just imagine how cool jake probably thinks karkat’s sickles are like it’s probably incredibly embarrassing tbh karkat is like caught between holy shit fam they’re not that cool calm the fuck down and no wait what am I saying yes they are they’re the COOLEST the absolute most deadly and amazing weaponry in the universe and Jake is like all right but fight me bro I want to see them in ACTION and Karkat is sweating bullets like okay but first of all how am I gonna fight you you use GUNS and jake is just shrugging and has his dukes up and is bouncing around all like JUST TAKE A SWING AT ME BRO COME ON DIRK CAN FIGHT ME JUST FINE WITH HIS MELEE NONSENSE SURELY YOU CAN TOO
Karkat is like firstly please don’t compare me to a strider and secondly please stop hopping around what the fuck is this (it’s footwork you fool everyone knows you can’t box a good round without it)
rose and kanaya voraciously search for and consume fanworks in earth c including fanworks about the versions of themselves that have transitioned into popular myth, sometimes kanaya will look over at rose who is hunched over her laptop typing furiously grinning like a maniac and she sighs and is like all right rose what anonymous kink meme are you writing about us on now ………… 👀
Do you think the time Roxy harassed Dirk into kissing her counts as assault(or "coercion")? It's uncomfy to think about, especially because they're both overall nice people, but it's been in the back of my mind lately. I get the feeling that if a guy did that to a girl, there would be an outcry. Ugh, I would've liked to see the alpha kids resolve their issues after the final battle.
tw: kind of frank discussions about sexual assault and my own personal feelings on a high level about exploring grey morality in fiction
I think the most important thing to consider when you’re trying these questions out is what the victim thinks, instead of thinking about what the situation would look like in a totally different context with real life people. We already know what Dirk thought of everything that went down, because after Trickster mode ended they talked for like a million words about their feelings. The crypt bed talks are the closest thing we get to a conclusion for the alphas (which sucks so bad, I’m with you there.)
This is why I hate applying real world rules to fiction like they fit 1:1, because they often don’t. Is Dirk written like a victim of assault? Do you feel that his dialog in the events after the trickster arc imply him as one? I don’t think anyone would argue that what Roxy did there was OKAY, it most certainly was not – it was horrendously shitty of her, in fact – but up to that point the context of Dirk and Roxy’s relationship always had this poisonous underpinning of Roxy resenting Dirk for being gay and pressuring him about it in really uncool ways, and we saw on screen first hand what Dirk thought about that stuff. He doesn’t read like an assault victim to me.
Again, in my mind, the most important thing when you’re talking about things like assault is whether or not THE VICTIM FEELS ASSAULTED.
I think given what we saw of Roxy talking to Jane and Jake and Dirk talking to Jane, it’s obvious that Roxy feels absolutely fucking AWFUL about what she did and knows it was absolutely 100% wrong, and I think it’s also obvious that if some rando from Tumblr walked up to Dirk and said soooooooooo Roxy is an abusive manipulator guilty of sexually assaulting you what are you going to do about that Dirk would probably literally punch that rando in the face and then fume about how wrong they were for weeks – Because he personally does not see himself as a victim and his and Roxy’s situation was extenuating, weird, not really translatable to real life, and they love each other deeply despite how fucked up everything is.
The alphas ALL hurt each other deeply over the course of their stories, and it’s a fucking crime that we didn’t get to see them all reconcile on screen, but applying context-free thought exercises to the group that way rubs me the wrong way. Fiction isn’t reality and Roxy dubcon kissing Dirk is just one of a parade of shitty things we see happen on screen over the course of Homestuck.
For instance, Roxy being fucked up on Trickster drugs and being pushier with Dirk than she ever would have off them has an obvious parallel to Jane being fucked up on MIND CONTROL and threatening Jake with literal rape and sexual slavery. Do we take her to task for that too? Or, like, what about 10 seconds ago when Jane trickster’d Jake? That was a pretty uncomfy situation too, wasn’t it? We know what a low state Jake and Jane were in at that time and we know their relationship is in utter shambles because of some combination of entitlement and unrequited pining and poorly handled festering issues. The AR manipulating Jake and Dirk when the AR itself is a victim. Jane in a moment of emotional turmoil stating that she liked Roxy better when she was drinking. The alpha situation gets VICIOUS sometimes, and that is a big part of why I love them so fucking much. Their stories are hella personal and the narrative doesn’t really pull punches.
Back to this, I find the the things Roxy did OFF the drugs “worse”, actually, it’s implied she’d been pretty uncool and guilt trippy about it for years and years and Dirk DID feel like shit about it – not at Roxy, exactly, but at himself. He internalized a lot of it as his problem when it absolutely was not, and I DO think he and Roxy need to work this poison out between them at some point between now and eternity. But the difference between fiction and real life is that I can look at this plot structured in fiction and feel hope that they WILL talk about it and will work it out because this isn’t reality and an actual gay man is not at risk of undergoing actual IRL abuse at the hands of an actual woman. Fiction is a safe arena to tackle hard questions because real people are not put in the position of having to guess at real people’s true feelings and risking perpetuation of actual abuse.
I hope that made sense.
