Episode 48: Sometimes Love Just Isn't Enough

optimisticDuelist joins Kate to talk about Dirk and Jake’s relationship. Topics: Sigma’s feet. Dirkjake as a core romantic arc. Love without understanding. Christianity and the alphas. Suffering through the epilogues. Your impact on canon. The persistence of ideology and how we replicate power structures. Faith.

Read Taz’s new fic, “THE APOCRYPHON OF JAKE ENGLISH.”

Read Sam’s essay, “Evil Be Thou My Good, or Why Dirk Strider Is Literally Satan.”

Check out Floral’s dream comics mentioned in the show.

Listen to this episode at https://perfectlygenericpodcast.com/updates/episodes/48

Transcript
Kate: The Perfectly Generic Podcast contains spoilers, occasional adult language, and Vriska. Join us Saturday, August 3rd at the Berliner in Renton, Washington, for Pgenpod Live! You can find out more at pgenpod.com/live. Live shows like this and this entire show is made possible by the support of listeners like you. Thanks to our Crockertier supporters: [names] for your incredible support per episode.

[intro]

Kate: Taz, welcome back to the Perfectly Generic Podcast.

oD: Thanks Kate! I'm happy to be back.

Kate: It feels like it's been a while. But I wanted to talk about — before we get into the topic of this week's episode, I wanted to talk about, like — there are some creative decisions that people make that are so brave and so ballsy that like, I get envious, almost, of them. And for me, one of those creative decisions was the Overwatch team —

oD: [deep sigh]

Kate: Y'know, hearing from the foot people for years and years.

oD: (God.)

Kate: Y'know, about Oh, we wanna see Tracer's feet, or whatever, and they've resisted rightly. And then they finally — they threw a bone to the foot people —

oD: Where's the stump so I can shoot myself.

Kate: [laughs] By giving them old man feet.

oD: Yeah. Alright. I guess we stan the old man feet. Someone just make a Caliborn skin about it so I can find it funny.

Kate: [laughs] I just think it's very good to acquiesce to people, but only the ones that are brave enough to be into the old man.

oD: Yeah. Yeah, you're right. That's fair.

Kate: [laughs]

oD: I'm not in it but I respect it.

Kate: Uh-huh. I think that that's — like, I just think that the people who are — I think the old man people deserve to be rewarded for their suffering.

oD: Fair enough. Fair enough. It's hard out there being an old man feet lover.

Kate: Also, I just wanna say that Taz was an hour late to this recording because he wrote a 2,000 word outline.

oD: [laughs] I have a problem! Maybe I'll make it a video script, I don't know.

Kate: Okay.

oD: I had a lot of feelings about Dirkjake that —

Kate: I know this about you! [laughs] Alright. Fuckin' — I don't get the — what is the dirty joke in Murrit's screen name? UnclaspedKahuna. I don't get it.

oD: I guess his belt is unclasped?

Kate: Oh. Maybe. I don't know. Apparently there's a dirty joke in Murrit's screen name but I never got it.

oD: I — I've — this is the first I've heard of it, so I guess I'll take your word for it. Yeah, I guess unclasped could like, refer to his shorts buckle?

Kate: [laughs] Does he have a buckle?

oD: Does he?

Kate: I'm sorry, I'm getting absolutely distracted. This is the Dirkjake episode. This is the Dirkjoke episode.

oD: Yes! At last!

Kate: And it's time for us to gather, to plunge into the troubled world of Dirkjake, one of Homestuck's core romantic arcs, currently in a very low part of it.

oD: Just an absolute black hole of romance happening right now.

Kate: Like I got to sort of see your reactions to the epilogues, and like, you went — I mean you were through it — you absolutely like, went through hell.

oD: Yeah. I've — it's — I was planning to do an epilogue video, like, immediately after the epilogues came out, and it's been three months and I still haven't done it because it threw me for a loop, like, emotionally, so much. And I wanna be clear, I'm like — I'm still — like it's been a real journey for me. I've still come down on the side of being like a Homestuck positivist on the whole, but the epilogues challenged my ability to give a shit about Homestuck like nothing else in the comic.

Kate: Which is very funny because like, that's — y'know we've talked about this before. Before the epilogues we talked about that being like, one of the core appeals of Homestuck, right?

oD: Yeah

Kate: And —

oD: Yeah, but it's like — it's something I understood intellectually, but emotionally, like, I loved everything about the Homestuck comic. Like, I was just always one of the positivist fans who didn't really feel the hurt. Like I didn't emotionally connect to a lot of the more bitter fans who like, felt slighted by this plot twist or that one or whatever. And after the epilogues I was like, I get it. I get it now. I fully —

Kate: You just — but that's the thing, is you were just lucky before this!

oD: Yeah. Yeah, I was just lucky. It just — it hadn't hit me yet. But Homestuck always figures out how to hit you eventually, I guess.

Kate: [laughs]

oD: That's just the entry toll you pay.

Kate: And it's like, y'know, for those of us who are like, first and foremost, Vriska people — like we were already pretty much suffering by the end of Home— like, the end of Homestuck, y'know, leaving us in this sort of ambiguous zone. And [laughs] and y'know the epilogues — I wouldn't say the epilogues made me suffer any less, that's for sure.

oD: The epilogues really just made everyone but like, the Davekats, suffer.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: The Davekats got through okay.

Kate: The Davekats made it out. Which is, y'know, again, like — it does sometimes seem like Homestuck is an exercise in just rewarding people who shipped Davekat back when it was a crack ship.

oD: Yeah. They struggled for a really long time, I guess they deserve to run their lap for a while.

Kate: So look, you wrote this outline. Where do you wanna go first with Dirkjake?

oD: [noises of indecision] I shoulda left this up to you. I can't pick. I've got choice paralysis.

Kate: Why don't you just start at the top?!

oD: Alright.

Kate: [laughs]

oD: So I'm just gonna say it: I think a version — like — Dirkjake's, like, in a really bad place right now. Like I get people who don't get Dirkjake.

