive” or “figures out how he hurt his friends” when in reality that’s something all of the Alphas needed to learn, and Dirk is really not a unique
And that’s been my experience of the fandom for as long as Dirk’s been a part of it, whatever your experiences have been. Decide to go about this however you want, but please don’t revise all of fandom history to put yourself on the moral high ground here–the reality you are describing is not the reality for everyone, even if it’s real for you.
I literally told you like yesterday I’m not in LOVE with soft Dirk but consider it a welcome reprieve from Basically Bro Dirk, and that’s pretty much true. The reason people are rejecting your take on this so harshly seems to have nothing to do with people making Dirk “ugly” and everything to do with making Dirk something that he canonically is not: An asshole.
I’m not really speaking for arc or anyone else who “does” soft dirk here, just speaking as a dude who has enjoyed the movement quite a lot and feels he has a sense of where it’s coming from in answer to most fanon.
anyway your experience of dirk fanon is not objective, mine was mostly negative, whatever you want to believe Dirkcourse was and is a continual problem that makes it actively harder for people to understand fanon. As for all this? I think you’re a legit good guy and that some overly bity hot-take meme posts have gotten things out of hand.
Also trying to turn this into a public tumblr witch hunt–and whether you meant it to or not there’s a real risk that’s what this is gonna be when you start calling people homophobic for how they personally use the word queer–is legit disgusting and I hope you reconsider the course of action quickly.
Feel free to hit me up if you want to talk about this in private or something dude. I’m happy to try to help if I’m able, but I think you’re straight up in the wrong about this.
1) fanon is large, it contains multitudes
2) but yes, some ideas and interpretations and trends are far more popular than others
3) different people are going to have different reactions to characters, and to fanon interpretations of characters, and there’s nothing wrong with that
4) in my own interpretation (in this fandom since 2013, always a multishipper never much of a stan, have recently whittled down my fandom consumption to a little analysis-heavy, dirk-heavy corner and that’s been a positive decision): all of these fanon interpretations can easily be about the same fanon character
like, emotionally relatable strider manpain centred likeable ultimately good-natured (but incredibly self-destructive) dirk, single initial that launched a thousand fanworks dirk, got-lots-of-lovin-in-fanfic dirk is also often angry, elitist, insufferable in mannerism, stemlordy, robot-that-needed-to-be-taught-to-love, it’s-all-up-to-me-and-that-prompts-a-smile (remember that one?) dirk. in sum, those are two sides to the same fanon character interpretation, one i’ve seen in probably hundreds of fan works. it’s a flawed character interpretation in a lot of ways! it’s deserving of criticism from multiple angles! but it also describes a three-dimensional character who many fans clearly like, not a cardboard cutout Bad Gay or an indefensible monster.
5) it’s never been soft dirk vs. hard dirk, it’s been people who want to moralize the text through some really shallow analysis, and people who don’t. there have always been moralizers, there still are, and their main game is telling you which entirely fictional people are Morally Bad and should therefore be thrown in the dustbin. this is a dumb game! But in the Babby’s First Theory petri dish of tumblrstuck this dumb game gained a lot of clout and did a lot of damage. it led to very serious discussions about whether a fictional stylized fantasy relationship, which we know almost entirely from fictional online chat logs that aren’t even between the two people in it, is “objectively abusive.” that’s definitely an unanswerable question! and probably a bad one! but quite a few people took their answers to it very seriously, they harassed people who answered it differently, and they made people feel like actual shit. that’s terrible! and the terribleness of that isn’t negated by reminding everyone that fanon dirk actually did contain multitudes! fanon dirk always contained multitudes, fanon dirkscourse always contained garbage.