Oh and one last note before the disclaimer – this is a HUGE HUGE HUGE HUGE part of why I am fucking NOT okay with Roxy having been silently bisexual the whole fucking time. God, the way female sexuality is handled in Homestuck upsets me. If Roxy herself was bisexual the whole time the fact that it NEVER comes up when her struggling with her shitty feelings about Dirk and his orientation were so central to that entire relationship. Jesus. But this post isn’t about that so I won’t go into the full damn rant.
(obvious disclaimer about anyone with personal history with this sort of thing that they project onto the characters etc etc etc I’m not getting into any of that because victims are free to cope however they want and if ascribing a fictional character victimhood in ways that are different from how I read that character is one of them that’s absolutely fine with an asterisk about how that is a very personal mechanism and that reading isn’t and can’t be expected to be universal.)
AH I don't want to correct you but HIC never influenced Jane! Jane can't be held responsible for her actions under the crocker tier thing because it was only an AI basically driving around her body. one that ARquius said was even more superior than he was. I have evidence from the comic if you want me to go find it? I'm not usually one to come to Janes aid in defending her because I'm not a huge fan but she shouldn't be held responsible for those things she did to Jake because it was all the AI.
I deeply disagree, the things Jane did and said to Jake were at least partially from a place of deep seated and yeah pretty dark entitlement, she still shows flashes of her own personality while under the influence of that headband and I think any reading that completely absolves Jane (or Jade) is reductive and kind of boring so I’ll stick with mine, you do you
(why would a completely unaffiliated AI give a shit about dave calling her hot, about being so jealous of Roxy’s bond with Rose that she literally attempts to murder Rose (and instead murders Roxy), about choosing Jake, specifically, to be her captive trophy husband (”you’re lucky you’re so hot”, that is not an AI speaking, that is Jane) and so and and so on and so on – but honestly, I REALLY am not here to argue about it, just – you’re not gonna change my mind)
Okay but,
I mean, we can blame Jane and nag her for so much of the other things she did but the one thing she honestly didn’t do?
Like yeah it’s more interesting if you blame Jane, sorry that this is “boring” but. Hey, sometimes the more fun way isn’t exactly right.
why the actual blessed fuck would HIC design an AI that blushes when dave calls it hot and gets jealous of roxy’s friendship with rose
AH I don't want to correct you but HIC never influenced Jane! Jane can't be held responsible for her actions under the crocker tier thing because it was only an AI basically driving around her body. one that ARquius said was even more superior than he was. I have evidence from the comic if you want me to go find it? I'm not usually one to come to Janes aid in defending her because I'm not a huge fan but she shouldn't be held responsible for those things she did to Jake because it was all the AI.
I deeply disagree, the things Jane did and said to Jake were at least partially from a place of deep seated and yeah pretty dark entitlement, she still shows flashes of her own personality while under the influence of that headband and I think any reading that completely absolves Jane (or Jade) is reductive and kind of boring so I’ll stick with mine, you do you
(why would a completely unaffiliated AI give a shit about dave calling her hot, about being so jealous of Roxy’s bond with Rose that she literally attempts to murder Rose (and instead murders Roxy), about choosing Jake, specifically, to be her captive trophy husband (”you’re lucky you’re so hot”, that is not an AI speaking, that is Jane) and so and and so on and so on – but honestly, I REALLY am not here to argue about it, just – you’re not gonna change my mind)
Okay but,
I mean, we can blame Jane and nag her for so much of the other things she did but the one thing she honestly didn’t do?
Like yeah it’s more interesting if you blame Jane, sorry that this is “boring” but. Hey, sometimes the more fun way isn’t exactly right.
why the actual blessed fuck would HIC design an AI that blushes when dave calls it hot and gets jealous of roxy’s friendship with rose
jane is still in there, yo
I-she didn’t? The AI was supposed to imitate Jane but make her more, evil I guess. Take the dark pars of her Jane would never act on. We all have dark intentions buried somewhere in us, and by making an AI that copied Jane, it acted on and made her do those bad things. I’m not saying Jane is guilt free, she did a lot of bad things in the comic but this one bad thing I can honestly say and defend that it wasn’t her.
Dark intentions, yes. Exactly. Jane would never actually do that stuff in her right mind, but if, say, Roxy had gotten mind controlled instead, she wouldn’t have acted the same way. She would have done other dark things, acted out other dark intentions.
Is Jane personally responsible for doing these things under mind control? Obviously not. But there’s nothing Jane does in Crockerteir that Jane isn’t capable of at least THINKING about doing, deep in her heart, and that’s way more interesting than “an AI made her evil.” We definitely do all have those dark intentions. Having actually seen Jane’s, we can see that they’re very dark, indeed. And that tells us interesting things about what kind of person Jane is.
AH I don't want to correct you but HIC never influenced Jane! Jane can't be held responsible for her actions under the crocker tier thing because it was only an AI basically driving around her body. one that ARquius said was even more superior than he was. I have evidence from the comic if you want me to go find it? I'm not usually one to come to Janes aid in defending her because I'm not a huge fan but she shouldn't be held responsible for those things she did to Jake because it was all the AI.
