While I’m on that, there’s a worrying undercurrent with just how many physically abusive Dirk/Bro requests I’ve seen on the site. Like, leaving aside everything about Dirk’s character and whether he is emotionally abusive or not – a subject that has been thoroughly talked about by people that aren’t me and is still a pretty hot topic – I’ve seen requests for abusive, rapist Dirks or Bros from Johns, Daves, Jakes, Roxys, and now Caliborns. And more that I’m definitely forgetting!

It’s pretty fucking worrying that you take the only canon-confirmed gay male in the entire comic and make him into your OOC rapist boogeyman for the sake of drama. I mean, you know, it’s not like “all gay men are rapists” is a huge issue in society that people mindlessly repeat or anything.

It’d even be one thing if these requests were playing off Dirk’s actual personality traits. And boy, does he have shit you could play off of. His penchant for guilting people and assuming he’s right. His controlling tendencies and his belief that he knows what’s best for everyone. Maybe his tendency to think he doesn’t have to tell anyone else what he’s doing, or that he doesn’t have to answer to anybody but himself, while everyone else has to answer to him. It’d be one thing if they played off Dirk’s fascination with the idea of controlling and manipulating other people, or if they built off Dirk’s self-loathing or even his belief that he could never be happy – maybe something about him taking that out on other people.

(I am not personally comfortable with abuse being roleplayed; but I can accept some people are, and I think there’s plenty to build off with Dirk that isn’t, well … see below?)

But what we’re getting is generic “Dirk hits my character” stuff. “Dirk rapes my character and blackmails them to keep them from leaving.” “Dirk has all but enslaved my character in a BDSM-in-name-only relationship.” “Dirk forces my character into sex and then physically harms them when they fight back.”

It’s pretty concerning to me that Dirk is the one who gets so much of this when A) he hasn’t interacted abusively (or at all) with half the characters I see these prompts from, B) there’s other characters who are way, way more likely to be physically abusive than Dirk, whose possibly-abusive behavior (again, covered better by other people than by me) is all emotional and mental, and C) Dirk is seriously the sole confirmed canon gay male in the entire comic.

Not to mention, D) some of these characters requesting OOC abusive rapist Dirks are way, way more likely to be physically abusive than Dirk himself is. (Caliborn? For real?)

Look, I know it’s fictional. I recognize that sometimes we mess around with dark stuff in fictional worlds. That’s ok. But sometimes you have to think about the deeper implications of the things you fuck around with in your fictional universes, and where you may have gotten the narrative from. And whether that narrative is one that should really be repeated.