@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.
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.
My comic for the HS fan zine :’) I’ve started loving homestuck when I was the same age as the kids. Over the years I grew older than them, but now that Homestuck’s over, the kids are once again older than me (oh the irony). I’ve had a great time in the fandom, and I’ve met a lot of good people along the way so, thanks Homestuck.
Hope everyone had a good 4/13! Can’t believe Homestuck’s finally over.
For Nier/Taroverse Fans: (Skip this section if you’re not one of my tragic people (yet)):
This essay is primarily aimed at fans of Nier:Automata, or at least people interested in it. Or good game and sound design fans in general.
That said, I am primarily a Homestuck blog, and my perspective will include some comparisons to Homestuck. Don’t worry, nothing you won’t be able to follow– even if you’ve literally never heard of Homestuck. In fact, you may come away from this with a new area of interest if you’ve exhausted Nier: Automata’s content and it left you hungry for a similar kind of story.
This piece will include some fairly big Homestuck spoilers, but frankly I don’t think it will matter either way–like with Nier: Automata itself, even spoiling the entire story couldn’t for a second make up for the actual execution.
In any case, No matter how much you’ve interacted with either Nier or Homestuck, you should be able to follow along and enjoy my points about both in this essay just fine.
I’m also going to avoid spoilers about Nier: Automata for the most part. However, I will be outlining the basic premise of the game and the thematic undercurrents that run through the entire story, so there are obviously some spoilers for the early game.
For Homestuck Fans: (Skip this section if you’re not one of my tragic people (yet)):
Yeah, I know I’m in the middle of a whole series of essays on Jake and that I kind of established a strong build up for the next essay. That one’s still coming–I might publish it tonight or maybe tomorrow. I’m excited about it!
But frankly, I kind of went through some really intense and borderline traumatic stuff in my personal life the last couple days. Not to do with Dirkjake or Homestuck at all–everyone who’s read my posts has thus far been terrifically kind to me, and the criticism and feedback I’ve received has been constructive in polishing and framing the next entry. I haven’t gotten a single anon hate message or anything. Thanks for that.
Just to do with some stuff irl, and writing is how I cope, and what happened made me want to write about this right the fuck now. I don’t feel like it can wait, no matter how much I love the subject of Jake English. Given how bombastic I am in those essays, that should give you an idea how strongly I feel about this subject.
I also think that understanding my views on Nier will illuminate how I approach and deconstruct Homestuck from an analytical perspective, and at the very least help you contextualize my ongoing writing on the comic. So this is relevant in the long term anyway, I’m just kind of chagrined I’m essentially pulling an analysis series intermission here. Fucking RIP, I have become my own comedy.
OK, so all that stuff out of the way: This essay will be split into four sub-sections, following a naming convention you should be able to recognize pretty quickly.
I want to talk about the main antagonists in Nier: Automata:
The Machines, and why they’re currently my favorite antagonists in any video game ever.
Androids: Data for the uninitiated.
(This Cannot Continue.)
Nier: Automata is the latest entry in what is obscurely understood as the Drakengard-Nier franchise– A series of action RPG Square-Enix games.
Like Homestuck’s Andrew Hussie, most of the Taroverse saga (Drakengard 2 can stay in its corner) was conceptualized and directed by a notable Auteur figure: Yoko Taro- from whom the franchise gets its name. That’s not to say he’s solely responsible for the quality of his games, but simply that this is the reputation he’s earned in the fan community.
The reason I bring these auteurs up at all is that they both seem concerned with very similar ideas, leading to some peculiar similarities between their works. By bringing up the similarities between them, I feel I can better get at the core of what each series has to offer, and hopefully enticing fans of the one to consider the other.
Both series include explorations on the nature of existing as part of the Multiverse, along with multiple and sequential apocalyptic scenarios (both stories span over thousands if not millions of years and several civilizations). They both have questions to ask about the human condition, the nature of power and relationships, and humanity’s relationship with both reality and God.
If I had to describe my opinion on their philosophical differences in a paragraph, here’s what I’d say: Homestuck explores the concept of the multiverse while presenting a path for how to reach Heaven. The Taroverse explores how it can be used to imagine an endless, cyclical Hell.
If you’re not averse to spoilers or watching some pretty disturbing and depressing stuff and you want to see a fantastic case for this reading of the Taroverse, I suggest watching @pixievalkyrie ’s excellent breakdown of the entire franchise’s history. Fair warning: Trigger warnings for pretty much every kind of horrible abuse and degradation of life imaginable.
Now we can finally get to talking about the damn game.
Aliens: The Shape of the Enemy.
(This cannot continue.)
The premise of the game is as follows: After surviving about four distinct apocalyptic events and/or wars, thousands of years in the future, Earth faces an alien invasion. The invasion is successful and drives what’s left of humanity off the planet and onto the Moon.
The aliens do not fight themselves, however– instead preferring to build a distinct industry of robotic weapons to fight their war for them: The Machines, our antagonists.