I deeply disagree, the things Jane did and said to Jake were at least partially from a place of deep seated and yeah pretty dark entitlement, she still shows flashes of her own personality while under the influence of that headband and I think any reading that completely absolves Jane (or Jade) is reductive and kind of boring so I’ll stick with mine, you do you
(why would a completely unaffiliated AI give a shit about dave calling her hot, about being so jealous of Roxy’s bond with Rose that she literally attempts to murder Rose (and instead murders Roxy), about choosing Jake, specifically, to be her captive trophy husband (”you’re lucky you’re so hot”, that is not an AI speaking, that is Jane) and so and and so on and so on – but honestly, I REALLY am not here to argue about it, just – you’re not gonna change my mind)
Okay but,
I mean, we can blame Jane and nag her for so much of the other things she did but the one thing she honestly didn’t do?
Like yeah it’s more interesting if you blame Jane, sorry that this is “boring” but. Hey, sometimes the more fun way isn’t exactly right.
why the actual blessed fuck would HIC design an AI that blushes when dave calls it hot and gets jealous of roxy’s friendship with rose
jane is still in there, yo
I-she didn’t? The AI was supposed to imitate Jane but make her more, evil I guess. Take the dark pars of her Jane would never act on. We all have dark intentions buried somewhere in us, and by making an AI that copied Jane, it acted on and made her do those bad things. I’m not saying Jane is guilt free, she did a lot of bad things in the comic but this one bad thing I can honestly say and defend that it wasn’t her.
Dark intentions, yes. Exactly. Jane would never actually do that stuff in her right mind, but if, say, Roxy had gotten mind controlled instead, she wouldn’t have acted the same way. She would have done other dark things, acted out other dark intentions.
Is Jane personally responsible for doing these things under mind control? Obviously not. But there’s nothing Jane does in Crockerteir that Jane isn’t capable of at least THINKING about doing, deep in her heart, and that’s way more interesting than “an AI made her evil.” We definitely do all have those dark intentions. Having actually seen Jane’s, we can see that they’re very dark, indeed. And that tells us interesting things about what kind of person Jane is.
okay then can we all agree that we shouldn’t say Jane’s not responsible for attacking Jake like that? She’s a teenager with a crush and the AI acted on that in extreme ways so we can’t say Jane is totally responsible for those actions.
I don’t think I’m conveying what I’m trying to say well.
Jane, hh, okay, Jane honestly is trying her best. And again and again and again she sabotages herself or gets hurt by Jake. I’m sure she’s p mad at him by this point but Jane’s not the type of character to get revenge. At least not like that.
So who’s responsible for bringing those awful things into reality has got to be the AI, not Jane. Saying it’s Janes fault is like me saying someone’s an awful person because they once got pissed and said they wished so and so would fall down the stairs, when in reality they’re a good person. I hope this makes sense.
man, what the hell that’s literally what everyone was saying the whole time my dude…
Jane is about as culpable for her actions in Crockerteir now as someone who was force fed drugs is culpable of theirs while high. IE: essentially not at all, but the things that they do during that state reveals priorities, thoughts, feelings, and character traits that we might not see without it.
I feel like you’re arguing a point absolutely nobody made
I'de like to see a movie, or, better, tv series based on the Homestuck universe and with Hussie as a screenwriter but w/ other characters and plod (basically just me craving for more Homestuck in any form of media)
all right but, serious version I guess
There is no studio on this earth who is going to let Homestuck be HOMESTUCK on either the big or small screen. I agree that a tv series would be better than a movie, just because one less than 3 hour long movie is not nearly enough time, but also just like – any adaption of homestuck that restricts it to one medium just … doesn’t work, you know? The coolest thing about Homestuck aside from its infuriatingly compelling character writing and dialog (90% of which would get cut in ANY adaptation) is how multi-platform it is, how it’s fully and cheekily aware of the fact that is exists on the internet in a web page and plays with that knowledge and branches insidiously into other forms of internet-based communication on a whim.
also on the polar opposite end of the pretentious protest scale, look no one is going to just let a bunch of little kids get in front of a camera and start slinging around fucks with reckless abandon and if dave strider can’t say fuck you can pass me right by I ain’t buyin
the core issue is that homestuck has a cast of young characters written for an audience of 20-somethings which works fine in the medium(s) it was created in but not so fine when you try to box it in to a defined and carefully cultivated format that has to pumped for maximum appeal to justify the costs of creating it
also i have z e r o faith in the queer narratives being respected
I’m terrified enough of the actual creators of homestuck right now let alone what Popular Media Studio Whatever would do to it
fuck it my other reply was better
back to being a inexorable venomous blight upon the earth hsssss
Talking about Jane earlier got me thinking, you know, Jane is not at all the only character that uses this device to show off the less desirable traits lurking in the psyche of all these damaged teens. Like. So many characters have these lurking deep seated issues that stay hidden deep down because the characters are pretty good at projecting a less damaged and more together version of themselves.
If that sounds familiar it’s because it’s a fucking outrageously relatable quality and part of what makes the Homestuck characters RESONATE so much. Why they feel like they have all this dimension and depth that makes us grab on to them and never want to let go.