6) i have been lurking the dirkscourse corner of 2017 homestuck tumblr for months, not for popcorn reasons but because I actually like anaylsis of this character, i like reading everyone’s different interpretations, and I really like reading the secondary analysis where we pick apart fanon too. it’s fascinating! but it also seems like a lot of the very angry disagreements result from people talking past each other. people aren’t just disagreeing on their interpretation of this character, or on their moral analysis of this character’s motives. it seems like people are disagreeing most vehemently because they’re here for different reasons. they want different things out of this. they are doing this analysis for completely different purposes. of course they’re not seeing eye to eye!
7) more on that. if the question is “is dirk the fictional character abusive,” I think a nominally correct answer is “no,” but a much better answer is “that’s the wrong question.” I know folks really care about this and identify with these characters, but fictional characters aren’t real people and analyzing fiction (especially this fiction) from an in-universe perspective is the worst way to do the thing. this isn’t judge judy, we aren’t here to be rules lawyers. there is no such thing as “what actually happened” in dirk and jake’s relationship, or any other thing described in this webcomic. the correct response to someone saying “dirk is abusive!” isn’t “no he isn’t,” it’s “why are you running around trying to decide which fictional characters are 100% certified Abusive? according to who, you? what purpose could that possibly serve?”
8) i’m all for talking out our different interpretations of this fictional relationship, but let’s all remember that’s just what they are — interpretations. none of them are objectively correct. and you probably aren’t gaining or losing any morality points for favouring one over another.
9) i probably missed quite a few Significant Posts in today’s dustup, so if you’re going to tell me I’m not responding fully to (Thing) in (Dirkscoure Today Post #??)…you are probably right
10) larger societal currents have always been here, fandom trend currents have always been here. there has always been an element of assuming gay courtship is somehow more Active or Predatory or Corrupting than otherwise equivalent straight courtship (and that’s, yannow, garbage). there has always been an element of My Fanfic Boy Is Best Boy, Nothing Is Wrong With Him Ever (and that always leads to highly inaccurate fanon of a different stripe). here, these two currents probably collided a bunch to some rather strange ultimate effects. neither of these currents disappears because you mention the other one.
11) but seriously, can we please not moralize everything, for good or ill? can we all remember there are much more interesting things to do with fiction than trying to decide whether a character is a) A Bad Man, No Really, I Mean It This Time, b) Actually Not Culpable In Anything Ever And Always The Victim, or c) Always The Victim, but i mean the victim of Bad Fanon, like not just Incorrect Fanon but Morally Bad Fanon because that’s totally a thing, So Meta. can we all recognize that homophobia/mlm marginalization breathes life into both Predatory Gay and Perfect Fanfic Woobiepet stereotypes at the same time? can we agree that personal insults are probably never warranted in an argument about how we should interpret the interpretations of a webcomic character? can we deal with fiction as fiction, not as something we can Objectively Morally Analyze? can we please talk about something more interesting?
Okay I think that’s all of it. I expect strange reactions to this, probably.
So I fundamentally agree with all of this, for the record, and I think this is the most intelligent breakdown of the situation thus far.
Here’s what I think you’re missing.
Predatory Gay (or what we’re talking about right now, Kind of An Asshole) Dirk and Perfect Fanfic Woobiepet Dirk (as you refer to him, anyway–considering the fanwork movement I’m discussing here, I think that’s a reductive take and I’d kind of just call this brand of Dirk Canon Dirk) can both carry homophobic elements, sure.
But even swamp-wizard himself noted that any homophobia carried by Soft Dirk brand was minimal at best. I’m not making a claim that no one should ever engage with or produce Asshole Dirk content–though I’d be delighted if anyone pointed me to a single time he was an asshole in the comic the way fanfic commonly depicts him. (spoilers, I looked, it doesn’t exist).
But Dirkjake is by far the least recognized, least celebrated canonical ship in Homestuck, and this image of Dirk (and the complementary vagueness in perception of Jake, who is by turns viewed as a victim of Dirk’s or varying degrees of uninterested) is absolutely why.