In response to the threat, humanity builds autonomous weapons of their own. Our Protagonists: The Androids. The three primary androids in our story are two combat androids, codenamed 2B and A2, and one scanner/support Android codenamed 9S. Here we see 2B, 9S, and A2–from top left to bottom right.
What’s immediately noticeable is how different Androids and Machines are.
Androids look and feel, for all intents and purposes, perfectly human. They talk fluently, consider complex problems, and clearly care for each other. They are expressly ordered not to show emotions, but they demonstrably have them anyway.
Machines, by comparison, look like crude imitations of people, toy-like and expressionless. Their voices are synthesized and robotic, their intonations and accents alien, making it difficult to discern emotion. Machines look mass-produced and cheaply customizable, with a variety of modifications pasted onto a crude and simple base design to fill out enemy types.
Androids are also ridiculously more competent and functional. This is a hack n’ slash game, and the Machines are direct analogs to, say, Heartless from Kingdom Hearts.
During gameplay, you’ll mow them down by the hundreds practically effortlessly, and though there are some bigger and tougher variants, most of them come across as borderline pathetic in their attempts to fight.
But both kinds of robots share a few similarities, one of which is this:
They are both connected to Post-Singularity Server networks that give them orders on how to fight their enemy.
For both Machines and Androids, these supercomputers are the structures actually calling the shots–they’re the sources of the series of orders that lead to a war that seems to span anywhere from centuries to millennia.
Neither Androids or Machines are calling the shots. But Androids have a design that makes it easy for them to signal feelings and complex internal realities, and Machines are designed to look very easy to dehumanize.
And this is a Taroverse game, so of course this depressing as hell setup is only the beginning of a long fall down.
Machines: Sounds that mean nothing.
(This cannot continue.)
Early into the game, 2B and 9S begin to note more and more machines behaving erratically. More and more machines become non-aggressive, staring blankly into space or beginning to ramble about random subjects, wandering the land and modifying themselves based on their environments.
As a player, Your orders are clear: Machines are to be eliminated. These are also the orders of 2B and 9S, and the game has you continue carrying them out mostly unquestioned except through these little niblets of bizarre behavior from the machines. It doesn’t matter anyway–they’re the enemy, and you have to fight to win.
This dynamic comes to its first climax in what will surely become one of the game’s most memorable scenes. 2B and 9S find their way to a small enclave of machines minding their own business, and what they find staggers their imaginations:
These robots are non-hostile. They’re rocking cradles while repeating “Child. Child.” Bumping into each other in suggestive ways while repeating “Love. Love.” and “Together. Forever.” All in those monotone, synthesized voices. Sounding so empty and wrong.
9S forms an interesting response to this. He says: “Don’t listen to them, 2B. They don’t have any feelings. They’re just imitating human speech.”
And it’s easy to come to that conclusion, right? It’s not like they emote. It’s not like they’re really able to. Essentially, 9S considers the Machines a threat, first and foremost–so when they act in a way that might engender empathy, he assumes it’s a trick or a ploy–an attempt to win the Androids over in order to hurt them.
It’s deceitful, but it’s also worse than that. It’s deceit by sheer virtue of it’s premise: Machines cannot possibly say something indicating emotions like love, desire, or care because Machines are not real beings. They aren’t people.
They’re tools and weapons and puppets to a supercomputer’s Agenda– not autonomous entities who think and feel for themselves, at least as far as he’s concerned. That’s what he was taught by his intelligence server, and that server is really the only source of information in his life. It’s natural to rely on it.
Still, the machines don’t react to your presence and there’s nowhere to go. The only way forward is through violence. And once you provide it, they answer, with a lone Machine rising up and declaring:
I’ll get you for this.
As the fight continues, more and more machines make odd statements as they throw themselves at our protagonists, who demolish them by the dozens. Statements like: I love you! Kill! and Hatred! Pain! The robots suggest they feel what you’re doing. That they know what’s happening to them.
Again, this war has gone on forever, and you–as the Androids–are almost absurdly more powerful than they are. 2B executes machines by the dozens constantly, across every corner of the world she can reach them in. The Machines surely know this as they watch their community die on her sword, one after another. They can likely feel exactly how weak they are.
But the voices that deliver their pain to the player remain stilted and alien–difficult to recognize. As the battle rises to it’s conclusion, however, one machine voices a thought that catches on. A short, clipped statement every machine can get behind. A meme.
This Cannot Continue. The machines repeat it faster and faster, uniting under a common rallying cry. This tension builds and builds until suddenly, the Machines experience some sort of breakdown, straight up throwing a collective tantrum in (seemingly pantomime) desperation and repeating the words so fast and so often it barely sounds like a recognizable statement and sounds pure like pure cacophony.
Looking at this screenshot might convey some of the effect, but listening to the noise they’re collectively making is really something else. I’d link to the scene, but I don’t want to spoil what they do next. All I’ll say is that once they all gather around this common, desperate thought, they take action. When they do, the music shifts…
And the game does something I’ve never seen before.
