The Dirkjake Meta masterpost
Let’s clear the most frequently asked question right off the bat:
“Is Dirkjake abusive?” | “Is Dirkjake toxic?”
No. Dirk and Jake’s romantic relationship is based on mutual interest and a supportive friendship established years prior to the events of the main story. What a reader experiences over the course of Homestuck act 6 is how their insecurities boil to an all-time high once the Game is afoot, aggravating some of their worst habits - Like Dirk’s inability to communicate honestly without hiding behind one of his splinters (may they be metaphorical or literal), and Jake’s practiced avoidance in the face of confronting and potentially upsetting one of his friends about their shitty behavior - until it ultimately leads to a breakup. But an imperfect first date does not abuse make. They were both barely 16, under ridiculously stressful and hopeless circumstances (over 5 months trapped inside a dead session populated only by ruin and decay!), and Homestuck ends on a note of reconnection, both of them making the choice to remain close after the immediate danger has been dealt with. I mean, at the end of the credits sequence they’ve made up, are nonsensically playing ball together, and have elected to share a home in the consort kingdom, so I don’t think this is an exaggeration.
Does Rose’s alcoholism in the Game Over timeline mean that Rosekan is abusive/toxic because Rose was not sober enough to consent on a routinely basis and her frequent slurring and fraught grasp on reality canonically upset Kanaya to the point of pushing her to scream? No. They’re teens in an imperfect relationship that is new to both of them, and at the end of Homestuck, they’ve also gone through a more forceful do-over.
Does Jade, June & Dave(sprite)’s friendship turning sour during their 3 year space trip held in extreme isolation, coinciding with jade and davesprite’s breakup, which upsets their dynamic enough that june threatens to beat him with her golden hammer in the middle of a morbid tantrum about how everything sucks mean that they’re not friends anymore and their relationship is toxic now? No. For similar reasons as those cited above.
Hell, the possibility of ‘Davekat’ was deemed abusive when it was still a weird and janky rarepair competing with the other two big Dave and Karkat ships. At the time, both fandom favorites set them up with the series’ protagonist, and Davekat was the ugly duckling. There were arguments about how it was ‘inherently toxic’ because they traded barbs on a daily basis, went after the same troll girl, suplexed one another onto a hard table, and Karkat’s perpetual screaming was cited as an *undoubtedly* grave trigger for Dave’s PTSD, among other threaded squabbles marking them as ‘permanently incompatible’. Through the course of act 6, Dave and Karkat’s bond eventually deepens, and they also end up together. Sensing a pattern here.
Point being: Relationships in Homestuck are not an smooth-sailing affair, never have been, and through the many years of fandom many people have interpreted them in the worst possible ways, but that isn’t a guarantee of truth, just a matter of individual perception.
And now you may be thinking, okay, I’m willing to humor the thought DirkJake isn’t as bad as the 2013 discourse posts written by fellow teens with a limited POV on relationships vehemently claimed it was, but I still don’t see what’s the big deal. These characters don’t make a lot of sense in my brain, individually or together.
Well, what the hell! That’s a topic I’ve been trying to breach for nearly 2 years now. Babbling intro notwithstanding, what follows is a collected list of Dirkjake meta accumulated over the years.
1. “Why does Dirk remain interested in Jake in Act 7 and even into the Epilogues?”
2. Dirkjake was never like Tavris (On Jake’s Pesterquest)
(If you’d like an in-depth look at Jake’s PQ route and its major inconsistencies, click here)
3. Dirkjake and Vrisrezi as Narrative Mirrors
4. What would you say is the core of Dirkjake?
5. The “S” in Spider-Girl is for Strider
6. Jake’s Narrative as a Gender-Non-Conforming Gay Man (I’m 100% serious and so is homestuck , actually)
(This also ties into how grandpa’s & jake’s marriages are flukes.)
7. Jake is a Gender Mimic
8. Did Dirk make up Jake’s romantic feelings?
9. On Jealousy: Jake Wants Dirk to Show His Feelings
10. Was it intentional for Homestuck to never show a Present Dirk/Present Jake log?
11. What’s your favorite bit of Dirkjake dialogue?
12. Okay, Dirkjake guy, What even makes you so interested in Dirkjake anyway? This doesn’t even sound like a real word anymore.
LOOSELY RELEVANT EXTRAS: Jane’s crush on Jake is nothing but comphet (or: Jane as a GNC lesbian), and Jake’s poor treatment as a sexual assault survivor in the homestuck universe. (CSA/SA Warning)
NEW: Dirkjake and the different versions of The Princess Bride (+ and some excerpts)
vaporwave
pixelskylines
blakekathryn
theartofmadeline
turnnoffyourmind
