i like all the canon ships in the text of homestuck itself pretty much equally? davekat, vrisrezi, roxycallie, dirkjake, rosemary, javepeta–all of them own
i have a particular fondness for dirkjake (should be obvious if you follow this blog lol), because it hits some particularly personal notes for me. but they’re all p great.
I also like to think about john or jane in some of those ships, too (johnrezi or johnvrisrezi in different ways, janeroxycallie, johnroxy, all good examples)
im kinda a laissez faire multishipper by default, so ive got all sorts of other ships i think are cute even if i find them less interesting.
I’m a big Roxygen fan. I’m kind of a very laissez-faire multishipper in my heart of hearts, and that’s especially true with John. I ship him with like half the cast don’t even look at me…
That said, I’m also huge on Callieroxy. And Janecallieroxy and Johncallieroxy. Also I kind of figure between Davepeta, Dirk and Terezi, everyone’s probably more likely than not to recover their memories about everything over time with like, fraymotif god powers and stuff.
Not that the “bound together by shared memory of trauma” concept is bad at all for John and Roxy, now that you mention it. I have a similar mindset about how Dirk and Jake deal with their shared trauma as the ones who experienced the brunt of the responsibility for/harrassment of HAL/AR.
Hm. Homestuck is good. I need to catch up on fanfic.
Yeah!! One of the biggest strengths of Homestuck’s cast is, imo, their degree of flexibility. I wouldn’t really want to shortchange that, because it lets characters function as sort of quantum rep for different groups–like Gay vs. Bi Rose, for example–but without changing their fundamental character dynamics and relationships.
IE: You can read Rose as gay or bi, but she’s still with Kanaya in the end so it doesn’t matter much outside of how you personally relate to her. I think it’s cool that both gay and bi girls have that close reading available to them in that way, if that makes sense? Ditto Jake.
I think my favorite bad anti-dirkjake argument is when people go “Oh Brain Ghost Dirk/The Masterpiece happened in Another Timeline” because they genuinely seem to think it diminishes the weight it carries in the canon when actually
all they’re arguing is that Jake not only loves Dirk but loves him consistently, across multiple timelines, and demonstrates it by either:
A) choosing Dirk as his protector, which not only comes with gay romantic coding but also references a movie with philosophical undertones, reflecting both of their main interests
B) choosing to act as Dirk’s protector, which has also comes with gay romantic coding and especially connotations of jealous and protective love
or C) You know, literally decides to live with the guy and hold him close for pictures to their friends & family
Wow yeah you’re right all of this stuff happens across different timelines? Shit then I guess it makes sense to assume Jake doesn’t actually feel anything fo Dirk and it was one-sided, it’s not like the comic ever implies anything about what it means for relationships to survive timeline resets–
Oh. Oh right.
Anyway Dirkjake is canon thanks
Can we get an article on why Dirkjohn is terrible because I only discovered it yesterday and it makes me angry and upset for reasons I can’t vocalize.
‘No!’ I cry. ‘No, this is a wrong thing!’ but I can’t explain why.
I’ve been getting asks about this on and off over time and I’ve heard some suggestions that people have the wrong idea about where I stand on this, so I hope you don’t mind if I take your reblog to make my position clear.
The answer to your question is no, sorry.
I’m never going to write a big takedown of Dirkjohn, or really any other fanon ship, or fandom stuff in general, for a couple reasons. Like everything I write, those reasons got long, so I’ll put them under the cut:
Even with what I already have planned, the amount of writing and general Content I have slotted to produce is pretty much inexhaustible, and I only keep finding more interesting things to say about Homestuck along the way. So I could pretty much always be writing something better. That’s #1.
#2. I don’t like Dirkjohn, and I don’t particularly make that a secret. But it’s not like I have an axe to grind with the ship. It’s pretty ooc, which makes it uninteresting to me, and that’s pretty much it.
