#amityli

The Epilogues make light of every damn mental illness there is, and it’s deeply frustrating, especially when you consider how many of these kids are mentally ill or have trauma. 

Like, an interesting point of depressed John could have been the reasoning behind why people didn’t go to check in on him. 

Why would Dave, someone who was stifled for years and kept inside a very small apartment filled with traps and danger, not want to spend more time outside with his friends? Why would he, who only spent time with one person for 13 whole years, not want to experience life with other people? Why would Dave, who repressed his own trauma so much that he was more concerned about Jade seeing his dead body than he was with touching it, completely blank that the same thing is happening in someone else? Why would Dave, who understands the importance of being able to open up to someone about your struggles and have them validated, not immediately check in on someone who clearly struggles post-game?

Does he just want to spend some time for himself? Is he being selfish because he was never allowed to be before? Is he hesitant or even scared to face what he never acknowledged while in the game, and talking to John would make him have to face that? Is he unwilling to see his childhood hero at his worst? Or does he just genuinely think that John can’t be struggling, because John never struggles, and his own impression of John is blinding him?

Like, there’s so many things that could have made Dave’s lack of interest in John’s welbeing interesting - or having Dave go to visit John in and of itself would’ve been amazing to see. They’re fucking friends. If one of your friends doesn’t come out for a few months, you don’t just not check on them, or take their “I’m okay!” at face value. 

And I think a lot of this is what I mean when I say that they lose a lot of their individuality when they get together. Dave, for some reason... stops being Dave. He stops existing outside of Karkat. They become weirdly reclusive, existing only with each other, like none of the people around them really matter. They spend so much of their time trying to get people to leave in the Epilogues? It’s actually pretty bad, all things considered. That’s not what a healthy relationship looks like. It’s not even what a healthy friendship looks like. 

It’s also frustrating how little Dirk’s suicide is actually acknowledged in the characters who loved him most. Dirk dies, and that’s just sort of it. I get that it’s Candy, and that things are made irrelevant all the time, but Dave literally gets one speech to mourn Dirk and it pretty much never comes up again.

People don’t just get over loved ones. Even to this day, ten years after my granddad died, I can still remember one of his favourite poems and sometimes cry thinking about it. Four years after I lost a good friend of mine, I still break down over how unfair it is that they got taken from me. It’s not easy to just accept that someone is dead. It’s not easy even years later to be okay with it.

You definitely don’t just move right the fuck on after a funeral with little to no other thoughts on it. Like. Geeze. What a way to be insensitive to the people who’ve lost those to suicide and to suicidal people who saw how few people cared about Dirk when he was dead. But also, just how infuriatingly unrealistic that depiction is?

Do they really think that out of everything, Dave's biggest regret would be Karkat? Someone who’s still alive and who he can actively chase after and mend things with? That he’d think of Karkat over his own brother who he actively went to seek help from, who he felt actively lost without the guidance of? Like. You can regret things at equal capacities. If nothing else, they could’ve had Dave regret losing both Karkat and Dirk. Loss does that to you!! If you lose one person, losing another stacks on top! It doesn’t override it, especially if the second person is still alive! 

DaveKat shouldn’t overwrite everything else that Dave and Karkat live for or have going for them in life. DaveKat shouldn’t stop them from spending time with their friends, shouldn’t make them recluses, shouldn’t erase their own friendships for each other. It shouldn’t stop Dave from caring as much about Dirk as he clearly does. 

It’s frustrating and I completely agree with you. They just lose so much of who they are for this weird unity that they become, I assume because the writers can’t be arsed to write a good, healthy MLM relationship for once. 

Considering some of the Yiffy reveal was clearly meant to make Jade seem sympathetic - because apparently fucking your best friend behind her wife’s back to have a child you could’ve had with your own partner via Ectobiology is understandable and makes complete sense in every universe, including this one - I have come to the conclusion that the writers are on crack. 

It’s the only possible explanation for how bullshit it all is. How in the everloving fuck could Jade “I grew up alone on an island and was alone on a spaceship for three years because of family deaths and it scarred me for life” Harley just... abandon her child. How could Jade Harley, who grew up alone on an island, isolated from all of her friends, who only survived because she had a purpose and who was highly implied to be suicidal if she didn’t have that crutch behind why she suffered so much, not only abandon her daughter. Not only be an absentee mother. But also just outright foister her daugher off onto someone else to look after.

Jade grew up without a guardian. She knows what that’s like. She knows how that hurts. She knows how much she tried to survive with that, to survive without a prominent adult figure in her life who loved her, who comforted her, who helped to support her. And her guardian was actually dead.

How much fucking worse must it be to know your mom just shoved you onto someone else. Made you their problem instead. That she didn’t even care about you enough - or maybe even just outright FORGOT about you - to such a degree that she left you in the hands of the enemy. 

