All I can really say in terms of assurance is that the POC who’s “content to be servile” is one of the most complex and nuanced characters in fiction imo, and most of those other characters don’t slack far behind.
My friend recommends ep. 4 as the beat that got him hooked. I’d say give it til 7 because that’s where my favorite character arc comes into focus for the first time.
That said, I know I talk Utena up a lot here and I am completely genuine about it but I also feel a certain obligation to make something clear.
I can’t promise you’re gonna like Utena, because Utena’s not a show for everyone. It happens to speak to my sense of aesthetic visually, so it’s got one up on me that might not work for you at all. But thematically and content-wise it just really, really is not for everyone.
Because Utena deals almost exclusively with themes of abuse–social abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse. It’s a show about fucked up people hurting each other in fucked up ways. It explores the complexities of incest and incestual abuse quite a lot.
As an incest survivor that’s always been interested in archetypes, apocalyptic imagery and stories about abuse’s effects on human psychology-largely due to personal reasons-all of that naturally proves pretty resonant to me. It might be absolutely horrific to some other folks, and just kinda boring for others.
I think the way its handled puts it on about the same level as Homestuck, in some ways. But Homestuck focuses on more systemic and physical/fantastical violence, in a lot of ways. It’s rarer that it gets into more explicitly sexual territory.
Utena, on the other hand, is visually a lot cleaner-it’s pure shoujo, no blood or gore to be had, most of its conflict rendered symbolically and through character performance.
But the subject matter it deals in is just closer to social, grounded reality, and the kinds of violence it deals in are I think more likely to be…personally triggering? So I really can’t be sure everyone will enjoy the experience. I just know I’m a big fan, processing stuff through it did me a lot of good, and the story gets better the more it adds to the layers of interpersonal drama and symbolic meaning.
i will say that i’ve heard somewhere that jane could be talking about ectobiology here. and she could be. but i think her comments on jake’s body give it a sexual meaning, and also, if the roles were reversed and it was a guy saying, “your only value is being hot and i’m going to force you to have children with me,” it would not be ambiguous.
(also the prime time of jake’s life was after the brobot was in it which reveals that he never really found the robot more of an annoyance and inconvenience at times and certainly not as a sexual threat. because jake is scared right now, and i posit that if the robot really had been that kind of threat, jake would not be wishing to return to a time where it was in his life but i digress.)
“no, why does everyone want to kiss me? aranea, stop!”
context: this is after the conversation with crockertier jane. aranea has said before that she knows jake is attracted to her. she is about to “heal” jake and turn his hope powers up to maximum radiance and was going to do it by kissing him. jake Does Not Want to be kissed.
this is brain ghost dirk, during jake and crockertier jane’s conversation.
“look at our god tier pajamas. i look really stupid and it’s weird that my leg hair is gone! but i think your pajamas are decent.”
(and then like twenty minutes later brain ghost dirk, who canonically represents jake’s subconscious desires and understanding, calls himself jake’s boyfriend.)
like you don’t have to care or believe me. i’m sure i skipped some things but these conversations which all happen really close together have always really stuck out to me. but i’m just saying, please listen to what jake is actually saying and thinking. he’s not scared of dirk.
You’re not embarrassing yourself, this is a pretty common idea people have about Jake and the Brobot. That said, I disagree with basically everything about how this question is framed. Which imo, is good news for you, because it means the stuff you’re upset that the Brobot did is not actually a problem–if you decide to believe me, anyway.
If not, I welcome follow up questions on the matter. Let’s break this down, starting with one statement:
Jake doesn’t hate the Brobot.
This line. This “id rather deal with the monsters” line has caused me so many headaches, because people looove to quote Jake venting his irritation at Jane here completely out of context and take the statement at face value.
The thing is, we know what happens when Jake has to deal with the monsters instead of Brobot. What happens is Jake basically doesn’t go outside at all. On Jake’s 13th birthday, we’re told Jake pretty much just pretends to adventure all the time without actually going out much–no surprise, since he mentions growing up afraid of the monsters.
When he’s 16, by contrast, he treats going outside like an annoying chore. And while you chalk that up to Jake getting better at adventures across three years…
He still relies on Brobot to save him, so. He’s not that much better. It’s also made pretty clear Jake appreciates Dirk’s help and protection, and considers him a net positive in his own life.
And in fact, Dirk saving Jake through the Brobot over and over again is the only narrative justification we get for why Jake believes in Dirk’s ability to save him strongly enough to summon Brain Ghost Dirk.
Jake also makes it pretty clear that he A) Loves to wrestle and B) Ultimately likes the Brobot. He says it’s annoying sometimes in the same block of text where he says he finds it exciting, and that it makes his life feel like more of an adventure.
And when Jake is actually deep into the sexual objectification and abuse in his narrative, when he’s actually terrified and overwhelmed and feeling sexually threatened–
He says he wants to go back to “when all i had to worry about was being tackled by a feisty robot.” (PS: Hey he mentions wanting to go back to his pumpkin patch. Which is literally canonically the name for Dirkjake as a ship. Homestuck truly never ceases to give.)
The Brobot is being distanced from, and set as a highly preferable alternative to, all of the sexual violence being directed at Jake from Crockertier!Jane. Which strongly implies that the Brobot was not complicit in making Jake feel unsafe in this particular way.