I’m just going to run through some examples here while I’m thinking about it. The first OBVIOUSLY since thinking about her is what got me going on this – Jane. Crockertier Jane removing the layers of self-imposed filter on Jane’s festering insecurity, entitlement issues, jealousy and so on. I’ve already talked enough about that today.
Grimbark Jade! You notice Jade says what she’s thinking WAY more easily while she’s mind controlled, and she still sounds like herself – she sounds kinda like she does when she’s owning Karkat repeatedly, doesn’t she? Because angry Jade has that same effect of pushing her nice girl filter aside and letting the angry witch (not a cutesy slur, her literal witch class) within fly free. Grimbark Jade tells us that behind that nice girl front Jade Harley actually thinks some pretty uncharitable thoughts sometimes, she just keeps a tight fucking lid on it because – well, don’t most people? Relatable as fuck.
Jadesprite! Since we’re talking about Jade anyway. Jade likes to think she has everything together, that her visions from Skaia and her scientific prowess and the tools her Grandpa left her are more than enough to handle everything that comes her way, she’s independent, she’s capable, she’s certainly never LONELY oh no of course not certainly never CRUSHINGLY OVERWHELMED by the responsibility of her own existence nah those are weak feelings for weak girls who aren’t as awesome as Jade! And then – Jadesprite. Why do you think Jade got SO ANGRY at Jadesprite? Because she was being confronted with something she knew deep down was a reflection of weaknesses in herself (totally normal ones that her later arc reinforced were a mistake to pretend weren’t there – Loneliness and fear and regret are all tied in with Jade’s character progression and learning how to deal with those things is where I imagine her arc would have gone if Homstuck’s ending hadn’t been the literary equivalent of chopping off a limb and cauterizing the wound.) Jadesprite is Jade without the filter of implacable strength Jade imposes on herself to fuckin cope with living on a hell island with the stuffed corpse of her grandpa who she grew up thinking literally killed himself at BEST. god damn
Davesprite. Dave Strider with a slow long agonizing depressing arc wherein he realizes his coolkid persona won’t make anyone think of him as their best friend anymore, and in the absence of the security that persona afforded him when he was The Real Dave he has no idea what to do with himself. He’s lost, he feels aimless, untethered, incapable of being happy – and yes, Davesprite is his own character, but you can still infer a lot from Dave’s character about him – for instance, how he completely ties his self worth up in how useful he is to his friends or how worthwhile they find him and has no idea how to even BEGIN the hard journey of looking within for worth instead of relying eternally on changeable external sources. Davesprite is Dave not WITHOUT a filter but certainly with a VERY DIFFERENT one.
Homestuck does this with almost every single damn character on its roster at some point. Shows a version of them with a different or lesser or completely missing filter to highlight flaws and issues and internal struggles of all kinds.
Homestuck is a damn deep dive into an exercise about analyzing nature vs nurture and what we’re predisposed to do and what comes from within and what is put upon us by forces out of our control, and how that line is blurry and messy and everyone has the potential to be either the worst or best version of themselves. Even Caliborn was given a choice. Hussie-The-Character explained it to him at great painstaking length.
There are so many other examples. Jasprose is Rose without a filter, and the way Jasprose goes around gleefully calling every hot girl she sees hot and delighting smugly in knowing more than just about anyone else and lording over the information and playing smarter-than-thou games – that tells us a LOT about Rose! A LOT about what sort of urges Rose tamps down on every day in an effort to just be fucking cool!
I bet you have things like this with yourself, right? Doesn’t everyone?
Tricksters! Look at how they act. They’re not themselves but there is plenty to glean from them. Jane immediately goes for Jake, the object of her desire, to pursue an exaggerated version of her idealized future. Trickster Jake is a passive fucking ragdoll who immediately acquiesces to everything everyone demands of him because their happiness becomes his happiness – Jake hates confrontation, so Trickster Jake is just a fucking doormat. Roxy goes for Jake AND Dirk because divorced from the guilt she normally feels for harboring desire toward either one of them she knows exactly what she wants! ETC ETC. Of course they would never do any of this shit if they weren’t high as balls and incapable of understanding the meaning of the word “consequence.” That’s the point. Seeing what they do in this situation is an interesting window in!
Brain Ghost Dirk is a version of Jake (yes, of Jake, not Dirk) without a specific filter Jake runs his own personality through before he’s comfortable presenting it to others, and you’ll notice, it’s EXTREMELY biting and critical sometimes. Jake knows what he’s about. He just buries it most of the time because that’s easier than dealing with it.
I could seriously keep going.
Homestuck loves to show us what our favorites do and say and ARE when basic filters go out the window. Those filters that most of us employ to make other people believe we don’t all have intrusive thoughts or bad desires or just plain old weaknesses we’re ashamed of and want to keep hidding at costs – or that we occasionally think things or think about doing things we would never ever ever do in real life are demolished or changed or temporarily suspended.
It’s brilliant tbh. It lets us see facets of characters that would normally never really get full spotlight reveals by their very nature, especially with protagonists.
Vriska vs (Vriska) – (Vriska) is just Vriska with some more self awareness and more willingness to let down her self-imposed filter and actually examine the shit she wants and why because watching Aranea fuck the timeline over out of motivations eerily similar to her own
hardcore shook her enough to develop in that direction.