How the hell could Jade think that any of this was okay. Knowing her own roots. Knowing her own struggles. How could she get this child, this actual living, breathing human being, and just - not fucking care at all?

I know in a way this shows that Jade is immature, and it’s a good sign that children don’t fix everything. You can’t fill up the hole in your life by having a child. A child is a responsibility, not a fix-all measure; there’s so much that goes into raising a baby into an adult, and what this has shown is that Jade didn’t take that into consideration. Jade wanted a baby because she thought it’d make her feel better, and she was wrong. 

She could’ve just gotten a fucking puppy and figured out the same thing with fewer consequences. She may have even kept it.

So tbh? Definitely not the only one angry. I genuinely don’t understand why they’d go down this route for it. Like, yes, I can see how it works, but that doesn’t mean I understand why.

Why, out of everything, they did this. Why they keep making Jade out to be a sympathetic character we should all feel sorry for when all she’s doing is causing other people more and more trauma, with no accountability for her own actions? And why they’re making her such a shit mother when Rose was also supposed to have helped raise Yiffy? As if Rose was compliant in this, too - as if Rose would have not seen the fucking implications and tried to do something about it. Why they made one of the most loving and understanding characters in Homestuck such a horrifically selfish, toxic person even towards her own family. 

And this, mind you, is the same woman who was so against John helping Tav escape from his mother that she ratted them out. Despite seeing how terrified Tav was. Despite John trying to convince her otherwise. The woman who looked at an abused child and was so against the idea of splitting up a family that she prevented his escape from abuse - and then she just abandons her own child? Like a fucking hypocrite?

well NOW all i care about in life is reading this analysis.

Your wish is my command. 

As a Prince of Heart, Dirk is deeply entrenched in the Self. We see this a lot in the main comic; he feels physically haunted by himself, by his Splinters, unable to get away from his own Destruction. He feels Suffocated (in his own words) by his inherent ability to Destroy so perfectly that - quite without realising it - he can Destroy his own progression as a person (such as, perhaps, by convincing himself that he’s some awful villain, and that he was wrong in thinking that he could ever be better when faced by the multitude of Selves that exist across Paradox Space). 

What Dirk needs is... to learn to be Free. To let go, to go with the flow. He spends so much time thinking, in his own head, that he very rarely spends time Feeling - and if he does Feel, he then overthinks it to such a degree that he mechanises his own Emotions. It’s well within the role of a Prince of Heart to do this, of course - it’s the natural course of Desruction of the Heart - but it’s more a Prince of Heart that doesn’t know how to stop himself. A Prince who, perhaps, has a tendency to try and Control other people, himself, his Emotions - and who needs to be shown how to relinquish that control. 

Naturally, you can see how a Breath Player like John would help here, but a Breath Player who has Inherited Freedom - is quite literally Freedom Incarnate? This is more likely to help Dirk because of two things:

A) John has always been a narrative anomaly. Yes, Dirk managed to control and kill him in the Meat timeline, but all that did was pave the way for a comeback in the Candy timeline, a more aware Candy John. It is a lot harder to control John as a general rule of thumb, which means, in some ways, he’s a narrative equal to Dirk. He has freed himself from the narrative before. He can do it again, rendering Dirk’s powers fairly useless. (If, of course, the writers had thought about John’s abilities for longer than two seconds, they’d have realised this). 

B) John isn’t an active Player. He’s Passive; his use of Breath is relaxed, unassuming; it happens around him. Dirk doesn’t need someone that will try to fix him or force him to face the facts, because Dirk can easily talk about that sort of logic, can fight back against it and ignore it. If he’s exposed to it more naturally, however - put in the presence of someone who can help him Breathe, to relax, to let go - then there’s a higher chance that he’ll accept it. A greater potential that Dirk will allow himself to open up, without even realising he’s doing it, so that he can’t overthink it. 

He needs to be Freed from Himself, his thoughts, his ability need to Destroy - but as an Active-Destructive Player, it will always work best for him to be with someone who is Passive-Control (as in, someone who is strong enough to stand up to him, but not going to go out of their way to pressure him or needle him). 

On the side of John... John is so unteathered from Reality it’s startling. He has so few connections that he feels as if he has no place in his timelines, and he has a tendency to ignore everything about himself to such a degree that - for instance - he’s not even aware he’s depressed. 

John very rarely considers himself. He doesn’t tend to overthink, to analyse, to really look at himself and question who he is. 