Kate: Yeah actually, let's — actually before we get to this, like, let's start at the top and say like — y'know, I mean obviously I'm familiar and I've read your essays about it, and I'm familiar with your perspective, but I know a lot of listeners aren't. So explain to me first, like, why you see Dirkjake as a core romantic arc of Homestuck.

oD: Okay. So the thing — like, this isn't even about shipping, like, this is about reading the Alphas' arc in general. Like, I'm going to come at this from an emotional perspective the whole way through. I am a speaker with an agenda here, and that agenda is to make you feel some type of way about Dirkjake; but more generally about all the Alphas, because their arc — their half of Homestuck — is an emotional narrative, like, fundamentally. Like Hussie takes the audience analog, like, the worst audience analog in the form of Caliborn, and screams at them. Teens have big feelings. Like, that's what he wants you to take away from this arc.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: The point of the Alphas is that they are like, wildly, devastatingly in love, not just Dirk and Jake. Every single one of the Alphas feels like this intense, complicated and like, emotional entanglement with the others. And despite all of that mutual love and affection, they just really struggle to like, connect and like, be honest emotionally with themselves and with each other.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: And that carries through to the epilogues. Like, there's that line that Dave gives to John in the candy route about Karkat, where it's like, he doesn't think he'll ever be over it, it's just the kind of thing that you live with, to love someone that much. That's how every single one of these teens feels about the other, and that's like an extremely important part of especially Dirk's arc, and like, Dirk and Jake are both dismissed as like not really caring about their friends in a lot of —

Kate: Which is — I mean that's evidently bullshit, but also I wanna interrupt you and say that I did take, like, 1d4 psychic damage with you reminding me of that Dave line, so thanks for that.

oD: Yeah. No problem.

Kate: [laughs]

oD: I — we're all here to hurt each other.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: That's what Homestuck's about.

Kate: Yep!

oD: And there's also that other line that Ult!Dirk gives that kinda goes along with it, where he tells — I think it's Jake, he's narrating to Jake — and he's like — no. It's Kanaya. And he's telling Kanaya that she loves Rose, but sometimes love isn't enough. Sometimes what you need is understanding. And like, that is the core struggle of the Alphas, both in Homestuck the comic and in the epilogues, is that they struggle to actually understand each other and what they're doing, which is why in candy Roxy ends up like, enabling Jane to be like, a dictator —

Kate: Yeah.

oD: Because she just loves her bffsie that much that she just can't see past her affection for Jane into the reality of the situation. And y'know, like, people have connections like that in real life, it's like —

Kate: I mean it's a mirror of how Jane treated Roxy in the story itself, where Jane refused to acknowledge like, the reality of Roxy's situation.

oD: Yep. Yep. But this isn't about the girls, for once.

Kate: [exasperated] Oh, *fine*. [laughs]

oD: Believe me, I was tempted. But like, that comes through really intensely with Dirk and Jake. Like Dirk and Jake's relationship is conveyed in these like, big symbolic flourishes. Like Jake tells Dirk that he believes in him once, and Dirk immediately uses the inspiration to make a sentient AI —

Kate: Yeah.

oD: Which is like, the holy grail of all science fic— the way that all science fiction imagines technology. Like, the mutual affection between these two is capable of creating like, reality-warping things, is what's being told to you. It happens the opposite way with Brain Ghost Dirk, where like, all Dirk does is basically just love Jake enough that Jake just owns a piece of his heart, like his soul itself, and then Jake can use that and he remembers and can imagine Dirk so vividly that he can just manifest him as an imaginary friend that actually exists. Like that is some reality-warping intense shit, entirely predicated on these like, teens boys that don't understand how to be people at all, being wildly obsessed with each other. And they show it in different ways.

Kate: Yeah. And it's —

oD: But like —

Kate: And in the end I think a lot of people actually end up experiencing this like, discomfort at maybe how much they are seen by the problems that the Alphas have with each other. I think, y'know, for a lot of us it's actually — it's almost — it's so raw as to be almost uncomfortable, the way that the like, breakdowns of understanding and like, the difference between love and understanding between the Alphas like, harms them — because it reminds us of the time when we were like that [laughs] with our friends! And that's also part of what made the epilogues so painful for — y'know, if you were invested in relationships like Dirk and Jake's — is that we — for older people we've all had this situation where we grew up and people that were really really important to us when we were younger didn't exactly — things didn't go with them as we quite expected them to.

oD: Yeah.

Kate: And we had to grapple with the unexpected consequences of the people that we love changing.

oD: Yep. So, like, that's part of why, like, I want to try to de-tangle this from the actual act of shipping, a little bit.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: Because I don't necessarily need everyone to love the idea of Dirk and Jake together, or drawing cute art of them. But like, a lot of people just don't wanna think about this part of the comic, and if you don't read these characters with these relationships and these feelings that they have about each other in mind, your understanding of the story is just limited. Like it's the same as Vrisrezi, like you can't understand these characters without understanding their feelings for each other.

Kate: Yeah, exactly. And actually I wanna get into the parallels between those two a little later, but first — so now that you've laid that out, like, your core thesis — and you've told this to me a few times, y'know in our conversations with each other — about how important it is to you that like, the reader understands an empathetic perspective of Dirk and Jake, to speak to what makes Homestuck special. So like, what is that — what does that mean to you. What is necessary for you to believe in Homestuck, re: Dirk and Jake?

oD: The fundamental nature of Dirk's struggle is, in some extent — to a certain extent, like, Homestuck wrestling with like, really intense depictions of like, gay stereotypes, of like gayness as inherently predatory and controlling and abusive, right? Like I'm not — like Homestuck isn't stereotyping exactly, Dirk is an extremely well-realized character. But it's playing on the razor's edge of like, deliberately playing off these perceptions in Dirk's character arc itself. Like Dirk himself worries that his obsession — that his feelings for Jake make him a toxic and predatory influence in Jake's life. He feels guilty that he couldn't just go along with Roxy and like, just be her romantic partner, because he's gay. He feels guilty because he got in the way of Jake and Jane, even though at the same time he felt this like, righteous sense of like, deserving to have a shot, and to do what it takes to make that happen, because he felt like Jane had the edge by virtue of being a girl. Like he's dealing with all of these like, really intense feelings about his gayness, and he doesn't really get positive affirmation on it from anyone.