(which makes sense since HER original motivations are copying Mindfang who IS alt-aranea lmao I love Homestuck) (Vriska) is still Vriska, it’s just a very very different lens through which to view her character.
blah blah blah blah etc there are so many examples
anyway I love Homestuck and good character writing what up
I feel like this is, honestly, what the true Ultimate Self is that Davepeta talks about. It’s a metatextual thing, it’s not a physical concept of tapping into your evolved meta consciousness. It’s the simple fact that we’re all made up of all of our parts. Not just the things we do and think, but the things that we could do or could think. The roads we don’t take matter as much as the roads we did. The things we consider but don’t act on. The intrusive thoughts and our darkest desires. When you spend an hour wondering what would be different in your life if you’d done THIS instead of THAT… that’s the Ultimate Self.
dirk has soft, fine hair and jake is a deeply tactile person
dirk and jake just. sitting in jake’s jungle orb (because fuck canon I live in Thanks For Playing’s post Act 7 Universe thanks kindly) and dirk just took a shower and here they are on the couch. they’re watching a movie and dirk has his head in jake’s lap and jake is just stroking his hair and dirk is going into a literal trance
just completely sinking into the couch forgetting his name eyes slipping closed
lips parted, breathing soft
he can hear his heartbeat in his ears the movie sound kind of fades
his entire existence narrows to the sound of jake’s breathing and the feeling of his fingers
and then suddenly he gets that anxiety spike that dirk sometimes gets and thinks shit, I have to do – I have to –
and then he remembers that he doesn’t have to do shit, and jake is here with him, and they’re happy in their little jungle orb, and the entire world is just holding its breath and waiting for whenever they’re ready and the only thing that matters is him and jake and that moment of relief coupled with everything else is like
euphoric
and dirk just feels completely and totally happy
he kind of mumbles and jake is like what’s that, buddy? and dirk is just like love you. and jake kind of pauses and then goes back to doing his thing and is like right back at ya friendo and dirk smiles and starts drifting off to sleep, content
Let’s get a thread going with good things from post-Gigapause hs so I stop feeling like shit about it.
davepeta exists, also dirk and jake are canon again & the hiveswap trailer looks amazing. theres a couple things
awkward bisexual dave strider
the 30 page strider conversation
decapitation jokes
rose and kanaya got married
davepeta and jasprose and gcatavros
jake exploding to save dirk’s life in the masterpiece
“this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, and bear in mind that one time my leg was chewed off, and I tragically lost a sister to murder”
whatever your opinions on the retcon itself the way it was executed remains really damn cool
rorb lalorb
That moment in Collide where Dave realizes he’s going to have to kill Dirk and they both have this moment of silent understanding
Getting to see Jake displaying clear introverted traits and the increased diversity that brings to things, there are so few good introvert characters who are actually uncomfortable in groups!
Oppa Toby Style
[S] Remem8er. Damn Remem8er is the good shit.
Dirk and Jake living happily with flower crowns on an island with consorts. Jake becomes a reality star billionaire famous for showing off his hot ass. Jake and Dirk have a pet cat and it’s also a bull man troll ghost. I put these all in one cause I realize that most people don’t find literally everything about Jake’s life in credits wonderful.
Roxygen AND roxycallie, TWO canon-heavy ships that you can pick your poison of liking, holy wow, a buffet of Roxy ships!
Roxy and Dave’s lightning round.
The amazing animation in Act 7.
“hooooooooooooooooooooooow did you tell your friends”
(Vriska) and (Terezi) meeting in the afterlife and cuddling happily.
Me: I love homestuck so much, it is so good, it is a wonderful thing, I'm so glad I decided to read it, I'm so glad it's 4/13, I'm so happy that this beautiful work of art is in my life.
Also Me: Ah, yes. One year since Andrew "fucking" Hussie came into my house and personally kicked me in the nads.
like I know it’s still really trendy to do the “homestuck is trash” thing if you ever liked homestuck, even if you currently like homestuck, and I just need you to understand it’s not my jam. I’m not going to unfollow anybody for it but understand that even when I am at peak salt, as I was last year post act 7, it is still a wonderful story that has changed my life and that I consider a net good. I still recommend it to people. I think even if I went back in time to tell my past self that the ending was bad (imo), I’d still want said past self to read it. like ironic disparagement of my own interests isn’t something I’m really into, at least not for homestuck. I’ll shittalk dangan ronpa all the live long day and god knows I have PLENTY of words, many of them negative, for current-era fire emblem. but you’ll never see me say homestuck is trash. if that’s your aesthetic then obviously I can’t stop you but I’m just past that stage of my life. it’s a net good for me and I genuinely do not think it’s bad. in fact it’s quite good.
I am INCREDIBLY sleepy rn so I may regret making this post come morning but I just wanted to share my 4/13 thoughts on homestuck like all the other cool kids
those thoughts are: homestuck is good
I think of it like this
Not every PART of homestuck is good. homestuck is not ONLY good. and critical readings of media you love are awesome!