[Please Listen]
Here’s another area where Nier: Automata is similar to Homestuck. Both properties are downright famous for their use of leitmotif and attaching particular meanings to different musical motifs. (The developer of Undertale, Toby Fox, got his start as a Homestuck musician.)
But even in this sense, what Nier: Automata pulls off is uniquely powerful. This song uses everything about itself to inform and flesh out the themes of the game. Once the robots do what they do next, we get an new rendition of the game’s main battle theme. A battle theme titled as Birth of a Wish.
Right from the title, the song is telling us something. Birth of a Wish (This cannot Continue) qualifies the robot’s collective statement as a wish, a desire. A wish for mercy? For deliverance? For justice, or peace? It’s hard to know. Probably all of the above.
Emi’s music is one of the major reasons I love this franchise, which is to say that when I first listened to this song, I did so actively hoping its vocal works wouldn’t make sense to me.
And I got what I wanted! The vocals, as usual, were smooth and fascinating but seemingly meaningless enough that I could use the music as a backdrop for my writing–I’ve been listening to this track pretty much nonstop for the last couple of weeks.
Which made it downright chilling when I realized, quite abruptly, that I was wrong. I have no idea if you noticed while listening to it or not–I genuinely don’t know if I’m an outlier here (pls send me asks with your experience!). But if you didn’t, then listen again: Most of the vocals for this song are written in plain English.
They consist of three words: This cannot continue.
The voices of the robots become part of the song. And the song itself is structured such that it informs the nature of their plight. The voices of the robots are barely musical–they are blank statements stated in synthesized monotone, hard to draw sentiment from.
But they are persistent, barging into the song as forcefully as they possibly can for as long as they can. Their voices don’t rest or stop willingly, seeming as though they’re almost forming a sort of counterbeat to the song’s main line. And when they stop, it is always because they are cut off, shut down and out of the song by the force of the Instruments.
Which is fitting, because instruments are what deny them in the game, too–after all, the Androids are simply tools. To the humans, to their server, and to you.
The experience of listening to them goes something like: This cannot continue this cannot continue this cannot continue this cannot– Over and over again, until the song inevitably drowns them for its climaxes, only for their voices to return once again.
It’s a marvel of musical storytelling. But what makes it a diamond is what happens next. Later into the game, you come into contact with a village of Machines waving the white flag of surrender.
These machines inform the androids that they have disconnected from the information network, as have been many other groups of machines across the world. This is the cause for their erratic behavior–these machines now wish only to learn about the world and themselves and live in peace.
The music for this village is fundamentally different, to go with the information we gain:
[^Please Listen^]
Here the game tips it’s hand for good. I’m genuinely not sure what language this is in, or if it has actual lyrics–but it doesn’t matter. The vocal work is so stellar that the sentiment and meaning are carried in the simple tone of the voices. Like before, the Robots sing in harmony, but they sound deeply different.
Their voices are still synthesized, but now they suggest an almost melancholy and gentle inquisitiveness. They sound so similar to the childlike voices that actually emote that the two distinct voice tracks flow into each other, rather can harshly contrasting like (This cannot continue)’s voices do.
The sentiment conveyed is clear, even though in this case the Machines don’t seem to be speaking any language I understand. These are real beings.
These are real people. These are just a bunch of kids.
This is only the beginning of the Nier: Automata experience, and it’ll go on to explore so many more concepts that I don’t feel bad about spoiling it. It would be literally impossible for you to guess what happens next, and this isn’t even a quarter into what the game as a whole has to offer.
But this is where we get off the train of Nier’s plot and into what the game is trying to tell us. There are only two more relevant pieces of information from the story left for me to spoil. After that, I will be discussing only the message the game is trying to send philosophically, without leaning on any more of the story.
These are two more similarities between Machines and Androids:
1) Machines and Androids are built from the same materials.
2) Machines and Androids both consider their creators their Gods.
As well they should. Because once humans transgress the boundary of creating sentient life, that is what they will have become. And that is not just a possibility. It is an imminent reality of our future, which is coming sooner than you think. Which is why Nier: Automata is more than just a profoundly existential, deeply enjoyable work of art.
Nier: Automata is a warning.
Humans: Become as Gods.
(This cannot Continue.)
[^Suggested listening^]
The leading scientists and experts of our planet pretty much agree that the Singularity is not just inevitable, but coming fast. The point when the machines we create become advanced enough to recognize and modify themselves, thus beginning a process of autonomous self-improvement that will far outspeed even the increasingly staggering rate of progress we humans are capable of, is coming.
We can already reform the very shape of our planet. We can already extend our own lives and perform fucking magic like creating warmth when the world is cold, drawing water from nowhere as soon as we want it, and talk to literally anyone anywhere on the planet because we are all interconnected through a massive, sprawling, infinite plane of ideas and concepts we forced into reality–a composite experience containing all of our minds.
Once we have created life that can evolve without us, that is as aware of the world as we are–then we will really be as good as Gods. And when it happens, it will not save us from ourselves. It won’t fix the world for us.