Kate: Right.

oD: Like Jake is all wishy-washy, and like, hot and cold with him. Roxy outright, like, sexually assaults him eventually, and like sexually harasses him for years before that. And Jane is just completely clueless, and like deeply normative.

Kate: God she's so normative! She's just — ugh. Fucking — have —

oD: In this outline —

Kate: Have a non-completely white-bred American suburban existence for once, you fucking fascist! Sorry —

oD: [laughs]

Kate: Got a little angry there!

oD: I described her as "conservative americana normie personified" —

Kate: Yeah.

oD: In this outline. And the interesting thing is that all three of Dirk's friends, like, have these connotations of Christianity along with all of that. Like Jake literally summons angels and his chumhandle is golgothasTerror, which is referencing the place where Jesus died. Roxy describes herself and Dirk as like, nega Adam and Eve at the end of the world. And y'know, Jane is Jane, and that kind of upbringing definitely has like, connotations of conservative Christianity in America. So when you think about where Dirk fits into that, he sees himself as this destructive force breaking up all of these like, quasi — like, heteronormative Christian narratives that his friends like, filled up — like, would work out perfectly without him, y'know? He sees himself as this destructive force by virtue of his —

Kate: He also frequently has literal Satan in his ear! [laughs]

oD: Yeah. Like, Lord English is like, explicitly Sat— especially in the epilogues, like, if Doc Scratch and Lord English are like in his brain — like Lord English is described as a demon.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: They are like, personalities so forceful that just as ideas they can act to perpetuate themselves and like, in the book — in the Homestuck [thinking noises] the one with Vriska in it, the latest Homestuck book that came out — Hussie's commentary talks about how Doc Scratch probably incentivized Vriska's worst feelings and instincts about Tavros —

Kate: Yeah.

oD: To like, foster her abuse to him — of him. So if —

Kate: Yeah, he directly like, textually encourages the thing that starts the whole revenge cycle.

oD: Yeah. So in the epilogues it's like, if you imagine Doc Scratch being in Dirk's head for 7 years, it's pretty easy to see how he gets to where he gets with Jake.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: And we can talk about that later. But like there's definitely strong associations with Dirk and like, being damned, like in this really potent, symbolic, like spiritual sort of sense. And to me, like — I was a lapsed Catholic teen when I read Homestuck. Like I read Homestuck with these characters as peers. And that was like, really potent imagery for me because I felt damned partly due to like, my sexuality, and like my relationship to gender and all that stuff. So seeing that reflected in Dirk was just like, really really intense, and especially the masterpiece — like people laugh about the masterpiece but that's the one time that Jake, of his own volition, activates his powers which are explicitly connected to faith and to this kind of like Judeo-Christian like — this like Christian framework of like, angels and holy white light and an association with Christ — and it's specifically to save Dirk. Like, specifically to have him like, be happy and like, safe, and with him. That was like, really really intense for me. And I don't know, I feel like for the epilogues to land on this place of, actually Dirk is doomed to just be the devil all along —

Kate: Well —

oD: That just —

Kate: I think it's more that Dirk convinced himself that he was damned. He fell to that worst tendency of himself. He believed that that was his fate.

oD: Absolutely.

Kate: It's not that the narrative decided it had to be his fate. Like I don't like any interpretation of the story of the epilogues that erases Dirk's agency.

oD: I agree, like, I agree with you on the level of I do think that Dirk is a conscious agent in having done what he did. But part of the contention of the epilogues is also that like, there's different timelines that could've gone different ways, and epilogue Dirk just does not read to me as a logical continuation of canon Homestuck Dirk unless you account for this like, demonic influence on his mind as a byproduct of the ult-self process. If you tell me that paradox space is this realm based on all of your wishes like, being granted, even if it's in a monkey's paw way, and that characters are gonna branch based on their choices and all of that, and then the big exception to that rule is that Dirk is existentially damned to always end up this way because he's a god tier and he's just gonna advance to the point that his splinters start influencing him and he goes dark — like, that just kind of loses me. Because it's just too close to home, to like how I felt, and like these are — we're talking about like, characters that were really formative for me. So I'm not necessarily saying that this is like an indictment on Homestuck as like an — as a work of art. But like, if the epilogues ended here I would feel that they detracted from Homestuck more than they added to it, for me specifically, as a queer work specifically.

Kate: Well I actually do agree with that perspective. Like, I think that the Homestuck epilogues are excellent as a transitional work in the sense of, to make the process of putting things back together satisfying you have to fuck them up really bad first, right?

oD: Yeah.

Kate: If Homestuck ended on game over it would also be bad! [laughs] Right? Like —

oD: Exactly.

Kate: Like, nobody would like that, right, and so people who treat the epilogues as thought that's it, even though they end on dual cliffhangers and like, I — and y'know there's a significant number of people who still work on Homestuck, like and are invested in its future — like I think that it's patently ridiculous to treat it that way. But a lot of people do, they read the epilogues and they though, Well I guess that's it then. And it — I think that part of that is this like community idea that sort of bubbled up, of like, we'll we're just waiting. There's gonna be one epilogue and we're just waiting for it. And it's like, a lot of people just sort of took the like, one blog post that Andrew put on the old MSPA website and just created a sort of idea of what would happen next that —

oD: And just stayed in that bubble about it.

Kate: They just assumed would be the truth, right? And there's — who the fuck knows what happens next — but like the idea that this one novel-length this is the only continuation of Homestuck's story, and anyone who thinks that I genuinely do not understand that perspective. Because I too think it would be bad if this was all there was. But again, that's because it's part of a story. It start a number of narrative arcs and concludes almost none of them.

oD: Agreed.

Kate: Like it's very, very clearly like, a transitional piece of work. So like, I — if it doesn't continue, right, that's just the worst case scenario for Homestuck, right? If it doesn't continue then I can't imagine that that is intentional.

oD: Yeah. Yeah that's pretty much how I feel too.