But Homestuck, the thing created from the sum of all the parts, some of which are honestly fucking awful and some of which are absolutely transcendent?
jane crocker content where she’s allowed to be a little biting and snappy and judgy without anyone ever questioning whether or not she loves her friends and family beyond everything because she most certainly does. jane crocker content where she’s plus size and beautiful and dresses in a bizarre pastiche of suave debonair hard femme heiress and eyebrow raising pseudo-retro soft butch twee shit because when you’re a Crocker you can be a queen and a geek and pull off the best of both worlds. jane crocker content where there is no doubt that she will slap a bitch down if necessary with quick and brutal efficiency but also sit with you and marathon bad netflix shows and eat six gallons of ice cream while gossiping eagerly and shamelessly. jane crocker content where she’s an approachable everyperson with a smile like the sunrise but you say one wrong thing about her friends – maybe even something jane herself has said – and the sun sets instantly and the look she gives you makes your stomach drop down into satan’s wine cellar because you KNOW you just fucked up
some quick doods that I ended up liking a lot? Anyways the Retcon version of that time in GO when Dream Karkat showed up in the same room as his sleeping self and then proceeded to demand Dave caress his face in a platonic fashion.
Let me start this off, to avoid confusion, by stating plainly that I myself have NPD as well and that’s why it was so easy for me to recognize.
This post is going to be relatively long. I’ll add a “tl;dr” after every text-heavy section. That will also be bold for convenience.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder’s most prominent and defining trait is the genuine belief that one is superior to all of those around them. Often narcissists will have a sense of entitlement, a need to be recognized for things they have done, and an outright obsession with control. It can develop from many different things, or it can be genetic. Since none of the other Strilondes display serious Narcissistic traits, I’m assuming it was something that developed.
What we know about Dirk is that he grew up alone. Without adult supervision and, well, without anyone. Human beings are social creatures, this can’t be helped. The lack of human interaction he had as a young child could have easily prevented him from growing out of the self-centered nature humans have in early childhood. So, yeah. Neglect is assumed to be one cause of NPD.
tl;dr: Dirk grew up alone and being left alone/neglected as a child is one reason NPD develops.
Beyond that, we can see Dirk has an absolute craze for control. We can see this in his interests as well as in his friendships.
Dirk seems to be a man of a few interests, but the three that stand out the most are puppets, robots, and philosophy. I don’t think much needs to be said for puppets and how that relates to his need for controlling other things, so I’ll move on to robots immediately. Dirk’s use for robots is basically “sparring partner that I will spend months crafting and destroy in days”. This might not seem to say much, but really what it means is that Dirk puts himself into these machines- so much of his own time, energy, resources, etc.- just to inevitably destroy them. Why? To make himself feel as if he is constantly growing and improving as a person? As a plain old power trip? To prove to himself that he is better than even his own creations?
Personally, I think it’s the last one* (I’ll be getting back to this), but any way you look at it Dirk’s controlling personality is seen best through how he treats/views his robots- if not there then in the fact that he makes them at all. Robots are complex, difficult things but they are something created by Dirk that he can control, something easy.
His third major fixation is philosophy. If I had a nickle for every Narcissist who was into philosophy, myself included, I’d be the richest and best person in the world. This relates to his control obsession in that one of his biggest problems with himself is that he can’t control his own thought processes- that he can’t control his own brain. An interest in philosophy is, at its core, a desire to understand brains; and, in this case, an innate desire to control them. For Dirk, I’d guess his interest comes mostly from wanting control over his own brain/body, but that’s not to say he seek to control his friends as well.
tl;dr: Dirk is obsessed with control. This shows in his interests in puppets, robots, and philosophy.
Moving on to concrete textural evidence that Dirk has NPD:
We can see here not only an obsession with control, but a desire for his friends to be flawless. This one doesn’t require much explaining; he wants both Jane and Jake to be better people. For people with NPD, it’s entirely normal to only surround oneself with “special” people (people who are worth our time) and to, at times (or often) suggest ways for them to be even more deserving of having a narcissist in their lives.
DSM-5 Criteria that relates: Believing that you are superior and can only be understood by or associate with equally special people
Now, lets go back to what I said above about Dirk’s desire to understand his own brain, shall we? The fact that he made Lil Hal in his own image is honestly proof enough of his narcissism, but then we have the fact that he frequently talks to him in what I assume to be a way to see how other’s see him, reflect on that, and better himself.
DSM-5 Criteria that relates: Exaggerating your achievements and talents
What was that I was saying about an obsession with control? In this case, it’s because Dirk is the only person Dirk trusts in this position and assumes it’s his and only his decision to make.
DSM-5 Criteria that relates: Expecting special favors and unquestioning compliance with your expectations AND Having a sense of entitlement
Not only is Lil Hal a literal copy of Dirk, meaning he would also have NPD (Which is prominent here as well), but Dirk gets agitated quickly when Lil Hal tries to “one-up” him in any way- whether it be with jokes or with solving pi. Also, with Lil Hal, we see he is rather pompous about what he feels are “victories” over Dirk.
DSM-5 Criteria that relates: Being envious of others and believing others envy you
DSM-5 Criteria that relates: Taking advantage of others to get what you want
DSM-5 Criteria that relates: Having an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others AND Requiring constant admiration and attention
Dirk assumes things that others do are done specifically to attack him, and that because Lil Hal is an extension of himself he would see Dirk as the “inferior iteration”.