So that’s some of the evidence in the “against” column. What is it that people base the idea that the Brobot sexually assaulted Jake on?
This single quote where AR references the Brobot’s “robogrope”. The grope is important, because this is the ~*Verifiable explicit text*~ everyone leans on to prove the Brobot was definitely literally groping Jake.
The trouble here is that the AR is actually well-known to be overly lascivious and sexually/romantically aggressive towards Jake. The AR is also a 13 year old boy with a flair for the dramatic. I am not really inclined to take the AR’s descriptions about the Brobot as the final word, especially since the description Jake himself gives is much more innocent.
Jake himself describes the Brobot, to the AR, in the exact same pesterlog where AR delivers his robogrope line. Jake does not describe groping, or sexual assault, or feeling objectified,uncomfortable, or manipulated–complaints he readily levies at AR himself, when AR actually behaves that way, btw.
No. Jake describes the encounter as “tender”. And that’s a pretty particular word to use. Not just because the definition of tender:
has literally nothing to do with sexual or predatory behavior–and in fact suggests its opposite. But because Tender has rather notable usage in Homestuck itself, as in…
Yeah. The word “Tender”, in Homestuck, most notably relates to Caliborn’s particular brand of tepid-ass sugar porn. Which means that as far as Jake himself is concerned, the Brobot’s treatment of him has a lot more in common with this…
…than with the kind of behavior displayed by Aranea, Crockertier!Jane, or the AR. It’s nice that Jake happens to be the one main character who’s casually implied to be subconciously omniscient, so you can easily make the argument some part of him literally knows about this.
This interpretation also happens to actually make sense from Dirk’s perspective, since Dirk was explicitly eager to draw Caliborn’s *TENDER* porn with himself and Jake. So there is actually canonical basis for Jake picking up on some of Brobot’s behaviors meant to convey “Tender”ness.
It’s just that only implies the Brobot was being cutesy, romantic, and caringly chaste–the kind of shit Caliborn likes. “Brobot rubbed a rose tenderly on Jake’s face while singing ghostbusters” is literally closer to the truth than “Brobot sexually assaulted Jake”, since again–and this is importantthe important bit:
So where are all my drawings of the Brobot’s wrestling giving way to the chastest, most caring, cutest displays imaginable, fandom? TIA. Dirkjake is canon, Homestuck is good, and I GUESS this is my 4/13 post because dirkjake remains my favorite thing about it.
No, not in the slightest. The only thing that remotely suggests that is Jake saying the wrestling got a little too “tender” for his liking, and he described trying to convey it as “awkward” at worst.
The idea that the Brobot seriously hurt him in any way simply doesn’t square with Jake’s actions at all. When the monsters were what Jake had to worry about, he holed up in his room all the time despite his professed love for adventure.
After the Brobot showed up, he was annoyed by it and viewed it as an unpleasant, impossible chore–but he was perfectly willing to go out and HAVE adventures with it around, and the monsters now seem to scare him far less–a sharp contrast to pre-Brobot Jake. And though his personal skill is a factor here, the Brobot DOES have to bail him out from getting murdered by a goat monster.
Also assuming that the Brobot would do more than just be a little too romantic/gentle with Jake implies assuming that Dirk would design it to be sexually aggressive, which doesn’t line up with anything in canon. OR that the AR can manipulate it’s AI beyond just toggling its settings, which we have no evidence for.
Jake was subject to romantic and even sexual harassment–by the AR, verbally, and in a situation where Dirk wasn’t able to do anything about the situation, and in fact likely wasn’t even aware of it since the way the narrative is presented implies the AR is already screening Jake’s messages from Dirk for a good chunk of the build up to Unite Synchronize (after the initial message in the bathroom, Dirk receives no more Jake pester bubbles, despite the fact that Jake is messaging him over and over and he DOES receive them from other sources.)
But extending that to the Brobot doesn’t really square with Jake’s general attitude towards it (annoyance and a bit of romantic discomfort, or at least, discomfort with vocalizing it’s actions TO THE AR, who he already has a fraught and uncomfortable relationship with) and it definitely sure as hell doesn’t square with Dirk’s motivations at all.
If I were to guess, I’d say the Brobot is programmed to be somewhat suggestive of romantic overtures and was in part an attempt at courtship on Dirk’s end, but then the AR coming along made it damn near impossible for Dirk and Jake to communicate about romantic stuff and that made Jake see it somewhat uncomfortably because it’s yet another instance of Dirk implying interest but being really vague and unclear about it.
But that’s essentially me just writing fanfiction based on a vague suggestion in canon, as is any allegation of sexual abuse.
All we know for sure is the Brobot acts in a way that makes Jake uncomfortable enough to mention it (in the hypersexualized and fucked up context he’s already trapped in with the AR, that Dirk can’t do anything about)…
…BUT not uncomfortable enough that he’s anything less than pleased when the Brobot shows up to save him from a monster, or uncomfortable enough to undercut the fact that he fundamentally views Dirk as a figure of safety and protection. All of the discomfort with Dirk he displays through Brain Ghost Dirk comes through verbally, where it’s easy to argue the AR’s treatment of him has messed with his view of the real Dirk.
In physical space–where the Brobot resided–Jake doesn’t see Brain Ghost Dirk as anything but a protector when the chips are down. The idea that any Dirk stand-in sexually abused him physically simply doesn’t square with that reality, to me.
Flying through Storytelling 