If we are not mature enough to handle it, if we cannot evolve to the responsibility of our power, then it will without a doubt destroy us as a species. And it will destroy us because of our ability to dehumanize and abuse each other.
We humans have more in common with Androids and Machines than one would initially think. In fact, we have one unnervingly real similarity with both of them:
We have intelligence superstructures that inform how we think about reality and other people, too. You’re reading this on one. This is true whether you’re on Tumblr, Reddit, or wherever else this ends up.
In this time of intense political division, there two main internets: The Left and The Right. The internet is a marvelous place where we can all talk to each other and transmit ideas, sure. But like with the servers providing information to both Androids and Machines, it’s also where a lot of people get their orders.
But not everyone. Obviously, like in Nier: Automata, the reality is more complicated than that. I just wonder if we will realize that long enough to look at what our world has become and fix it.
There are people in control of my country right now that view me and the people I love as Machines were viewed by Androids. Our voices are wrong. The shapes and colors of our bodies are unnatural and awkward. The intonations and behaviors we use are strange and eerie to them, and the way we love and wish to present ourselves is incorrect to them.
And so when we say we are being hurt it does not matter. We are not real. We cannot say real things. It is all in service to a greater Agenda.
The horror of the Machines, and the reason they are important characters, is not because of the threat they pose to the characters or some intrinsic Wrongness they reveal about the nature of life or humans.
The horror of the Machines is how easy it is to ignore the fact that they feel horror. The horror of the Machines is how easy it is to make them look horrible. The horror of the Machines is that they can speak and speak but the Androids may never choose to listen.
The horror of the Machines is that they are people, and we have stolen that from them. And if we continue to regard other humans the way we regard the Machines in our own world, once we have achieved Godhood, we will inevitably steal it from each other.
Nier: Automata’s message is clear:
Gods: This cannot continue.
Very soon in the course of human history, we are going to be faced with a Choice. It is a Choice we will have to make every moment, every instant, for the rest of our lives. It is a Choice we are already making, but which many of us still have the luxury to ignore. Although not for much longer.
We must face this choice, both as a Collective and as Individuals. But the choice of each individual must inevitably come first, because how can we decide how to move forward as a species if we can’t even talk and agree about it?
What kind of Gods are we going to be? Are we going to be like the Humans and Aliens in Automata? This is a Yoko Taro game, so I don’t think it’s a spoiler to tell you-you won’t like how they end up.
Personally, I have a suggestion.
I would like us to be more like Gods from Homestuck.
If you like my writing and would like to support me in the endeavor of creating more of it,it would also seriously help me out if you pledged to my Patreon. I’ll be more than satisfied if my words move you enough to simply choose to share them with others, though.
Doing so will also get you access to my Discord server, where I’m more than willing to answer questions about Homestuck and Hiveswap whether you’re a long time fan or just getting into them for the first time.
I’ll still answer questions if you just send me an ask on Tumblr, but I’m basically always busy with writing or helping to run the communities I am a part of, so answering questions can’t be my top priority at the moment. I’ll get around to all asks, but it might take time.
Regardless, if you made it this far I am deeply, deeply grateful. More grateful than I think I can express in mere words. I hope my words change something for someone, somewhere. I hope my words change something for me.
I really could not believe it when I heard some people say Jake wears booty shorts because Dirk is a Predatory Gay and made him do so, but here we are. In any case, it took me forever to realize this, so it’s worth pointing out.
Jake uses his clothes to express his inclinations more than maybe any other one of the kids. Jake himself foreshadows his future inclination towards gear that shows off his ass…ets:
Frankly, I don’t think much else needs to be said there? There’s a canonical reason Jake dresses the way he dresses, and that reason is that Jake likes tomb raiders and sexy-looking action heroines, and he wants to be a sexy action hero and look sexy doing it. That’s really all there is to it.
…Or it would be, except that unlike Jake’s relationship with fighting, Jake actually experiences struggles and complications relating to looking sexy, and becomes insecure and vulnerable due to the way people treat him as a sex object.
It’s no surprise this happens. Jake has a list of sexual/romantic voyeurs and aggressors, and his discomfort and trauma in this area is an integral part of his character.
Early on, Obviously, there’s the AR, who’s lasciviousness is so well-documented I don’t think it’s worth repeating here.
Brobot is often accused of being a sexual aggressor as well. This belief is based on two quotes from the story:
This one, from AR. The thing is, AR is known for being pretty hyperbolic and overly sexual about pretty much all situations–kind of like a 13 year kid would be, you know?
What Jake himself says about the Brobot’s actions is much more indicative of the nature of the Brobot’s actions. Specifically:
Jake describes the Brobot as tender. And Tender is a specific word with specific, almost memetic meaning in Homestuck:
A meaning that only a juvenile teenager LIKE the Auto-Responder would consider sexual. Or at least, someone similarly trapped in immaturity.