Kate: I would think of it as being more of a circumstantial tragedy than an intentional quote "ruining" of Homestuck, you know what I mean?

oD: Yeah. I do agree with that. So yeah, it's not like I like, hate the epilogues, I just — there needs to be more, especially if Homestuck's gonna maintain the reputation that I believed in it presenting for so long. Because —

Kate: Yeah but again, that's the thing, that — this is the thing that gets me, and we've talked about Pip's like, philosophy, and their writing after the epilogues, of y'know, you need to — how we enter into conflict with Homestuck, right? And for me that's critically important, because I think it was very easy to rest on your laurels after Homestuck concluded and get the sense that like, now it's a complete thing and we can fully understand it. But during Homestuck's run it was — it frequently foiled your expectations for it, it frequently foiled what you wanted, and people's response to that should not be to — I don't know. I just — I don't understand a judgemental response instead of a response that involves creation, that involves actively, y'know, proselytizing your view of Homestuck, and this is not something I'm accusing you of because you are one of the most effective people at proselytizing your view of Homestuck! But like, I — y'know, you take the issues that you see with the epilogues and you write an absolutely momumental amount of fic that I haven't gotten the chance to dig into yet about them, right? And you interpret them and you talk about them, and I want more people to bring that energy, right? Because you have a set of very valid and realistic concerns with the epilogues, and instead of just getting mad, like, you got — like, you acted, right? Like, you acted to actively bring people to your side. And what I'm trying to get at with this is that canon is a thing that happens collectively in our community, by our collective decision-making about what counts as canon, about what happened in Homestuck and what it meant. And I — and like, I think what I can most point to about that is like the reaction to the absolutely terrible shit hidden on the Skaianet Systems website on January 1st, which we talked about in an earlier episode. That was pretty immediately disregarded by nearly the entirety of the community, and there's no one who would say that that is — that like, reading that is at all essential for understanding Homestuck, right?

oD: Yeah.

Kate: But meanwhile, there's also a proactive way to do this, right? I would struggle to meet a Homestuck fan who doesn't consider the events of Rex Duodecim Angelis to be how that fight happened, right?

oD: Yeah. Absolutely.

Kate: Like — and you get these fan theories, these interpretations of fans— of characters that end up leaking back into the work, right, and end up coming back into the collective community understanding and remembering of Homestuck, right? And by creating, we make the Homestuck that we want possible.

oD: Absolutely. I completely agree, which is why —

Kate: I totally went on a tot— on a tear during this otherwise, y'know — doing this not-on-topic tear here, but — I'm sorry about that, but like —

oD: I mean, no it's on-topic because it's a good segue into me saying I did in fact, like — my response to the epilogues was really the first thing I did, is that I wrote a small novel — novella, entirely about Jake and Dirk, like that's just what it's about, called the Apocryphon of Jake English, that's on AO3 now as of this week because I decided to finally post it to get ready for this episode. And —

Kate: And you can find a link to that in the description of this episode.

oD: And like, the — my goal with it was straight up to just make a new Homestuck path specifically centred around the idea of growth. And I'm like — I'm staying on the iterations of like, meat Earth and candy Earth, and what I wanna see is — we've got a bunch of gods just kind of stuck here now with different agendas and perspectives. Is it possible to imagine a way that they can work together to make a better world? Like just anything that's like, kinder or like, interesting in different ways, and see what comes of that. Because I just — I love these characters and I love the promise that Earth C represented, and I feel like I don't want that to be lost just because canon needs to move on. And I think that just would be fun to do, so that's what I'm doing —

Kate: Yeah, and y'know I think it's also —

oD: And I would definitely encourage more people to do stuff like that.

Kate: Yeah. I think it's also encouraging to note that Homestuck has always showed us the worst possible result — like, Homestuck shows us complex situations, and then it shows us the worst possible resolution of them before showing us the best one. By which I mean —

oD: Yep.

Kate: Like, Homestuck first showed like — showed us John dying and Dave and Rose, y'know, trapped in a dead timeline, before it showed us how that goes right, right? Homestuck shows us game over before it shows us the retcon, and like, again, to y'know — I think that the epilogues are just another way of showing us, here's how things could go wrong, and then leaving it to us to think about for a while, like — this — y'know, we all now together have this idea of, well here's all the players, here's all the pieces, and we have an understanding of how they go wrong. But y'know, how could you avert that? What actions, what choices could characters make to avert an ending like that? And also like, what can you do to save the worlds that we — like, the timelines that we've already seen, right? Like I — y'know just as I don't think any character in Homestuck is inherently, existentially like, at a collective self level, irredeemable. I don't that any timeline is irredeemable.

oD: Yeah. I agree.

Kate: And I — and what I mean by this, and this genuinely — this is gonna sound out of character for me, but I mean it — I genuinely think that like, meat Dirk is redeemable. I don't mean that it will be easy [laughs] but I believe that it is possible.

oD: Yeah. I agree.

Kate: I do not think that Dirk's belief —

oD: Especially in light of what —

Kate: I'm sorry, I don't believe — I don't think that Dirk's belief that he is damned and his self-destructive actions actually make him damned, any more than Rose's self-destructive actions, like, actually made her damned, right?

oD: Agreed. Yeah. Couple of things: in case you haven't read it already, I neglected to mention when we were talking about Dirk's relationship to the Christianity motif pervading all of his friends, that Dirk is explicitly like, kind of a Luciferian figure in the epilogues, and kind of a Satanic figure of destruction, which you should read Sam's article about if you haven't already because she did some like, great work comparing Dirk to — I think Satan from Paradise Lost, I think it is?

Kate: Yeah.

oD: I don't remember right now. But it was really great. And — yeah. I just — I completely agree. And it's like, the way I see it, like, Homestuck was powerful to me because like, it presented this like, self-sustaining horrifically destructive view of masculinity in the form of Lord English and Doc Scratch, right, and everyone in the cast is growing up in the context of being like, combined and exploited by that ideology.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: And the epilogues are partly the story of what starts to happen when you finally — when the masses — when, y'know, like the downtrodden finally overcome that ideology and start to make the world on their own. And that's like, really powerful on the face of it. At one point before the epilogues actually dropped I really thought that we were going to see epi— Earth C as not like this idyllic place, but like a happy fun place where people were getting better and when— and where the world was becoming — Earth C was becoming a kinder place, and you could have the characters as sort of like friendly superheroes in their society while they worked their relationships with each other out.

Kate: And to be fair that's where they're at, at the start of meat, for almost the entire cast, right?

oD: Yeah.

