Here’s the first teaser for one of the next essays, on the Steal and Serve classes! Just a little morsel on Knight’s relationship to Pages–or anyone they view as such.
You can access this essay early by hooking up with my Patreon–otherwise you’ll be able to read it on Thursday, when I post it here! You can also talk to me about it on the Hiveswap discord and on the r/Hiveswap subreddit. And here on Tumblr, obviously 😉
Keep rising,
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doesn’t aradia actually have a line implying knights are passive?
She has a line implying both she and Dave–as Time players–serve a Master they must be prepared to die a thousand deaths for. I THINK That’s a reference to Lord English, though–so I’m not entirely sure I’d count it for classpect purposes.
If you mean something else, then I’m unsure.
[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:
He worries about other people’s perceptions and discomfort with queerness, a byproduct of internalized homophobia…
His later discomfort with feeling unsafe and sexually threatened/objectified, a byproduct of his traumatic experiences with Hal, Jane and Aranea…
His lack of surety regarding the nature of Dirk’s feelings for him…., a byproduct of his willful ignorance and his desire to avoid talking about the possibility he may have hurt Dirk’s feelings growing up.
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.
Both of the boys literally LIGHT UP with their feelings for each other, in a comic where the concept of Light is explicitly linked to relevance, importance, understanding, and the concept of reaching Enlightenment or Nirvana. (Stay tuned, I’ll flesh this out more in my next three videos.)
I’ve gone over the inherent romance in Jake choosing to create Dirk over literally any other option imaginable. But with the new context of Jake explicitly looking to serve himself through Hope, it takes on an added edge. What Jake wants more than anything else in the world is Dirk, but not at all to make Dirk happy or because it’s what Dirk would want. No.
Jake wants Dirk because he’s selfish. Because he wants life to be happy and easy and adventurous but carefree, and he believes he can always rely on Dirk to take care of things or bail him out when things get too intense for him to handle. Jake wants Dirk as a best friend, a bodyguard, a partner, a rival and a servant all rolled into one.
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.”
Is indicative of the Dirk that Jake wants and believes in in his head. This line is a movie reference to The Princess Bride, a romantic fantasy adventure comedy with a very curious dynamic between the romantic leads.
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 Up with love to 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.
Jake’s stated motivation for trouncing Caliborn is one thing and one thing only: Saving Dirk. Serving his own desire to see Dirk safe. Caliborn is hurting his friend, and Jake is mad about it. His motivation is essentially identical to his desire to save Jane–he doesn’t want to live without Dirk.
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.
I already argued in favor of Grandpa being able to on some level remember his relationship to the Alphas, so click here to see full version of that argument.
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.
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.
This series has been a passion project, but also a side project to my youtube series aimed at welcoming and explaining Homestuck to new, incoming Hiveswap fans. If you find yourself trying to make it easier for a Hiveswap fan to understand what Homestuck is about and how it connects to the game, I hope you think of me.
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.
See you again soon, everyone. Until then,
Keep rising.
[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. 4 – Noble]
[Pt. 5 – As You Wish]
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.
And fairly intense ones, too: The Hal describes his memories about feeling for Jake as ‘heavily arresting’ periods of remembering ‘conflicted, incipient preteen episodes’ on the subject. This tells us that the episodes were getting started before Dirk was 13, that they involved conflicting emotions, and that they were intense enough that Hal is still essentially prey to them at times–even removed from their original biological context.
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.
Soon after that, Jake says something that could be read as flirty and Dirk immediately jumps on it, escalating things to thinking about actual physical proximity. When Jake points it out, Dirk gets flustered and quickly changes the subject. He then starts talking DOWN how capable he is–a sharp contrast from later Dirk talking himself up in front of Jane. They talk some more, the conversation turns to Dirk doubting his own ability to make the AR, and…
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:
Brain Ghost Dirk implies Dirk thinks Jake’s faith is impressive, further undercutting the less relevant reasons Dirk gives Jane for letting Hal hassle him.
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.
The big romantic overture he had planned blew up in his face, and he can’t really do anything to fix it without exposing Jake to the danger of the monsters again. Dirk wants to be done by this point, I think, and I would be too.
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.
This series has been a passion project, but also a side project to my youtube series aimed at welcoming and explaining Homestuck to new, incoming Hiveswap fans. If you find yourself trying to make it easier for a Hiveswap fan to understand what Homestuck is about and how it connects to the game, I hope you think of me.
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.
See you again soon, everyone. Until then,
Keep rising.
Flying through Storytelling 