Dirk was extremely clingy in the relationship with Jake, as Jake was/is someone Dirk sees as an equal (the NPD equivalent of a ‘favorite person’).
DSM-5 Criteria that relates: Requiring constant admiration and attention
I can’t explain this one well, and of course there’s nothing related in the goddamn DSM, but this is it. This is the core of NPD. This is what NPD in its entirety is built on, and when Dirk is alone with “himself” (Lil Hal) and his own thoughts, it shows.
Avoiding discussing his own issues to ensure that his friends continue to see him as the perfect person he is.
Dirk puts his own feelings for Jake above Jane’s, personally believing them to be more important and within his own mind even invalidating her feelings for Jake out of either a lack of empathy or envy.
DSM-5 Criteria that relates:Having an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others OR Being preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate OR Being envious of others and believing others envy you
Lastly, and possibly most telling, we have this:
This is after the whole “[S] Game Over” shit, mind you, When literally everything went to shit? Dirk’s initial response to everything going awry is to assume “it’s all about him”, so to speak. To assume that because he was entirely in control of the situation at hand, everything that went wrong was his fault. And this, having in his eyes failed everyone he cares about and loves and even himself, is what literally breaks him.
DSM-5 Criteria that relates:Having an exaggerated sense of self-importance
Anyways, this is a long post and not many people care for/about Homestuck anymore, but I just want y’all to know that Dirk Strider canonically has NPD, and while that does not in any way excuse his actions, it definitely explains a lot, if not all, of them.
Me reading this: Well, you know, IF you read all of Dirk’s actions in the absolute least charitable/most selfish light possible then I guess this is a valid reading though it requires assuming the worst of Dirk’s motives in essentially every circumstance which doesn’t mesh with how I interpret the character. But people relate to characters in ways that reflect on him – god knows, I’ve always read some of Dirk’s behavior as potentially bipolar because of my own personal struggles etc so I wouldn’t say that there’s nothing valid to –
imagine one day a bunch of salamanders and nakkodiles get curious about what’s inside the secret robot workshop tower their royalty lives in, so being simplistic creatures they’re like LETS FIND OUT :D and just roll in while Dirk & Jake are out one day and make a huge fucking mess
like dirk and jake come back and shit is everywhere, their kitchen is upended, the food that jane makes goddamn sure they keep stocked because left to their own devices they go feral is just scattered all over, piles of flour on the floor, eggs splattered on the walls, cookie crumbs lead a sinister trail higher up
and they find the culprits just up in their literal private rooms, there is a group of nakkodiles roasting marshmallows with the welding torches and dirk runs in yelling like jesus christ this is not okay this is our private shit you shits are not nearly intelligent enough to be swinging a welding torch around this very precariously arranged workshop you are going to get everyone killed
this group of salamanders walks in and they’re just dressed up head to toe in dirk and jake’s clothes, there are literally just dirk salamanders they have found spare pairs of shades
dirk sucks in this breath to start yelling but jake just takes one look at this and BUSTS A FUCKING GUT and dirk chokes on his own tongue watching this because jake english laughing so hard he slumps down and starts crying is far more compelling than any other chaos in front of him at any given time
and it’s definitely chaos there is endless nakking and bubbles fill the room
Jake eventually crawls off the floor gasping for breath and pulls his phone out and is just like GET OVER HERE CHUM WE HAVE ABSOLUTELY GOT TO CATALOG THIS look at this one dirk holy shit this buddy likes your style!!! and he’s enthusiastically gesturing for Dirk to pose with this salamander dressed in all his clothes
and dirk just does it because jake is so excited and his cheeks are all flushed and he’s just so fucking happy and dirk’s heart is skipping every other beat watching this so he just slings his arm around this salamander doppleganger and poses for 400 photos and Jake is teasing him like wow Strider try not to laugh too hard it’s not like anything objectively hilarious is happening here and Dirk is just internally screaming forever
he’s going to send these snaps to jane and roxy and dave and everyone isn’t he
dirk: the force awakens was alright, I guess, but it really didn’t diverge enough from the formula of a new hope and just hit the same story beat for beat, complete with a major death as a character crisis point near the end of the --
jake: did you SEE when finn nailed that PERFECT shot and did you see how him and poe met back up and did you see that bit when bb8 gave finn a thumbs up like yeah buddy were in this together! and i cant believe she found luke at the end what do you think her jedi trainings going to be like??? oh my gosh strider do you think shell get to use a GREEN LIGHTSABER????? i bet luke has it just lying around and maybe hes gonna give it to her! do you think kylo uh wait i mean ben do you think hes maybe her brother or her cousin i sort of think cousin myself but theres all these people online talking about how they might have been adapted from some book character malarkey so maybe theyre TWINS but i dont think that makes sense for han and leia to have left her behind! oh my gosh that bit where one of the stormtroopers recognized finn i was on the edge of my flippin seat and i really thought *starts tearing up*
dirk: did ... did you just say "starts tearing up" aloud
jake: i really thought he was gonna make it strider i really thought he was gonna be fine and i thought ben was gonna see the light and be a hero do you think leia can save him???? gosh i hope leia saves him i can't friggin WAIT for episode 8
dirk:
dirk:
dirk:
dirk: um. anyway it was a great movie and i liked it a lot. uh, yeah.