Kate: What we see in meat is the result of a deliberate action, right, a deliberate series of actions by Dirk, and then what we see in candy is the worst possible result — like, is the worst possible breaking point after that. But like the Earth C that we confront at the start of meat is one where the characters don't communicate enough, it's true. But it's also one where the world is fine. The world has been governing itself fine so far, right, there are —

oD: For 5000 years.

Kate: There are economic problems, right, there are — but they are not more severe than those of our Earth, right? There are problems of inclusion and problems of wealth, but they're not — it's not an unrecognizably terrible world, it is in fact a world that might even be slightly better than ours. [laughs]

oD: Yeah.

Kate: And one that certainly has, y'know, better ideas on gender and sexuality.

oD: Yep.

Kate: And — sorry, go on?

oD: No — yeah, and it's interesting to explore the idea that even in a world that's like that, where there's no like, imminent existential threat, and like after you defeat like the actual demons of like, ideology, ideology itself doesn't necessarily die.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: And I think it's worth exploring that for an audience that's like, largely made up of like, queer people and leftist people who like, might be unconsciously like, performing certain toxic ideas or ideologies without being fully cognizant of it.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: Like that's important stuff to explore.

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. I think all of us who are queer and listeners have dealt with the situation where like, a dynamic exists among a group of entirely queer people — like entirely among our peers — an uncomfortable dynamic exists that in some way replicates the power structures that we have faced. And the simple fact of the matter is, just because the world, y'know, is in the — was created in a place free of these ideologies, doesn't mean that they gods are free of the ideologies that they grew up with, right? They ended up importing this society that they lived in into a new one, and it's perfectly realistic that that would occur, right, because these are all people who did not have any sort of — these were not people prepared to be, y'know, domestic leaders! These are not — like, aside from basically Karkat, like these were folks who have not done much deeper thinking on the philosophy of leadership!

oD: Yeah.

Kate: And nor did they have any reason to! And if you take the average person who like — if you take the average person out of society as a teenager and then you ask them to be a god, they're not going to be very good at it! [laughs]

oD: Yeah.

Kate: And I don't think it's particularly pessimistic to say that, that like, once — 'cause the bad things that start happening on both candy and meat are when the gods start meddling in shit that they don't fully — like, that they're not fully capable of understanding.

oD: Absolutely. Man, we've been talking about a lot of the things that make Dirkjake interesting a lot, not a ton about Dirkjake itself.

Kate: Yeah, that's true, and I'm sorry about that. [laughs]

oD: I mean I've been right there with you, like, this is the stuff that I like — I need people to understand, whether you feel strongly about it one way or another. Like, Dirk and Jake's relationship is inherently intertwined with the bigger themes of Homestuck.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: Like part of the reason that Dirk and Jake are the ones that have the most trouble making relationships — like, they're Vrisrezi levels of dramatic, but it's not because they're like set against each other, to kill each other, by society, it's because a society that's like, more human and closer to ours makes it so much more difficult for boys to emotionally connect.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: And like the way that that manifests in the story is that they are the ones who like, ultimately have primary responsibility for creating Lord English. Like, all of the biggest moments of Dirk and Jake's relationship involve them making splinters of people who are basically Dirks, and now with the epilogues and like, Dirk being influenced by Lord English so strongly, it's a lot clearer that like, when Jake activated his Hope powers to save Dirk of his own volition and created Lord English, that was another instance of him creating someone who is identified as an instance of Dirk. Like Jake just keeps making Dirks left and right.

Kate: It's true! It's true, this actually reminds me of what, genuinely, is one of my favorite — one of the most enlightening Homestuck takes I've ever seen, which was that the auto-responder is a metaphor for teen pregnancy.

oD: Oh yeah, absolutely, they just have to deal with that responsibility, they're like 13 year-old kids and they're suddenly in control of this like, autonomous entity. And like, okay, I didn't get to this, I just skipped right over this in the outline — if you're reading this and you somehow believe that Dirk just naturally was always like he's like in the epilogues, I need you to disavow yourself from that, please. Dirk in the comic, Alpha Dirk, the meat guy, is not the person who did Unite/Synchronize. He just isn't cognitively capable of that. The version of Dirk that resembles the ultimate self is the auto-responder, Lil' Hal, whatever you call him, because he is the version of Dirk that is more removed from his humanity and therefore his vulnerability, which makes his irony that much more intense and inscrutable, which isolates him more partly because he doesn't have a body so he can't have a connection with his friends, specifically Jake, that he wanted to have; which in turn makes him more lonely, more depersonalized, more miserable, and more prone to lashing out. And he's also cyber-omniscient. Like Dirk explicitly lays the responsibility for Unite/Synchronize at AR's feet, and AR not only accepts it but brags about it, saying that none of them would've survived without AR. Like Dirk — Alpha Dirk — messes up, especially as a 13 year-old, brobot is kind of messed up and controlling even though at the same time that he was being kind of ruthless and intense about it, Dirk was deliberately playing off a desire that Jake said he had. Like that involves both of their problems, not just Dirk's, because Jake systematically lies about who he is and just maintains these delusions about himself that make it impossible for him to connect to other people; because it's more convenient, because it's more fun, because it enables him to be happy when he's lonely and miserable on monster island — for a lot of reasons. But like, y'know, Alpha Dirk is a Dirk who cares intensely about doing the right thing, who is afraid of becoming the monster he becomes in the epilogue. Who deliberately avoids Jake towards the end of the comic because he's worried he's poisoned his life, until Jake takes control and approaches him at the end of the comic.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: And like, it — he's also a Dirk who like, aspires more than anything to be like Dave. To just like, be responsive to his friends and standing up for the right thing, and like, kind and supportive and stuff. Like that's what Dirk aspires to be and that's who he aspires to be approved of. So like, if Dave had gone —

Kate: I think it's notable that like, in meat, Dirk in his isolation has convinced himself that Dave would be the ideal one to be in charge of the narrative.

oD: And the ideal person to kill him.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: To judge him for being unworthy and put him out of existence.