Fanon produced an image of Dirk Strider and Jake English that simply isn’t real. You’re straight up incorrect in saying there’s “no ‘what actually happened’” in Dirk and Jake’s relationship, because the canon tracks a complex and nuanced series of events that lead to a specific, intentional artistic statement:
They’re in love, they help each other, they’re whole, valid, noble human beings.
This very argument is preposterous, and if you applied it to any other relationship in this canon you will immediately see why. No one is going to argue that there’s no “what actually happened” between Rose and Kanaya’s evolving relationship, or Vriska and Terezi’s mutually estranged and confused passion–without being rightfully laughed off.
I’m not arguing against the “Dirk is abusive” track because swamp-wizard isn’t claiming that, and neither do many of his associates. What I am arguing against is people taking some bizarre mix of AR, Bro, and the worst of Brain Ghost Dirk and humanizing it by jamming inside Dirk’s skin in fanon.
Meanwhile, AR–who is canonically emotionally manipulative and cruel–tends to be treated with much softer edges. The answer to the question of Dirk and Jake’s feelings for each other is, for much of the fandom, a great big Shrug, and the ambiguity to the perception of the fandom has nothing to do with Hussie’s writing and everything to do with the narrative fans themselves developed and imposed on it.
And Dirk? The Dirk Hussie wrote, the Dirk who is actually coherent and who’s motivations and actions are clear in every line of the comic and reflect all of the attention to detail and care that Hussie put into every other character, and who’s romance ties into his philosophical issues in parallel to Jake’s movie tropes?
Fandom treats that Dirk as though he doesn’t exist. He has been replaced with a weaboo jerkass who simply isn’t real, and to me as an mlm teenager who benefited greatly from Dirk and Jake’s romance until the Dirkcourse outright ruined my ability to perceive it for years, that’s infuriating.
That’s why I’m talking about this. I am not interested in moralizing or condemning anyone for their fanon depictions of Dirk–I just want the fandom to know them for what they are. Fanon. There is a rich vein of stories and characterization to tap into with Dirk and Jake, but fandom is broadly uninterested in it as opposed to…say…Davekat, largely because the fandom narrative around them has grown so muddled and imposing.
I’ve written plenty about this! I’ve deconstructed and reconstructed this story like four times over by now, and have YET to be answered by a single person giving me an actual reason why Dirk is actually an asshole in the canon. It’s a false projection people are so attached to they do not want to question it, and that would be fine in any other context except the one where that very projection is stifling a moving and empowering MLM narrative from being able to come into full cultural force.
You’ll have to explain to me if you feel my desire to change that dynamic–for my own sake, for the sake of other young queer MLMs, and for WP’s sake since god knows they’ve been hurt by this in terms of PR and brand perception worse than anyone–is somehow equivalent to trying to moralize about in-universe depictions of a character.
If that was the issue, this wouldn’t bother me. I’d regret that Hussie wrote a relationship narrative that isn’t too resonant or empowering for LGBT dudes and move on. But that’s not what’s happened, and what has happened is infuriating and tragic. Especially when it’s one of many elements contributing to this fandom’s hypercritical perception of Andrew Hussie himself, and the currently understood ending of Homestuck.
I don’t think I’m out of line in saying so, and if you want to convince me I should stop, I’m going to need a stronger argument.
you know it’s possible for dirk strider to be a sweet, sensitive boy who cares about and loves his friends more than anything and also kind of a huge asshole
Yes, which as you noted, Vriska pulls off. Ditto Terezi. If fandom didn’t respond to Dirkjake the way they do to Vrisrezi, I’d be fine with it so long as the Dirk and Jake they weren’t responding to were the ones actually depicted in canon.
But it’s not.
Point me to like a single time in the canon Dirk ever acts like a huge asshole. I’ll wait. It doesn’t exist, but I’ll wait anyway, and when you inevitably pull something from Brain Ghost Dirk or AR I’ll explain how Dirk’s agency is not theirs and their words are not words that Dirk himself would say.