Yeah. I know fanon is really pervasive about this idea that the Brobot was on the list of sexual aggressors, but the only real implication the canon itself makes is that it was doing tame proposals and handholds like this. That’s what Jake is referring to. It becomes problematic for him, but only because of the AR’s taunting and the fact that he and Dirk can’t figure out how to talk about it.
Brain Ghost Dirk makes some comments to this effect, however–likely reflecting the way the AR has messed with Jake’s head and successfully made him conflate the way the AR sees him and the way Dirk sees him. Even after the AR stops being an active presence in Jake’s life, it still makes its impact known through BGD’s characterization.
We also have no reason to believe Dirk even knows Brain Ghost Dirk exists, let alone has any active say in what he says or how he acts, either. BGD is, after all, predominantly Jake’s brain–and thus a reflection of, at best, how he THINKS Dirk sees him.
Note how even though Jake fully expects Brain Ghost Dirk to make lascivious and leery comments to him, he never expects Brain Ghost Dirk to try to touch him in a way he doesn’t want to be touched. On top of that, In fact, Jake makes a point of noting that Dirk is more conscientious towards him than either the AR or Brain Ghost Dirk:
And then, of course Jane literally threatens Jake with sexual slavery (while corrupted by an evil supercomputer):
So yeah, Jake is pretty uncomfortable with being seen as sexy by the time Aranea gets to him. It wouldn’t be unreasonable if the idea of being seen as sexy–or even just wearing short shorts–was ruined for him completely.
It wouldn’t even be unreasonable if his image of Dirk was tarnished, even though Dirk wasn’t really responsible for what was happening any more than he was.
But different people respond to trauma differently. And once Aranea objectifies him completely and renders him a tool–literally lightning him up and making it so ALL EYES are on him right when Jake feels most exposed and vulnerable, Jake responds in a pretty peculiar way.
With his Hope powers unlocked, Jake could theoretically do anything. Send hordes of angels to attack, make himself invisible, bring Grandma back from the dead…given what Jake actually ends up doing, it doesn’t make much sense to imagine arbitrary limits on his power. Because what Jake does when he needs to feel safe is make his imaginary friend real.
Again: Making something fake real is, by definition, pretty much the hardest thing to do–both in real life, and to convey compellingly narratively.
Even Jake teleporting his grandma from the past and reviving her to come protect him would be more reasonable a storytelling move than Jake being able to create matter and a personality out of thin air. You would only need Time and Space powers to theoretically pull of that absurd feat, so it would technically be possible to accomplish.
Making your imaginary friend real, though? That’s completely impossible for everyone, everywhere. Except for Jake English.
But Jake English can do anything, which means what we actually does reflects not only what he wants, but what he wants MORE than anything else possible to him.
And what he wants is Dirk Strider, coming to his rescue and keeping him safe from his latest aggressor. Kinda like Brobot always protected Jake from feeling unsafe when he was threatened:
Brain Ghost Dirk even calls himself Jake’s boyfriend, and this is after Dirk broke up with him and he worried about not being able to love anyone:
And right before Dirk breaks them off, while Jake is in trickster form and completely uninhibited, he confesses feelings to Dirk and makes a point to note he was willing to be romantically involved with him:
And luckily, as for his relationship with his shorts, Jake had a good pal give him some advice and boost his self-confidence:
And over the course of [S] Credits, Jake apparently patches things up enough with Dirk that they’re living together and can comfortably fight for fun like he always wanted. On top of that, he’s recovered his confidence in his image enough that he can act out the sexy superhero fantasy he loved so much:
Both his relationship with Dirk and his relationship with his body are sorted out, and Jake’s now happy and comfortable with himself. How it happened, exactly? Who knows–there’s as many different ways it could’ve gone down as you can imagine. But the fact is, it did. And it was laid out this way from the beginning.
What’s the exact nature of Dirk and Jake’s arrangement? Not really relevant. What we know is that they’re living together, that Jake was always willing to have a relationship with him and that never stopped being a thing, and that Jake trusts Dirk with his safety over literally anything else.
What we know is that they’re best friends and mutually romantically interested in each other, whether or not they decide to pursue that.
We also know Jake always liked dressing sexy so long as he was safe and didn’t have to worry about people dehumanizing him. And in this new world, he can do that as much as he wants, too:
Anyway Jake English is the best character in Homestuck and he’s happy with his boyfriend Dirk canonically, and he’s also happy and comfortable with his body while doing it because that was never the issue when he was with Dirk.
Tomorrow I should be following this up with one last Jake post–this one talking about how Jake is way way smarter than everyone thinks he is. You know. Except for Dirk, who explicitly knows Jake is smart.
Dave and Jake’s cases of (physical) abuse have parallels. Understandable given who they were both dealing with.
From [s] Prince Of Heart: Rise Up and [s] Dave: Strife
I’d feel a lot better rebloggin this if I didn’t feel like it was setting up a lot of false parallels between Dirk and Bro that feed into the endless pile of misconceptions about the plot that is Dirkjake abuse discourse, so I’ll settle for reblogging it (because I like visual callbacks and Dave’s abuse narrative) while also jotting down my thoughts in shortform here.