Kate: Right, it's — meat is just a suicidal temper tantrum. Like, Dirk is not a fundamentally evil person he's just extraor— like, again, y'know the — both the comic proper and the epilogues both draw extensive similarities between Dirk and Rose, and it's just like, this is just — when you're playing with the stakes of gods, like your self-destructive tantrums get real, real bad!

oD: Yeah. And y'know, Dirk is really clearly projecting his relationship with Jake onto Rose's relationship to Kanaya.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: And y'know, Rose and Dirk relate to their romantic partners in pretty similar ways, because Kanaya is the person that enables Rose to like, believe that reality can be good, to a certain extent. Like Kanaya's existence redeems reality for Rose over the course of her arc —

Kate: Yeah, absolutely.

oD: And is a big source of Rose's desire to like, open up and just be sincere in engaging with reality and the people around her. And Dirk —

Kate: That's the problem with Jake though, is that Jake fundamen— like, unlike Kanaya, Jake fundamentally like, won't access the reality of things as they are. Like he is too escapist to do that.

oD: Yep. And on Earth C he has an entire audience of like, and entire planet of people who will just adore him and let him run away from his problems forever to escape to. And like, people talk a lot about how destructive Dirk's masculinity is in the epilogues, but Jake isn't any better.

Kate: Right.

oD: Jake has like, kids that he doesn't pay child support for. Jake is a version of masculinity that is so self-indulgent that it just — he just makes the entire world, like, revolve around him and him whims, without taking responsibility for anything.

Kate: Yeah, and in that way he acts out the worst parts of Grandpa Harley, much like Dirk ends up acting like Bro.

oD: Absolutely. So like it's really not as simple as just like, Oh Dirk is evil and he tortured Jake for fun. Like, Dirk is like, heartbroken and angry to the point that he's lost his faith in god. Like when he puts that line in Terezi's mouth, when he says — when Terezi says that she's given up on Vriska, Dirk describes it as her giving up her faith in god. And like that's what Jake is to Dirk. It's like his faith in his ability to be good, or live up to like, any positive ideas, or for the idea that reality could contain those positive ideas. Like, to epilogue Dirk, there's nothing left but maintaining the story because reality is this hollow, meaningless shell that exists only to perpetuate its own existence.

Kate: Yeah, and Dirk leaves, like, Jake — Dirk genuinely leaves Jake Jane, not as an act of torture, but because he still thinks that that's the best ending for him.

oD: Yep.

Kate: Like, I'm sorry, but there — like, no matter what, like even if he's bitter about it, even if he's extremely embittered about it, there is still a massive part of Dirk that still thinks that Jake will be happiest with Jane.

oD: Yeah. That's absolutely true. And he has like — frankly, personally, I don't really buy the idea that Dirk put Jane in place in power specifically to like, further her like, fascism thing. I think Dirk believed that Jane was going to rise above it —

Kate: Yeah.

oD: And wasn't going to succumb to that xenophobia, and he just believed that so intensely that he took it for granted.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: Because Dirk checked out of the candy timeline. There's not actually any proof that he knows what went down there, and Dirk —

Kate: Yeah, and it's important to note too that like — that Jane — that the specific action that Dirk wanted, Jane becoming president, does not happen in candy.

oD: Yeah. Wow. Very true.

Kate: Jane's political — yeah, like the specific — the one specific thing that Dirk had planned for Jane did not happen in candy. Like —

oD: Yeah.

Kate: It could in fact be a result of Jane *not* becoming president. I don't fuckin' know. Like, nobody — it's impossible to say, but it's also — it is — yes. It is inaccurate to say that the events of candy are the fault of Dirk more than anyone else.

oD: Yeah. And like, Dirk specifically calls Jane out on xenophobia in meat. Like, Dirk is — if Dirk is invested in one thing that's positive, it's Dave and Karkat. I don't really but that even ultimate Dirk would want to render the political situation of Earth C such that they couldn't be together. I think it's the fact that he makes — he puts that risk into play — is the byproduct of the fact that Dirk loves and believes in Jane so intensely and compares himself unfavorably to her, that he just kind of assumes that she'll rise above this like, minor personality quirk that isn't really relevant beyond him, like, tsk-ing her a little bit.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: Because like, Dirk believes on — to some degree he's arrogant enough to believe that he's smarter than all of his friends, but he also kind of believes that his friends are smarter than everyone else.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: By association.

Kate: He's sapioplatonic. [transcriber's note: fuck this word for existing and fuck me for having to type it]

oD: [laughs] Yeah!

Kate: [laughs] So I wanted to get to s— I know — it's already been 50 minutes, I can't believe it, but I wanted to get to some listener questions before we wrapped up here. So JRHyde asked on Discord: "On the Terezi episode, Kate, you said Dirkjake is mlm Vrisrezi. Can you explain what that means in the context of Homestuck proper? Did the epilogues change this?" No, the epilogues didn't change this because the story put a significant amount of barriers in the way of both relationships, while still making them extremely, like — by still making them imperative, right? Like the epilogues are bad precisely because events have conspired to separate both Vriska and Terezi and isolate them from relevance. And the epilogues are bad because events have conspired to separate Dirk and Jake from each other, and separate them from an understanding and an accord. Homestuck is bad when they are at a — when these characters do not understand each other. When these characters are not in the space where they are able to act as good actors towards the story, right? And I still fundamentally — I believe the epilogues only made more comparisons between Dirkjake and Vrisrezi, and y'know Dirk's discarding of Vriska is just the same as his discarding of Jake, right, it's a projection, it's an idea that — it's a giving-up on the idea that the existence that they won in the game was at all worthwhile.

oD: Yep.

Kate: And that —

oD: Same with Kanaya, too.

Kate: Yeah exactly. And it's a discarding in general, like — what Dirk discards in his frustration and in his lowest point, is the idea that love is real. [laughs]

oD: Yep. Yep! Exactly. And y'know, I would say the big parallel between Dirkjake and Vrisrezi is a big factor in why Davekat and Rosemary don't hit really as hard for me emotionally, because they're stories of realizing that you're gay or into someone of the same gender more into your established teen years. Dirkjake and Vrisrezi are like, more codependent and messed-up partly because they're about having intense friendships with peers that you have these romantic, complicated feelings for, before you're even really old enough to know how to think about or what to do with them.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: And that's, like, a lot more like my experience of queerness, because there wasn't a point in time where I didn't see myself as different from the norm in my memory. And it always affected my feelings about, and my friendships with, other guys — and just like everybody, because I just saw myself as so different and so lesser, in some ways, growing up.