This would be way less of a problem if Dirkjake was given the weight in the fandom it deserves–but hey, it doesn’t. It is easily and by far the most overlooked and misunderstood canon ship, and all of the reasons why tie back to Dirkcourse.
This image of Dirk being the fandom dominant one hurts mlm and people who could draw a much clearer and more empowering and positive narrative from Dirkjake by obfuscating and confusing their perceptions of it. That’s a problem, in my view, and I don’t really think I’m out of line in speaking out about it.
i feel like all of the discourse over “the ar is responsible for actions x y and z whereas dirk is only responsible for actions a b and c” is like. missing the point in a really big way
like its useful to a certain extent and hussie does take the effort to distinguish between their voices – and if youre going to analyze either of them you should know how they interact with each other – but a lot of yall tend to take it to the conclusion that “no, lil hal is a cruel abuser and dirk is just a soft boy who wouldnt do anything wrong”
the point of lil hal – and bro, to a lesser extent – is to show what dirk is capable of. lil hal is crueler and less forgiving than dirk but those inclinations towards abusive behavior dont come out of nowhere. and you see that pretty clearly laid out in dirk and lil hals last pesterlog (which takes place on the rooftop of a skyscraper and thats not a coincidence)
hussie draws these parallels deliberately, over and over again. like its not an accident or a fault of not reading closely enough that readers get dirk and lil hals actions confused, hussie did that on purpose. its neither the first nor the last time he uses alternate selves to explore multiple facets of a character (dave becoming much more somber, introspective and insecure after spending months in a doomed timeline and becoming davesprite; vriska becoming soft and loving and emotionally open after entering the afterlife and being freed from a hostile environment). lil hal and bro are components of dirks Ultimate Self and you really can not conduct an efficient analysis of his character if you brush them off as totally separate people, instead of the same guy under different circumstances
I feel like there’s p much no way this doesn’t reflect on my writing on some level, so I feel pretty justified chiming in:
I feel this take is also simplistic. I don’t consider AR and Dirk wholly different people–that’s exactly why AR knows how to hurt Dirk, and it’s also why Dirk is so bothered by seeing himself in the AR. They’re the same guy, obviously.
But the thing to take away from that isn’t necessarily “Dirk is equitable to all of his splinters in all situations, and some people’s Ultimate Selves are inherently worse than others’ and so they are always doomed to being Kind Of Shitty People.” They’re also the same guy who makes starkly different choices, and make those choices for different reasons.
I think it’s important that Dirk has the potential to be like the AR, absolutely. I also think it’s important to note that he chooses not to be. Just like it’s important neither of them are as evil as Bro, for that matter. Context, circumstance, power and agency and the reasons why these kids make the decisions they make–all of that matters, too. If it was just about who you are on the Ultimate Self level then agency doesn’t even exist in Homestuck’s story, does it?
Dirk’s narrative matters because he sees the potential in his ultimate self and chooses to respond to it in a completely unique way: By destroying it. By choosing to become something different. He manages to do it by relying on his connections, his bonds with his friends, backing up the entire narrative of all of Homestuck and it’s focus on the themes of reaching higher levels of understanding of the world and yourself…through connections to other people.
That’s what makes Caliborn and Gamzee the true antagonists. That’s what they don’t do–bond and connect emotionally to others. Dirk does this. Dirk does this extremely hard forever, and I think that’s worth celebrating about him.
It’s obviously true that the AR tells us something about Core Dirk, but I don’t think anyone would argue that. I also don’t think anyone would argue that Jadesprite is Literally Exactly The Same as Jade, or that Davesprite would’ve jumped into a relationship with Karkat with open arms, either.
You can read Dirk as someone with the innate potential for abuse and know that it’s a core facet of his character…and still see that the decisions he makes in his Alpha self iteration are very different. This Dirk makes different choices, and those choices are worth considering as much as the AR’s.
