Thoughts on Dirkjake, from a queer dude
Alright, I was always going to say something about this at some point.
I’m going to ramble out an EXTREMELY LONG SPIEL on Dirk and Jake’s relationship. I just want to say, before I do: If you read Dirk as an abuser or he reminds you of your abuser or physical violence, even in slapstick, is a trigger for you, then I completely understand. That’s ok. It’s totally reasonable for it to bother you, and I don’t want any of what I’m about to say to come off as an implication you’re not allowed to feel the way you feel about Dirkjake.
What I AM going to argue against is this enormous expectation that everyone read it that way, and minimize what is an incredible complex, mutually passionate, and unfortunately mutually toxic due to several extenuating factors.
The bottom line is this: Dirk and Jake’s narrative is one about growing up and being in love with your best friend, as a boy, specifically. I don’t specifically mean cis boy, just going to lay that out there–just, someone socialized to internalize certain ideas about their own identity as being related to boyhood. I read Jake as ultimately nonbinary, so this isn’t me trying to shut down trans headcanons.
What I’m arguing is that this is a story about toxic masculinity. Toxic masculinity is a major theme in Homestuck, along with many other societal narratives that it argues ultimately hurt us: Compulsory heterosexuality, troll ideals of violence, in some cases quadrants, etc, etc.And I’m going to explain why I think it’s important to read each individual interaction of theirs complexly, and think about their situation as a whole, to understand why it so happens that yes, Jake genuinely just does like fights, and that part of their relationship doesn’t necessarily read as inherently problematic.
You can feel free to think differently if you feel strongly about this, of course. If you’d like to hear my argument, though, I’ll put it under the cut–this is stretched enough.
Absolutely the best dirkjake meta I’ve ever read.