Why do you think Jake was running away from Dirk and complaining about him? I just can't imagine what was happening in his head to do such things, also I have a hard time believing that Jake loves Dirk romantically although I want to. I've been reading your analysis and I'm still not sure.
Jake’s fundamental problem is the same as Grandpa’s: Escapism. In Grandpa, that misery and desire for escapism seems to grow into outright delusion–the guy seems plain old not that in touch with reality.
That’s how Jake operates when he has problems he doesn’t like and he doesn’t want to do better. Jake runs away because Dirk is needy and suffocating–the dude ain’t perfect, and he’s not any better at talking about his problems than Jake is because he likes to pretend they don’t exist by subsuming them into his (fake as shit) hypercapable persona.
But Dirk was needy and suffocating in the first place at least partly because Jake had already hurt his feelings pretty badly several times over, and led Dirk to believe he was most likely straight. Jake is aware of this!
But Jake would, in all things, prefer to resolve his conflicts in a way that doesn’t require him to acknowledge or address any way he might have possibly fucked up or hurt his friend’s feelings. That’s why neither of them can make actual progress on improving their relationship–Jake is as willfully ignorant about the core of their issues as Dirk is willfully burying them to keep up his front. And neither of them will likely talk about how Jake really felt about Brobot or about the whole AR situation for that exact same reason. Jake is busy immediately trying to forget any of that existed or could, in fact, have been parsed as a problem. Dirk is terrified of hearing Jake’s real answer.
After like SIX MONTHS of enjoying Dirk’s company despite all these issues on BOTH their ends, long past the point when people who weren’t teenagers who don’t know what they’re doing would have sat down and said “Ok there’s definitely a problem here, let’s talk about it,”–yeah, all these underlying problems stress Dirk out enough that he gets to be too much for Jake and he runs away. Where he goes right on thinking about Dirk all the time, subjecting Jane to long rambles about him, and when Caliborn comes calling Jake spends his time making comments like this:
Which is A) Trolling Caliborn to some extent and really fucking funny, I love you Jake, B) Indication that Jake is now a lot more comfortable positioning himself as mlm than he was when talking to Jane, and C) That last one is obviously a reference to Dirk that Jake is making intentionally. Jake is, again, sharper than he’s given credit for. He knows what classpects are and he’s spent six months in a session where there’s exactly four of them. Even while running away, Jake is still making comments about Dirk that would absolutely be flirting if he were talking to the guy himself, and still largely thinking positively about him.
Jake running away doesn’t reflect his feelings for Dirk. It reflects his obsessive need to avoid confrontation, and his willingness to believe anything he can tell himself to avoid it.
this is all good
I’d also like to add that Jake is pretty inarguably canonically a BIGTIME INTROVERT. Just look at how he acts on the platform surrounded by people, even people he loves. He’s shy, nervous, quiet, and immediately pulls away from the group and isolates himself. Before meeting his friends in the medium, Jake hasn’t been around another human being since he was six years old. He probably never knew about social exhaustion, because anytime he experienced it before, he could just turn on a movie. Jake likes to be by himself. He needs time alone to recharge from social interactions.
Dirk, meanwhile, appears to be an extrovert. He’s not good at being alone and withers without social interaction.
Jake is drained by being around others and Dirk is drained by being by himself, so there’s a disconnect there that they don’t know how to navigate. Dirk feels clingy and suffocating, while Jake feels cold and unfeeling. Neither of them are really either of those things. They just experience their feelings differently. If you look at how they’re both talking about themselves before Collide, Dirk is saying that he feels he bullies everyone into spending time with him while Jake is saying that he shouldn’t even have friendships because he can’t experience emotions correctly. These boys need to be educated about how diff people have diff needs, and then use that education to negotiate a good and HEALTHY relationship with each other, which, I think, Credits proves that they have.
(Though I woulda loved to have actually fuckin seen is grumbe gurmble)
Also, insert a lot of words about Love Languages here for more shit on this but instead I’m just gonna link @landofsomethingsomething ‘s amazing DirkJake series, Thanks for Playing, which deals with this exact conflict and kind of goes through Dirk and Jake learning that the way they experience love and navigate relationships is inherently different, but that doesn’t make them incompatible – it just makes their relationship a constant negotiation, which is good, ultimately, for both of them.
Literally nobody is going to be convinced by the pitch now who hasn’t already come on board so join me in the latest chapter of the train wreck that is Alpha Dave Strider’s life. Now with more train wreck!
If anyone feels especially generous to my poor ass, I have a patreon.
I always have Jake continuing to use startlingly “platonic” nicknames for Dirk like they will have been married for ten thousand years and Jake will still be calling him “chum” “buddy” “pal” “friendo” “comrade” “colleague” “cohort” “compatriot” and then there’s like the plausible deniability ones like “mate” and “partner” and every time he uses one of those Dirk just narrows his eyes like god damn it English
every once in awhile jake will be like also this is my boyfriend dirk and dirk straightens in startled shock which is the equivalent for anyone else of rocketing six feet into the air and Jake just winks at him