You’re right that it’s not a mistake that the fandom gets confused about who says what with regards to the AR, by the way. But there’s a different reason to that than They’re Exactly The Same. The fandom gets them confused because–as Dirk himself points out–the AR deliberately misrepresents himself as Dirk and blurs the line between their identities.
There’s a heroic narrative here that is being buried under having a simplistic, borderline villainizing reading of the only gay dude in Homestuck, and I think one can point that out without trying to hide the fact that that gay dude’s struggles center largely around being confronted with and terrified by his own potential for abuse and manipulation. The two readings are congruent.
I don’t really think the reading that allows people to make a joke and a butt monkey out of the one gay dude in Homestuck is the more nuanced and meaningful one, frankly.
I think it’s lazy–not just for what it does for Dirk when the actual canon is clearly going for something different-but also for what it does to Jake, who gets painted as a victim without agency or thought when he’s really one of the most interesting characters in the comic.
im gonna go thru this point by point bc thats the easiest way for me to organize my thoughts, hope thats ok
That’s fine with me, yeah. I tend to answer this stuff in order of complexity, so I’ll do that if it’s ok with you
ok, quick disclaimer – i disagree v strongly with the reading that dirk abused jake, ive talked about that extensively – but lemme play devils advocate real quick. reading jake as a survivor of abuse (by dirk or by anyone else) doesnt rob him of his agency or thought. people who are intelligent, strong, self-sufficient, etc etc get abused all the time. being abused doesnt mean someone is weak or that they have some kind of inherent fault of character… you can read jake as being his own fully developed person and a survivor of abuse
1) Yeah reading Jake as an abuse victim doesn’t erase any of that. I do consider him abused by the AR, Jane and Aranea, anyway. And reading him as abused by Dirk wouldn’t NECESSARILY erase the stuff I’m talking about–it’s just that it happens to do so in practice, because of the way fandom has approached the subject.
What it erases or at least tends to erase with regards to Dirk is the way Jake’s internalized homophobia hurts Dirk, and the way Jake is more comfortable playing along with a script and letting Dirk take charge of the relationship than facing any way he might’ve hurt Dirk.
It also erases the fact that Jake does want Dirk specifically, and considers the safety Dirk affords his solution to the threats presented by his actual abusers.
It’s the exact same problem behind how he treats Jane, but to suggest Jake had any hand to play in how his own relationship with Dirk played out is anathema to a lot of people. The fact of the matter is, he did, and as far as what we see of them chronologically in canon? Jake struck the first blow.
For the record, I’m not saying this means Jake earned any of how he was treated–since indeed Dirk never treats him badly except by virtue of having no good solution for the AR, and Dirk actively seems to hate the AR for what it’s doing with Jake (and Roxy, and even if you don’t think AR is being malicious towards Dirk with Jake, he’s definitely being malicious about the Roxy thing.)
Jake’s abuse is a wholly different narrative from Dirk and Jake’s romantic misadventures, though there are points where they intersect. Tipping the scales towards “Dirk is just Intrinsically Bad and Hurt Jake and Needs To Learn Better” reduces the nuance there significantly. That’s my only point here.
you are right in that dirk makes a deliberate choice in rejecting the cruelty in his splinters and in his ultimate, “natural” self, and youre right in that his interpersonal bonds factor into that decision. but i would say his interpersonal bonds are the reason why he chooses to reject his cruel inclinations, rather than the method by which he does so. dirk is forced to rethink his own nature, what it means to be “a good person”, and his goals for himself because he cares about his friends and he cares about dave and he is confronted with how his behavior, his nature, has damaged them. this is probably just a matter of semantics tho
2) Yeah p much. I think his friends are both the why AND the how–the two aren’t mutually exclusive. And while I can definitely agree with your reading that Dirk learned things like empathy and treating his friends well, by the earliest we see him–13–he’s already seemingly done so.