This is great, in some ways - consider, for instance, that this is exactly the sort of thing Dirk needs to stop doing in such extremes - but also comes with its own drawbacks, since John is inherently very ignorant about sexuality and gender identities, as well as his own mental health. He isn’t aware that, for instance, he feels so Disconnected from his friends because he knows different versions of them that don’t have the same set of memories, because - for some reason - no matter what he does, they are always different. 

John needs to be guided. He actually does his best when he has a purpose, has a plan, and knows where to go. Otherwise he just floats along, completely separating himself from everything he loves, without realising that he’s the reason for his isolation. He doesn’t need someone to control his life, of course, but he does need someone that knows how to motivate people and push them back onto course. 

Someone like a Prince of Heart who has a history of pushing people in the right direction, perhaps? 

Of course, you’d assume immediately that this is a bad idea. A Prince of Heart Destroys the Self and Emotion - why would that help John?

To that, I offer you this: if John lacks a sense of Self... what can Dirk Destroy? John does not understand who he is or what he does, he just exists. There’s nothing really there for Dirk to sink his teeth into, no foothold to step on. Dirk needs a Self to Destroy to do his thing. 

Maybe, then, what he’d Destroy is the fake Self surrounding John’s true Self. The Self that exists because John thinks it does, because John’s never really looked into it, but isn’t actually the fully fledged him. In other words, a Dirk that has been influenced positively might be more capable of Destroying the barriers that stop people from being themselves - the temporary Selves we all cling to while we either try to figure out who we are, or try to ignore the Truth of our Selves. 

On top of that, one of the best things a Prince of Heart can do, when they have a rein on their powers, is Destroy Negative Emotions, destroy Impulsivity. In other words, Dirk could Destroy all of the things that’re keeping John from interacting with his friends, that are weighing him down yet allowing him to float away at the same time. Dirk can Destroy the desire that John has to flit from thing to thing, and help him settle down a little, to find a form of Stability that helps even him out. 

And, to return back to that concept that John perceives himself as different from everyone he loves... Dirk could Destroy that Self. Not the physical Self - the John that we have now - but more the metaphorical Self; the things that makes John feel different, the things that make him struggle to connect. He could quite literally just help John feel like he DOES have a place by Destroying that sense of Displaced Self and making him a part of the group again. 

Their Classpects and how they work have a fairly fitting effect. They’re uniquely positioned to be interlocking with the things they struggle with and the things they’re strong at, without having the natural flare-up that tends to happen between Opposing Aspects. Something Dirk’s weak at, John excells in; someone John’s weak at, Dirk excells in. 

John helps Dirk be Free while Dirk helps John be Real.

They could actually work as a couple, and work exceedingly well. In fact, I’d argue they’d end up being one of the best couples for how well they could bounce off of each other and mellow each other out. 

I’m okay, yeah! I haven’t had anything on my blog yet, thankfully, and I’m staying away from Twitter for the sake of my blood pressure and sanity. 

I’m actually kind of surprised that people are linking my posts! Like, the idea that my posts are actually spreading around like that is sort of wild. Always makes me feel a lil humble and kinda gushy that people think my posts are good enough to use as sources in debates, haha- ;w;

But yeah! Right now I’m still on hiatus because of uni - which I’m hoping to have done and dusted by the end of the week if not tomorrow! - and that’s my only source of stress. Hoping it’ll keep up like that, but we’ll see as time goes on!

aaah perfect i love it. this actually became one of my favourite ships (weirdly, AFTER the epilogues, like i suddenly was like 'wait, there was potential here that got wasted'), and yeah, the way their personalities lock - john GENUINELY needs guidance, dirk NEEDS to feel like he's helping - is just really complementary (like their theme colours!) and fun to explore.

Honestly, I think it hit such a rise in popularity after the Epilogues in part because so many people went “what the fuck” and figured the best way to help both John and Dirk get a better lot in life was to get them together. Another part was because of the heavy focus of Self and Classpect powers, and the deeper dive into how their powers work in much closer context to one another, which definitely helped with this analysis-

John needing guidance and Dirk needing to be helpful, while also being able to call bullshit on each other and being physically capable of dragging the other back down again, is Ideal. Dirk needs to work with someone who ACTUALLY needs his help, and John needs to figure himself out so much more than he currently does. Likewise, John needs to have an actual purpose, and Dirk needs to figure out how to chill the everloving fuck out so he doesn’t go too far. 

There is so much about these two that works together (which shows because I completely forgot their colours were complementary, too, which is just a complete loss on Hussie’s part), and frankly, if Homestuck^2 doesn’t in part involve John and Dirk helping each other I’m going to be genuinely disappointed. Even in a non-romantic sense, if they’re cowards.

another celebrity cancelled in 2040 puritan culture :'(

you're sure having a character arc in this arg :o

they do get married it leads to a funny joke where dave asks john not to commit suicide at his wedding, ha ha funny