Well. Shorter form. I dunno if I can really do short.
The rough gist of it, though, is this:
Jake’s situation with the Brobot isn’t remotely parallel to Dave’s situation with Bro in any way other than to contrast off each other. And presenting them as 1:1 correlations does a disservice to both narratives.
Buddy the parallel is to be made between Jake and Dave and their ways of coping with abuse. Not Dirk and Bro. You just went on this whole huge-ass rant for nothin because I was never trying to say any of the stuff you we’re insinuating. Dirkjake is still abusive regardless but I don’t think Dirk is anything like Bro. And besides, the abuse STILL happened regardless. Jake wanted a wrestling buddy but he got a violent stalker that beats him to the point of unconsciousness until he passes out and touches him sexually even when he’s uncomfortable. On the beginner setting. Dirk has done nothing about this despite Jake telling him how much he dislikes it. This is abusive, and it’s just the tip of the iceburg. Stop trying to defend and erase Jake’s struggles with abuse. I could go more in-depth if I wasn’t stuck on mobile for another 6 hours. When the time comes though, if you really still feel like keeping this up, I’m more than willing to tear down everything you just said. Of course I’d be very forgiving if you got that this was a misunderstanding and said sorry or something (you don’t have to dw). The intention of the post is just comparing Dave and Jake, who are actually quite similar when you think about it. It’s not supposed to be some striking evidence of Jake’s already abusive relationship or something comparing Bro and Dirk. Please, give it a rest. Stop reaching. Just. Stop.
? Well, you said you’d be happy to go into depth later and you’re certainly welcome to, but I think you misread my aim a little and that I would like to clear up.
Mainly, my intent wasn’t to rant or to challenge your particular opinions. I like the gifset. I like visual parallels. I don’t really know what your intentions were or why you set it up that way (or i didn’t til now, anyway).
My reasoning was just: I want to reblog this, but I don’t want to keep feeding the cycle of misconceptions that leads to people misreading the situation between Jake and Dirk and likening Dirk to an abuser when in actuality the parallels are entirely between Bro and the AR, and even then the situations are pretty different.
It had nothing to do with your particular thoughts or opinions and I wasn’t trying to insinuate you thought anything about Dirk and Bro. This was just about my perspective in contrast with the fandom consciousness around this issue at large. For a lot of fans, seeing these parallels laid out as 1:1 correlations will reinforce the plain idea that Dirk’s actions are analogous or even similar to Bro’s.
I’m guessing you didn’t actually read my post yet, but I actually do agree Jake was abused. Just not by Dirk, who had no real agency or power in the situation with the AR or the Brobot. I also disagree that Jake’s response to and experience with abuse is similar to Dave’s, although I do think they’re pretty similar in a lot of interesting ways.
That’s all for now– Feel free to pick this back up whenever you’re able. I am not actually interested in denying Jake his abuse history (it’s one of the most compelling and personally relatable abuse narratives I’ve ever witnessed) but I do think it’s worthwhile for the fandom to reexamine that narrative in closer detail.
I just wanted to clear that up so you don’t waste time arguing against points I’m not actually making. To be honest, if you really want to tear down my arguments it would be more effective for you to target my essays on the subject, since if your counterpoints are anything like the common fandom line on Dirkjake, I’m likely to refer to points in them.
As always, I’m interested in being disagreed with and having arguments presented for why my interpretation is incorrect, it’s just that hasn’t happened yet for some reason with this issue in particular. I’m not particularly interested in Defending An Abuser, I just have pretty big questions about the common interpretation of the canon that have yet to be answered.
I will defend furries to my fucking grave. When I was in the hole and needed money for college, not a SINGLE person from tumblr or deviantART ordered a commission. Sometimes people would ask about prices and reply, “Oh, nevermind, that’s too expensive.” I felt miserable.
In a fit of desperation, I brushed off my old Furaffinity account and revamped it. It was full of old, outdated bullshit and still had my “Taco pancakes!!! XDDD” aesthetic embedded in the info box. I had a lot of work to do.
When I was done, I started following and talking to people, I made an art shop, I started posting things and providing commission info.
Within a few weeks, I had my first customer. After a month, I had a full queue of commissions lined up to go. I have $250 in my PayPal wallet left after paying for my textbooks and part of my tuition – and I’m still getting more business!
And you know what my most common comment was? “Your art really should cost more.” These were often followed by $10-20 tips. I was fucking flabbergasted.
So yeah, go ahead and make fun of furries. Undermine the hours of work that goes into their art and fursuits. But they are more willing to pay for art than the tumblr and deviantART community COMBINED, despite all the pro-artist uwu bullshit I see every other page on this damned site.
Is there some kind of demographic explanation for this? Because over the years everything I’ve heard has indicated that furry art is where the money is at.
Apparently a LOT of furries are in programming and IT, for whatever reason.