You mention how Dirk realizes his nature has damaged them by the time he talks to Dave. Fair enough, as far as the AR, and Dirk is definitely inclined to accept responsibility for all of AR’s behavior anyway (which I think is a good thing even if I also think it’ll be a good thing when Jake rightfully calls bullshit.)
But you also point to Dirk’s behavior, to which all I can say is–what behavior? All of it traces back to the AR. I’ve already broken down how it makes no real sense to assume the Brobot had anything to do with Dirk wanting to “train” anybody and everything to do with Jake’s misrepresenting himself to his friends.
It’s way likelier to me that Dirk adopts his “training” persona later, as a way to cover up how badly things fucked up. Is it fucked up that Dirk can do that in the first place? Yeah, I think so. It’s just fucked up to the exact same degree as Jake believing in whatever’s most convenient for himself at any given point.
dirks ultimate self is inclined towards cruelty more than, i would say, any of the other kids. which isnt to say that hes an inherently cruel person. i think – and ive talked about this before – that sympathy, for dirk, is a learned skill rather than something innate (and this grounds my reading of him as an autistic person, altho im sure most ppl would agree whether they see him as autistic or not). his first instinct – across all timelines and splinters, a universal constant of Dirkness – is to hold others to his own standards, which can result in him treating them in a way thats cruel or harsh or, yes, abusive, in the case of bros parenting of dave. and under certain circumstances, in certain timelines – the alpha, post-retcon timeline – he does learn sympathy, and he does become kinder and better at connecting with others.
The problem with the “Dirk imposes high standards on his friends” thing is basically–where is it in canon? The Brobot has more to do with Jake’s desire for adventure than with Dirk, and if you really still think it was Dirk being invested in Training anyone primarily I’d need to understand why he doesn’t train Jane the same way, since she’s even more unprepared than Jake is.
Dirk lightly comments to Jane that she could stand to be less skeptical and Jake could stand to be more critical, which, given how Jane’s skepticism hurts Roxy (and Dirk, but we see Roxy say it) and how Jake essentially uses his beliefs as tools to get what he wants from his friends with no accountability or having to play his hand to get it…yeah I’m willing to say Dirk isn’t out of line in saying so. Those aren’t very “high standards” in my honest opinion.
And the AR was shit, but Dirk has a stated motivation distancing himself from the AR on an agency level. Dirk considers hampering the AR to be abusive and cruel, and even before entry that’s already something he’s trying to stay away from doing. If you want to ask why Dirk doesn’t approach Jake with his feelings on the whole situation–well, he does. Jake knows Dirk doesn’t like the AR. He tells Jane so.
What Jake and Dirk presumably haven’t talked about is all the romantic intrigue the AR sets up, and if you want to take Dirk to task for that then fine…but you have to take Jake to task for it too. Arguably more in my opinion, because Jake KNOWS he hurt Dirk’s feelings and played with his heart with his dumbass heteronormativity goggles early on in their lives, and rightfully deduces it still has an effect on Dirk’s feelings by the time of the Sburb game.
So we’re not disagreeing on what events happen here–I can agree Dirk learns sympathy, and even that he does so due to seeing how his nature can hurt his friends. I’m just arguing he did this much earlier while watching the AR do his thing, and he didn’t intervene himself because…well… he considered his own hands tied by a philosophical dilemma–thus tying Dirk’s arc in with philosophy, which is the point of the whole thing.
right, but hussie chose to have the ar behave that way, is what im saying. the ar isnt guilty of misrepresenting himself because hes not guilty of anything, hes not a real person. hes a fictional character and the author who wrote him made him say all that, because he wanted to blur the lines between dirk and ar, because he didnt want the readers to be able to tell the difference unless theyre paying close attention – because both of them show us important things about the whole character.