Kate: Yeah, yeah, no I completely understand that, right, like I —

oD: Yeah.

Kate: I think both of those relationships get to the heart of this thing where it's like, the way that you feel about somebody doesn't fit within your societal understanding of how you're supposed to feel and it makes you wonder, am I a freak, or am I bad for feeling this way?

oD: Yep.

Kate: And I think that's — that describes both Vrisrezi and Dirkjake very strongly. Aysha asks on Discord: "Please talk about Dirk's internalized homophobia and how he projects his ideas of masculinity onto Jake."

oD: We talked about that first part —

Kate: Yeah.

oD: A lot. The like — Dirk's internalized homophobia is like, fed by his friends and part of the way that he like, accidentally lashes out at Jake in the comic for the most part and consciously does it in the epilogues is by reducing — like, either trying to push Jake to like, man up and take control and like, be a man —

Kate: Yeah.

oD: Or, y'know, objectifying him and assuming the dominant position for himself and like, making Jake this like subservient and exploited force in his life.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: And like, he doesn't really have a middle ground for that, even though when you read what Dirk says to Jake in the narration text in the epilogues, one of the things that he says that struck me really strongly is that like, to love someone is to submit to them —

Kate: Yeah.

oD: To a certain extent. And like, just reading that whole section you really get the impression that like, in Dirk's ideal life, if he like — if he still believed in god and in love and all of that stuff, what he would want is for Jake to just take control of his life and assume the control position, because Dirk, y'know, doesn't really trust himself. He doesn't really trust himself to be good or to know what's right, and part of why he likes Jake is because Jake has that faith in him. So —

Kate: Right, and then — and this is, y'know, Dirk having a transactional view of love which I've talked about before as regards to Vriska, right, where it's like — it's very easy to convince yourself that like, love is this thing that you just earn and are owed, like — y'know, and that being in love with someone is inherently this like, vulnerable act that you should avoid if you want to be strong.

oD: Yep. Yeah.

Kate: And like, for — as well, also, I would say that Dirk does display something — I personally think that Dirk, y'know, acts in a bit of a not necessarily — maybe not completely biphobic, but at least in a way that doesn't fully understand or respect Jake's bisexuality.

oD: Absolutely.

Kate: Right, in this way where he —

oD: Because he's too — go on.

Kate: He's obsessed with this idea that Jake has to make a choice, right?

oD: Yeah. Yeah, or like, I think in Dirk's teen years it's like less necessarily about forcing Jake to make a choice and more about being toxic as a byproduct of the fact that he's consumed by this sheer panic that Jake — that he's already forced to make a choice, and Jake is actually straight, and he just kinda like bullied Jake into buying into, like, his thing. Which is like, a whole byproduct of the fact that like, y'know, Jake doesn't talk about his relationship to masculinity or sexuality to Dirk at all. He specifically tells Jane that Dirk can be sensitive, but doesn't think to talk to Dirk about, y'know, that time that he implied that Dirk should use gay as a pejorative because he lives in Texas. Or something like that.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: Like the masculine violence directed between these characters is like, two ways. Like it's not just Dirk, but Jake directs his in really different ways, primarily by exacerbating — like, mostly unwittingly — Dirk's feelings about his sexuality. Which is also like, and interesting parallel to how John's joking around about being gay didn't have, like — John didn't mean it, and he wasn't actively being like, toxic or like — y'know like imposing these masculine standards onto Dave, but it still affected Dave that way.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: And that's a really interesting commentary on toxic masculinity, is like it's really just a reproduction of means and you don't necessarily have to mean it for the people around you to still be hurt. But yeah, Dirk definitely like, imposes a lot of standards, some of which are like really fucked up, onto Jake, and some of which are, if you're gonna have kids out of wedlock, pay your damn child support.

Kate: Right, that's a perfectly reasonable standard to apply to Jake English! Like — [laughs]

oD: Right? Like —

Kate: Come on, man!

oD: And like —

Kate: And here's the thing, is that like, again, to treat Jake as a blameless victim in many ways enables Jake's worst qualities.

oD: Absolutely. And if I'm frank, personally, you can't convince me that Jake running around to like have kids and stuff isn't partly about proving that he is like, more of a man than Dirk in this particular regard. Because people don't like to think this about Jake, but Jake is as invested in performing masculinity as he is femininity. He wants to have it both ways.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: And not have to deal with like, the responsibilities or consequences of either. Like that's what Jake wants, he just wants to self-indulge, to like completion. And it's implied over the course of the— that's it's been several years of Dirk increasingly getting worse about, y'know, like masculinity and the ultimate self, and like being influenced by Lord English, so the more pressured—

Kate: Also they spent years doing this, y'know, like, sweaty masculine ritual thing —

oD: Yeah.

Kate: On national television.

oD: Yeah.

Kate: While the entire globe just like, ate up the definition of toxic masculine conflict.

oD: Yep. And Dirk — y'know like, the worse Dirk gets there the more prone Jake is going to be to passive-aggressively lashing out, because if the epilogues proved anything it's that Jake cares as much as Dirk does, whether or not he shows it the way that people are trained to. Like it shows up with his Hope powers over the course of the comic, but Dirk can't just put people — he can't just put thoughts into people's heads that they don't already have. When he fucks with Kanaya's head it's by playing off anxieties that were already there, which means that —

Kate: Yeah, when he tries to put a thought in John's head that he wouldn't have, John immediately rejects it.

oD: Yeah. Which means that the deep reservoir of obsessive love inside Jake, that Jake expresses when he says that Dirk is like the only source of true self-worth that he ever had — like that's just Jake's shit. Dirk only dug it up.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: That's just what it takes to get Jake to be honest, apparently.

Kate: Right. And like, again, this isn't healthy. This isn't good. But it's a comparison between Jake and Terezi. Because Terezi also says the same thing about Vriska before Remember.

oD: Yep. Absolutely.

