jaystrifes:

Dipping my toe into the recent discourse/Dirkcourse here, sorta but not really. I mostly just wanted to say to @revolutionaryduelist that you’re honestly doing such great work here and thank you for it because it means a lot to me. 

I know there are some people in the fandom who the find the revival of the Dirk discourse to be somewhat ridiculous – because yeah, Dirk is probably one of the most well-loved characters. Nonetheless, when it comes to dirkjake, Dirk is often made out to be a villain, and I think that’s why it’s important we continue talking about it. I’m not here to debate point by point because I don’t have the time right now, but for the most part my views are aligned with @revolutionaryduelist, who has made some incredible posts about this whole thing and carries the discussion civilly and coherently.

Speaking from a personal standpoint, Dirk is the character I relate to the most. I’ve always liked him, and I’ve always shipped dirkjake, regardless of what’s been said about it in the past. The fandom consensus was rather negative at the time I first read Homestuck, and I accepted the general opinion as truth – that Dirk was a Bad Person. It didn’t mean I would stop liking him, it just seemed to be a real facet of his character and added some to his complexity.

But really, there was never much complexity in it. It made Dirk out to be a sum of splintered parts – mostly AR and Bro – that were actually not the same as him. It focused only on Dirk’s “great potential for evil”. Bad Dirk was such a widely accepted idea that I believed it, and in turn read it as something about myself.

It’s important to distinguish between the way Dirk sees himself, the way he projects himself, and the way he actually is. We’re all familiar with what he projects, the whole coolguy à la Dave Strider thing, someone who is confident and in control at all times. And I think most people are at least somewhat familiar with what Dirk sees in himself, how he (like the fandom) largely believes that he is Bad, that he is toxic, that he destroys everything he touches. And this persona of his was built up to the extent that many people actually take it at face value and think that what Dirk believes about himself is what the reader should believe about him, too. 

I was a reader who fell for it, who believed in Bad Dirk, when I first read Homestuck. I already had self-loathing out the wazoo as it was, and I thought myself to be a much worse person than I actually was, or even am now. It’s something that lingers with me today. The fear that wearing this certain mask, projecting a version of myself that isn’t completely who I am inside, or even making ordinary mistakes, means that I am intentionally hurting the people around me. That I am manipulative, or abusive, and that others need to be kept safe from me.

And forgive me for projecting but I don’t think I’m wrong in saying that this is largely how Dirk felt about himself. The fandom accepted his own warped self-image without digging deeper for the evidence of who he actually is. Dirk is a flawed teenager, like the other alphas, but he’s someone who cares deeply about his friends and tries to hide his feelings beneath his exterior of sharp edges. His relationship with Jake was flawed too, but it wasn’t one between an abuser and a victim, it was one between two boys who hadn’t figured their shit out and grew up so isolated that they didn’t know how to resolve their issues and their feelings properly.

In summary, you don’t have to ship dirkjake, and you don’t have to like Dirk, and you don’t have to wholly agree with me. But please realize that there are big misconceptions within this fandom about relationships and characters, and that it’s important to correct those misconceptions and at least discuss disagreements because these things do reflect on impressionable kids coming into the fandom. It makes me happy to see that this topic is back on the table, and I appreciate all points of view and welcome feedback or discussion if you’d like to bring up a point with me. And once again, much of the real evidence supporting the claim, at least the opinion I’m drawing from, can be found on @revolutionaryduelist‘s blog. My goal here was only to provide reasoning and a personal opinion. Thanks for reading.

me awakening to the possibility i’ve actually changed peoples lives for the better with all this. i’m not even joking reading this actually brought me to tears.

My experience was a lot like yours in a way! I relate to Jake as much as Dirk and the general fanon opinion really messed me up back in those times. I’m so, so happy if I was able to change that for people the way it was changed for me, because that’s exactly why I wanted to write all this. 

Idk, just. Today’s been really nice and people have been really nice to me. Thanks for taking the time to write all this and I hope you like the stuff I’ve got in store. I might have oooone more essay in me about Davekat but I’m really revving up my video editing back up and I am super excited to put Homestuck videos out again. 

I’m always excited to talk about homestuck and i’m even more excited now that it seems like there really are plenty of people out there rn who want to have those conversations. This is all so great. You’re all awesome ;w;