…
right, i think you and i are on the same page but were coming to different conclusions. and this is addressed in dirk and daves pesterlog – that dirk is a good person not because he is so innately, but because he chooses to be. i agree with that statement. but i also think that Dirkscourse forgets that he had to make that choice – softness, benevolence, understanding doesnt come to him naturally
We do fundamentally agree here. I think all of this was intentional on Hussie’s end, and I do think Dirk had to make that choice. I just think he was a quicker study about it than you seem to, and I also think Dirk making that choice makes him one of the noblest characters in the comic. Dirk’s choice to be good is powerful because the stakes were so high for him and he was capable of so much worse.
i think youll find that people are much more inclined to crack jokes about characters who they like. i feel a deeper level of sympathy with dirk than any other character in homestuck, or pretty much any other fictional character ive ever seen… which is why i rip on him so often.
Sorry but I crack jokes about Dirk’s gay ass getting owned all the time. I’m no stranger to the concept of riffing on characters. What I’m pointing out is that fandom paints Dirk not just in harsher edges but with outright inaccurate ones precisely because of this stuff, and if that’s ever going to change we need to take note of it.
A perfect example from yesterday: Some dirkjohn shitpost painting Dirk as an “annoying STEM Major”. Dirk’s personality in the story has pretty much as much to do with STEM as it has to do with anime–which is to say, basically squat dick. It’s a minor interest of a character with a multitude of them who is primarily driven by philosophy and culture–liberal arts stuff.
Not that I mind weaboo Dirk or robotics Dirk exactly, but the reason that label was given to him is basically that…it’s the shitty asshole thing to be. It’s a step above MRAs, maybe. So I don’t think it’s really people celebrating this character when they undercut his canonical interests–which include history, culture and philosophy much more than they include robotics–in order to paint him as more of a jerk.
Because that’s the fundamental perception of Dirk: A jerk. An elitist grump. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with Dirk himself in canon–it has a lot more to do with AR, who is a Dirk… but a Dirk who has been largely shut out of his relationships and has no body and is bitter and vicious as a result. Dirk himself simply does not act even remotely in that ballpark. Ever.
Interestingly, when I pointed out the op was thinking of an asshole version of Jade (since Jade is in fact a STEM focused character, and she actually calls Jake dumb during her grimbark episode), someone or another counteracted this by claiming it was untrue because Jade wouldn’t be an elitist, and would be more likely to tutor people. She’d be less of an asshole, basically.
The thing is, tutoring people is something Dirk…explicitly, canonically does and wants to do. He never treats Jake like he’s even an iota less smart than Dirk himself when they interact– even as he provides extensive history lessons, literary critiques, and philosophical rambles. He’s fucking thrilled when Jane so much as voices the possibility of learning about his irony stuff–even though he never looks down on her Pranksterism stuff, and in fact elevates it to the same idealistic heights he takes to his own craft.
Dirk cares about sharing information and teaching, and he’s never an asshole about doing it. So again: A fundamental misreading of Dirk, that the fandom has been led to out of the perception that he’s an asshole. So yeah, I don’t doubt people LIKE Dirk even as they twist him grossly out of character.
But they like a Dirk who exists absolutely nowhere but in fanon, and canon Dirk is actually a lot sweeter and gentler on pretty much every level–and yes, I do believe that’s a choice Dirk has to make in the face of his instincts, which if anything makes that sweetness all the more valuable and worth celebrating to me.
(I also feel like Hussie deserves a lot more respect for the writing behind Dirkjake in general, which yes, is one of the most transcendent gay relationships not just in Homestuck but in the history of queer writing, frankly.
Not the most important ship in Homestuck, necessarily, because obviously what relationship is The Most Meaningful is going to vary by the person–I love Rosemary and Vrisrezi but am not wlw, and so mlm narratives speak more to me.
Especially so with Jake and Dirk, where heteronormativity and internalized homophobia, and the emotional unavailability that comes with adhering to masculine standards (on BOTH their ends) factor so heavily.)
Flying through Storytelling 