But not everyone ships or thinks that way and that’s…fine? Dirkjohn isn’t really hurting anyone the way your Gamrezi or Tavris or Dirkroxy ships are, and even really bad fan content doesn’t personally upset me unless it’s actually having broad cultural impact.
So even in the extremely specific and rarely considered realms of Things In Homestuck Fandom I Don’t Like, some lgbt people and minors playing around with an ooc ship is far from the top of the things that bother me.
I literally don’t talk about the stuff that TRULY pisses me off in public at all, because I have no way to not make it personal, and there’s a tiny bit of that on Tumblr, but most of it is elsewhere.
Which brings me to why I decided to write this.
Buckle up, because I’m gonna get really real. Trigger warnings for political stuff if that upsets you.
#3
Mainly, I’d never seriously write about Dirkjohn because I’m just not interested in writing anything in a spirit of negativity. It’s not enjoyable to me and I don’t particularly feel it’s where I shine.
It’s draining and depressing, because I just…don’t want to be engaging contentiously or judgmentally with groups largely made up of minors and other lgbt people.
I say this every so often but: there’s Nazis, guys. Like, actual fascists bigots that want to kill anyone who ships Dirkjohn or Dirkjake or Vrisrezi or Rosemary or Davekat, etc etc etc are in the white house.
Fandom shipping divisions feel pretty petty when you keep that in mind.
Some days the negativity and fear and despair and sheer sense of hopelessness I feel when I look at the state of the world pounds on me to the point I can’t make myself get out of bed.
Soon after November I saw a tweet from someone talking about how their every running thought now included the constant underlying Mantra: We’re doomed.
That’s upsettingly relatable to me. I haven’t stopped feeling that way yet, and I lost my job and pretty much my relationship in the process of figuring out how to live with it. I’m still figuring out–I’m sort of stable now, but my mental health is hanging at “Functionally Self-Sustaining” by pretty much the barest thread I have.
And this Homestuck stuff? All my writing and video making and arguing in favor of the comic? This is my way of fighting all of that. Both as a way of relieving that awful sense of doom and pressure, and, if I’m incredibly lucky, as a way of doing the same for others.
I want Homestuck–Progressive media in general, but Homestuck specifically–to be recognized as the cultural touchstone it deserves to be. Not just for LGBT people–though primarily for us, yes– but for progressives in general.
Homestuck brings something genuinely new to the table, and it’s still growing and evolving as an IP, and I want to bring that stuff to light and nurture the excitement that all of us still, on some level, feel for it. Because I think it deserves it. And because I want to see what comes next.
And like, I’m sure that’ll sound silly to some people, but it’s all I’ve got. I don’t particularly believe in God, and I certainly don’t believe in the system that put us here. I only really believe in art, and in people.
So I have to believe that if I try hard enough and I’m kind enough, something in this twisted culture where we’ve all been conditioned to hurt and judge each other and prize, above all else, the ability to Care The Least and be the Least Affected–a culture that absolutely rears it’s head in progressive circles even as we denounce it as an approach to politcs–will give.
Maybe we’ll learn how to actually be friends with each other. How to be kind.
The story of these kids rising out of impossible limitations and escaping an inherently authoritarian system that destroys them reminds me a lot about my own life and future prospects right now, and it gives me hope.
I want to pass that hope on, as much as possible. And if I can manage it, I want this silly comic that we all love to be something that binds us and brings us together, as a community. As a people.
And if we can do that, if we can stop tearing each other apart over mistakes and miswordings in the pursuit of an impossible degree of ideological purity, maybe we can make things better. Maybe we can ascend.
That’s impossible, maybe, and it might very well make me a fool to engage with this community with that motivation. But it’s who I am and why I’m here, and I’d rather be mocked for being hopeful than praised for being cynical.
As such, tearing into some ship I don’t like is never going to do nearly as much for my desires as talking about the near-infinite things about Homestuck that I DO like. Given the choice I will always, always opt for the latter.
So my genuine advice–and I really hope this doesn’t feel condescending–is if seeing any fandom content affects you negatively to the degree you wrote about there, well: I can relate, because yeah, same.