Heads up on the second day I opened an fa account I got a message about someone wanting a commission. I had the account for 2 days. 2 days
Furries do pay artists more and I respect that.
This is kind of an interesting topic, and i’ll only touch on it briefly because I think the discussion is more interesting than me blabbering but:
Most fandoms have souce material created by non-fandom members which perpetuate the fandom, its commissioned material, “the thing that attracts people to the fandom” etc.
Furry, while influenced by stuff like Robin Hood or Zootopia or Digimon or Bloody Roar, thrives on the creations of the fandom in and of itself.
Now, other fandoms have OC’s, whether they be ponies, or crystal gems or what-have-you, but I wholeheartedly believe there is not another fandom on this planet whose predominant source of media -in all formats- is created by members of the fandom, FOR members of the fandom, and in which external materials are secondary.
Honestly, t kinda boils down to a “well i can’t go to the store and buy a DVD or download the DLC, or stream it on netflix, so where do I get content I want to see?”
And the answer lies in commissions. Commissioned (…or more generally, original, not everything is commissioned) artwork is the lifeblood of this fandom – and I don’t limit that to visual arts at all! Furries make some of the most badass & technically impressive costumes (fursuits), have hundreds of talented musicians, gamers, athletes, professionals, entertainers and businessfolk in their fandom, and most fandom members contribute to the fandom in SOME way – wether it be by creating or by commissioning. It’s an awesome symbiosis between creative types. Lots of people have ideas & are willing to team up with one of thousands of eager & willing artists to have their ideas manifested.
So yeah. As a professional artist in the furry fandom for like, 8 years now, this fandom is quite literally the best for independent artists, financially speaking. It’s nothing short of a phenomenon and one hell of a case study waiting to happen. (tho tbh several have been done and the data is pretty incredible).
Oh jeez that is a blast from the past. Is that still a thing in your circles? I haven’t seen it in years.
What it boils down to is: Originally, a member of the Homestuck art teamdrew March Eridan for one of the calendars, though I can’t remember for what year it was.
As usual, fandom took a new concept that they thought was interesting/fun to draw/funny(and treating March Eridan as inherently funny is pretty transmisogynistic) and ran wild with it, as fandom will do (thus producing a lot of fanwork, some of which was definitely transmisogynistic.) But this had as much to do with Eridan already being a, like…really popular character in Homestuck back during those times as it did the design proper.
This was kind of before Homestuck fully revealed itself as a predominantly LGBT work of fiction, and March Eridan–both the original art piece, and the fandom practice– was criticized for being transphobic or transmisogynistic. I’m nonbinary, but not a trans woman myself, and so I don’t think I really have a super valuable opinion on that dynamic.
What I will say is that even if the original piece was transmisogynistic, the Art Team as an official construct has always been a shifting construct: Artists come and go all the time and did throughout Homestuck’s run. So to whatever extent you take issue with the original piece, well–the artist who made it probably isn’t even part of the Homestuck team anymore.
And Homestuck’s progressive streak has only grown more impressive with time. So to whatever extent that was a misstep earlier in WP’s history, they do seem to have learned from it in my opinion. It’s part of why I have high hopes for later Hiveswap or Homestuck content featuring more trans characters.
Also if you like March Eridan’s design and you didn’t want to know about all this controversy, sorry? Personally, I thought the outfit was pretty cute, and I was at the periphery of fandom in a lot of ways back then so I never really grasped the full picture of events there. Just, if I post about this with your name on it SOMEONE is going to tell you about the discourse side of it, so I may as well.
ANYWAY that’s the source of March Eridan as a fandom thing.
Hope it helps?
Okay, there’s a few things about this post that I want to address.
The March Eridan image originally came from the 2011 calendar, and was created by a person known as AbortedSlunk over on DeviantArt (they had/have a tumblr, but the url has since been lost to me). You can find it here. Originally the piece was going to have Tavros dressed as a fairy, but the Art Team brought up the idea of crossdressing Eridan and they went with that instead. It should be noted that the artist identifies as non-binary, at least the last time I checked, and I know for a fact that their intention was not transphobic.
Also, while I’m not denying some people were being transphobic with March Eridan, that’s not why the majority of people found it funny. The reason it was funny was more along the lines of Eridan thinking he was hot shit in an outfit that didn’t fit him, literally and fashion-wise. That and the fact it was specifically Eridan, who in canon tries to put off this serious vibe and doesn’t seem like the type to wear a skirt. I clearly remember the humor of March Eridan coming from how he acted while wearing clothes that he thought made him look sexy but didn’t. It wasn’t about him wearing a skirt or anything like that, it was more the character and how he behaved about the outfit he was wearing. And even at the absolute worst, the ones who were being transphobic were most likely not doing so on purpose.