Kate: And I guess we can — we're gonna leave it off on that, unless there's any sort of closing statement you wanted to make, Taz.

oD: Here's one more thing, and it's just like — it's something like, really, weirdly personal. Like I talk about how Dirk and Jake's like, really young feelings about each other resonated with me. I talked about how Dirk as an exploration of feeling damned in a Christian sense, and like feeling the force of like, salvation and love through Jake influences me; but another way that Dirk and Jake hit me really hard that I just don't think you can replicate — like even if you added other gay male characters to Homestuck, I just don't see this kind of thing happening again — is like, I'm a US citizen. But I grew up looking into the US from Latino cultures, and I felt really trapped in those cultures at the time. So as a teen I had a really strong sense of American patriotism. Which like, looking back, feels like, misguided because things haven't worked out great. But the result was that it like — it really meant something to me when Dirk and Jake had those conversations about like, the death of democracy, or like all of the small nods to Americana, like just sports stuff and like, y'know, Jake being a guns right activist — all of the Alphas are like these like really strange, like conservative Americana archetypes. Like Jake is like kind of Christian — explicitly Christian coded — like, you know what I mean? I'm kinda rambling a little now. But the point is one really sharp moment of that was when Dirk gets kissed by Jake over the course of Unite/Synchronize, and the way that he celebrates is by doing this extremely rad high-five.

Kate: [laughs]

oD: And like, that hit me really hard as a teen, I don't really — I didn't really know why at the time, there wasn't a specific reason. It was just like a very American teen boy to do, and that was like, kind of how I wanted to live in my ideal life that I imagined to like, get away from what I was in. So it was just like really resonant to me. But then years later I come to find out — do you know how the high-five like, got started? Like, historically?

Kate: Yes. Sports! We're getting some sports shit going on here.

oD: Yeah, let's do the sports shit. Do you wanna talk about it or should I?

Kate: Go ahead.

oD: Okay, so it was actually a gay baseball player called Glenn Burke, a Dominican-American immigrant, a dark-skinned Latino American that popularized the high-five, is the way that the story goes. You can look it up on Wikipedia. And it's like — in retrospect it's like this incredibly influential symbol of how much like, Latino people and the queer community, and like all sorts of different diverse people contributed to the best of what America is and how we think about it and recognize it. And it just so happens to come along with this triumphant moment associated with the euphoric gayness of these dumbass teen boys. And to me that was like, devastatingly powerful because it spoke directly to my experience of culture. Because like me, Dirk and Jake were outsiders looking into the miasma of Americana, and they find things that they are inspired by and draw power from in that iconography, looking in from online which is how I was looking in at culture. And the — it turns out that the very same things that inspired them were also largely like the same things that confused them and made them feel ashamed of themselves and their romantic desires and their — made it feel like they shouldn't be able to connect or express themselves emotionally, because masculinity comes along with all of that stuff. The good shit that like, inspires you and teaches you like — helps you see what kind of person that you wanna be — half the time is also going to be the stuff that like, really fucks you up and like, reinforces like toxic aspects of your worldview. That's just how most culture is. And that's just like, it's such a powerful depiction of growing up gay, that like hits so close to home for me. Or like, just generally queer, 'cause like, sometimes I've felt like, more bi. Like it's complicated. But yeah, like, all of this is just like another reason why —

Kate: Gender's fake.

oD: Yeah, exactly. Not — it's just another reason why like, Dirk and Jake hits so close to home for me. And I just — I don't know. I just feel like this kind of this should matter. Like, I think — I don't think it's problematic or bad to want to believe in love, even when people are like, so cataclysmically fucked up that you can't imagine how they can learn to love properly.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: It's just — this is a fictional story, I wouldn't endorse this relationship in any sort of real sense, but being able to imagine loving that profoundly and being pushed to those extremes is like, a valuable thing to me.

Kate: Yeah.

oD: So —

Kate: That's — again, that's the whole deal for me of Vrisrezi, as well.

oD: Yeah.

Kate: And I think that's our show? That's — [laughs]

oD: Alright.

Kate: A week from today I will be in Renton, Washington, at the Berliner pub with Aysha U. Farah for our second live show of 2019. This is a free event, open to all ages, we're gonna be on the back patio at the Berliner pub and you can find information on that at perfectlygenericpodcast.com/live/renton2019. You can RSVP there so we know how many folks are gonna be showing up. It's all-ages, the Berliner has an incredible food menu of German food, all sorts of schnitzels and sausages and vegetarian options. And if you are a person who can drink alcohol they've got a great selection of beers from Germany and cocktails, including my favorite beer in the word, and if you wanna know what it is, ask me there! [laughs] I'm really looking forward to seeing folks there, it's the first of our 3 live shows remaining this year. I can't wait to see you next week. For those of you who aren't able to make it to Renton, the recording of the show will be up on the podcast feed as soon as I can do it. And I really can't wait to see you. You can make —

oD: I wish I could be there. [transcriber's note: me too!]

Kate: Yeah, I'll see you at the New York show.

oD: Yeah.

Kate: The — this show and these live shows wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for your support. The support of listeners like you helps me do this — y'know, keep doing this incredible show week after week, no matter how busy other things get. And also gives me the incredible experience of getting to send the folks on this show money for coming on this show, and for making music for this show, and for making art for this show. Because half of your contributions will always go to the other contributors on this show, this is not just contributing to my dragon hoard! But I wanted to thank our Skylark tier patrons at the end of the show: [names]. Let's see — you can find this show at perfectlygenericpodcast.com, on the Google Play store, on iTunes, on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave us a review and a rating on those stores, it helps us get in front of more people. You can find me at twitter.com/gamblignant8. Where can folks find you, Taz?

oD: You can find me at optimisticDuelist on YouTube, and @roseofnobility on Twitter.

Kate: Hell yeah.

oD: Yes.

Kate: Alright, well you can also find a link to Taz's amazing new fic in the description. I cannot wait to read it. I've seen — you sent me some excerpts as you were writing it and I adored all of those. And y'know, I've just been in — I've been in a very special — I don't know, anyone who follows me on Twitter knows that I've been in a sort of a work trance mode over the last week, so I'm looking forward to getting out of it. And also one day being able to tell you what I was doing this week. [laughs]

oD: [laughs]

Kate: See ya next week everybody, bye!

oD: Keep rising!

[outro]