But I just blacklist it and talk about stuff I like instead. And that has done wonders for my mental health. I heartily suggest doing the same, and then devoting your energy to boosting and praising the stuff in the fandom that you DO like.
Again, I hope that doesn’t sound condescending. I wrote all this so that I’d stand a chance at coming off as sincere when I say that I don’t think my approach makes me better than anyone. It’s just the only way I, personally, manage to survive.
But I also think it’s the path to a healthier, more vibrant fandom. Whether or not people are shipping Dirkjohn doesn’t matter to me. What matters is making sure to speak up positively and kindly and with a sense of fun so that the fandom can develop a better understanding of Dirk, Jake, and the comic itself overall.
And what double matters is creating a culture interested in celebrating and creating more than criticizing, although there is definitely value to both.
My thoughts are: It’s great and I love it, though I do think there are some circumstances where m/f is presented well (I do still ship Johnroxy and Johnrezi, but not to the exclusion of the obviously canon and thoroughly goddamn transcendent f/f pairings for both Roxy and Terezi. I’m not sure how exactly that’s going to work out–assuming John DOES end up dating anyone, it’s possible he won’t and he’ll be aroace and that would be cool too– but I have some guesses.)
Beyond what I wrote in my Lilith in Starlight post and what I want to write with regards to Davekat, though, I don’t have many thoughts worth putting to text yet. That’s mainly because I’m honestly not sure exactly how the nature of the Vrisrezi situation will resolve, and so I’m waiting for the epilogue before I draw any conclusions I feel are worth asserting there.
My honest hope there is that Terezi’s gay gay gay love will find a way to save/redeem Vriska, and possibly even save both (Terezi) and (Vriska) as well. But that is just a hope, and a guess at what I think is at least a plausibility. In the interest of being practical about where I devote my screaming about Homestuck, I’m waiting to see what direction Homestuck ultimately goes in before saying more about the romances, for that and other reasons.
So basically, for now my thoughts are contained in Lilith in Starlight. Eventually there’ll be stuff about Davekat if I can ever manage it, but now that I finished writing the best most important thing i’ve ever written and will be posting within today and tomorrow, I’m currently going to back off from writing meta for a while and focus on video editing and also, uh, you know–getting a job. Still a thing I have to do.
Litmus test for whether or not you, a female shipper, are fetishizing a male/male pairing: Do you care about the characters beyond their physical appearances and the fact that they’re part of a male/male relationship? If you did not find them physically attractive, would you still be interested in their character dynamic?
If so, you’re fine! Shipping is fine! Shipping is okay!
But what about if: You enjoy thoughts of the characters having sex? You read sexual fanfiction? You draw sexual fanart? What if you passed the first test and do those things? What if you failed the first test and do those things?
…This is also okay! A little more nuanced, but fine! Porn is this weird case where it’s hard to draw a line on what is morally “okay” but I think a good ground rule is, is it hurting anyone else? This goes for “real” porn and “fake/animated” porn. If your perceptions of actual human beings are being damaged by seeing fictional male characters as nothing but sexual objects, that is damaging. If you’re talking in public about real people being “yaoi” as if they’re on display for you simply by existing, that is damaging.
However as long as you can separate reality from fiction, enjoying porn is like enjoying any other piece of fiction. You can enjoy the visceral emotion of a serial killer on the hunt even though you would never kill someone, and you can enjoy watching two boys make out- but basic social decency says don’t stare at strangers IRL. That’s the line. Don’t involve people in your sex life without consent, which includes things like asking cosplayers to kiss for you, or referring to strangers using sexual terminology assuming they don’t know what it means.
Most of all remember that LGBT people are human beings, not objects. Straight men can watch women in porn, straight women can watch men in porn, gay or straight. The important thing is to know the difference between real life and fantasy and respect real people and their identities. Respect women! Respect LGBT people!
Flying through Storytelling 