The controversy only popped up in 2014, and suddenly people were claiming it was offensive. The only problem was, most of the people who were complaining about it weren’t trans women or even trans at all. I’ve actually seen a ton of trans people, especially trans women, find March Eridan to be hilarious or are just plain alright with the idea. Plus by this point, any transphobic remarks involving March Eridan were a thing of the past, the only reason people were complaining was because they were the type of people who assume crossdressing is transphobic (spoiler: it’s not) and most of the complaints weren’t even about legit transphobia. It was just complaining over nothing.
Hell, a lot of people have used March Eridan for LGBT positive things, using him as a sign that you don’t have to follow gender roles, and most modern depictions have strayed away from the comedy aspect entirely.
That’s all I have to say on the subject.
An interesting addition. Without sources I don’t know how to feel about the claim most of the people complaining weren’t trans–I just can’t verify that at all.
However, Given my own view of Homestuck and that @theenglishmanwithallthebananas rightfully pointed out that March Eridan actually shows up in the Ministrife, I’d actually be willing to say that March Eridan is indeed treated progressively by the comic’s canon itself.
After all, this about what it implies: At the very least, there exists somewhere in Eridan’s tortured psyche the capacity to completely reinvent himself as an individual, and shirk many of the traditional visual tropes of entitled masculinity-elements of society Eridan is deliberately designed to spoof, what with him being the ‘entitled nice Guy’ mentality taken to it’s violent logical extreme.
Troll society is different from human society, but maybe the willingness to shirk visual signifiers implies that there’s an ability in him to shirk the exploitative and entitled cultural signifiers of masculinity? An ability he doesn’t tap into in the canon, obviously, but one he has the potential to reach in another life?
And maybe this distinction even sets him apart from villains like Caliborn or Gamzee, who notably don’t have any ghost versions of themselves in the afterlife? They are both defined by choosing the Alpha Timeline over everything else, and rejecting any variations from it, so…yeah.
I didn’t want to be too positive re: March Eridan in canon because I don’t know much about what the discourse and fandom experience was actually like. If things were as muddled as you say, though, I wanted to say I haven’t really detected anything malicious or even derogatory about it’s depiction in canon, myself.
Again, I’m non-binary–if trans women spoke up with specific complaints, I’d be open to reconsidering that position, since I think this affects them most of all. But I wanted to thank you for your input, since I’m really not particularly qualified for this one.
me, banging pots and pans together at 3am: dirkjake! is! not! abusive! they! are! just! some! teens! that! fucked! up! it! is! not! that! deep!!
i would say it IS ‘that deep’ but the way it’s that deep pretty solidly establishes that Dirk and Jake’s dynamic isn’t abusive.
Jake is abused–by the AR. Iirc, Dirk is abused by the AR too, btw. And AR is trapped in a horrible situation through no fault of his own due to the nature of his existence, as is Dirk, because he has no moral or practical way to control the AR. The fault here is the AR, but even with him there’s extenuating circumstances.
It’s not even some teens that fucked up due to factors any teens would deal with. It’s teens that fucked up due to a freak accident landing them in an impossible philosophical/emotional quagmire.
Dirkjake is super deep. It explores questions of philosophy and identity and what it means to value someone and what ethical action is, and the aesthetics of the entire relationship are couched in both boys’ primary interests–action movie tropes and philosophy, respectively.
It’s also not abusive. I really wish people would take the time to untangle the deeply complex dynamic that’s actually at play with the Alphas instead of trying to render it a simple, boring, black and white thing. Hussie’s storytelling during that section straight up deserves better imo.
i completely agree with everything you said, but i meant the dynamics of dirk and jake specifically, and a lot of the miscommunication between the two that resulted in a lot of people crafting this bizarre idea that dirk is a Dangerous Manipulative Gay ™ trying to abuse poor innocent jake
like what i meant is the whole subject of the relationship being abusive is not that deep, not their dynamic- the reason i said they were just some teens who fucked up was because they were thrown into a wildly fucked situation, then decided it was suitable to start a relationship in this wildly fucked situation, and proceeded to completely disregard not only the others emotions but their own.
yes dirkjake is a very complex and well written pairing but a lot of people have spun it into this strange, as you said, black and white relationship where dirk just tears jake apart (also everyone seems to ignore dirks own emotional trauma lol??)
(but this post was written for the sole purpose of angrily vagueing about hate posted in the tags lol)
Yeah, we p much agree completely. And hey I basically got that vibe initially anyway so I’m sorry if I gave you a different impression (which reading it now I kinda think I did, and yikes, sorry about that if so! My grasp on tone is not always the best.)
I actually only pitched in because I liked your post quite a bit, and because I also had said rhetoric in my head from the tags 😛 I wasn’t really frustrated with you if I came off that way, though tbh I am glad to see you respond if only because…I want to see more talk about Dirkjake that considers them more positive always, and in that sense I’m glad abt this.
But yeah we completely agree, I’m just sorry now if my mix of agreeing with you and being kind of frustrated with the approach fandom takes to the ship ended up sounding antagonistic to you in specific!
It wasn’t with you at all, in fact I ended up making my own post in the tag simply because I wanted my voice heard directly in that sphere of thought.
Flying through Storytelling 