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rallamajoopEverything.
I seriously punched the air when I saw page 6501. Oh WQ, I never knew I would have missed you so much. Revenge is a dish best served with a large, blunt object. >D So that would bring the times when I have successfully managed to predict what was about to happen in Homestuck and spent the day before it hoping for that very event up to a grand total of…. 1.
Shh, I’m savouring my achievement here. Might as well, because as soon as I segue on to talk about the other things from recent updates that I have loved so very much, I’m going to have to admit that just about every step in that long string of revelations about the very real possibility of Dirk/Jake becoming A Thing can be filed under “things I was so sure not even Sir Hussie McTrollsalot would ever be good enough to give us that I was floored by each new development. But in a good way.”
It’s been quite the journey, and we’re far from the end of it yet. If I may be allowed to recap:
=> Dirk: Be ambiguously gay since approximately forever
No surprises here. It’s always been possible that Bro Strider maintained his collection of Smuppets and seedy websites purely for ironic purposes. It’s also possible Hussie was serious about his plans to give us an extra SBurb session populated by 48 Squiddles.
=> Dirk’s Auto Responder: Engage in a shameless display of sexual innuendo in your conversation with Jake.
Okay, so the thing is, when you have reached a place where one side of the conversation is essentially saying “goddamn, if you’re not leading up to inviting me over for sex right this damn moment, you’re going to want to start backpeddling right now because this is ridiculous”, we are beyond casual flirting. We are so far beyond subtext that the only way this conversation can be understood is that either character A’s desire to bang character B to be an open secret (or at least a long running joke), or that B is being messed with on an epic scale. Y’know, the kind of ‘messing with each other’ that forms the basis of probably something over half all notable character interactions that make Homestuck such a memorable read. And so it was that after grinning at those lines for I do not know how long, I shrugged, and fell face-first into the trap of assuming the latter.
Incidentally, does anyone know if any of the esteemed artists in this fandom have seen fit to grace us with an illustration for “Dirk: Rush to Jake’s location as nakedly as possible?” Because, dude.
=> Jake: Be embarrassingly oblivious. (Nonsuggestively!)
Oh boy, you can actually see John’s DNA at work, can’t you?
=> Roxy: Clearly state, for the record, that, Your Honour, Mr D. Strider is a gay gay man who is totally gay
Hee. Pretty sure we all saw that coming, but it was nice to have it all out in the open where there can be no possible further argument about authorial intentions. Hey, I wonder if I could ship him with one of the trolls-
=> Auto-responder: Warn Roxy that Dirk is planning to confess his love to Jake within the day via the most dramatic overture imaginable
WHAT
=> Auto-responder: Admit you’ve been dropping hints to Jake about Dirk’s interest as loudly as possible at every opportunity
YOU ARE SHITTING ME
=> Roxy: Clearly state, for Jane’s benefit, that just because Jake is old fashioned and has his well-known fixation on blue ladies that does not have to mean he would necessarily turn Dirk down.
HOLY. I. WHAT. OH MY GOD.
ROXY IF YOU WERE REAL AND NOT SO FIXATED ON THE MENS I WOULD MAKE OUT WITH YOU RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW. <3<3<3<3<3<3<3
(I mean, it’s Homestuck, that series with the whole race of bisexual space trolls, but the fact remains that Dirk really has been implied to be gay since before we’d ever met the guy and Kanaya’s preference for the ladies was being established way early in her arc and even Rose was in the ‘no information whatsoever’ box until she developed all that smouldering chemistry with that lovely troll lady and heck all the trolls basically get a free pass on account of being aliens. Meanwhile, John is Not A Homosexual. Homestuck has never before gone out of its way to subvert expectations on this level it is now doing with Jake.)
But the ride does not stop there.
=> Jake: Confess your suspicions that Mr Strider may have feelings for you that are not entirely platonic
=> Jake: Confess that you have noticed that his Auto-Responder has particularly gone out of its way to drop hints to this effect, likely out of some variety of bizarre matchmaking attempt
=> Jake: Confess that were Mr Strider a girl, you would be totally into him
=> Jake: Confess that the thought has occurred to you that perhaps the ‘not a girl’ doesn’t have to be the deciding factor
=> Jake: Confess, in short, that you are nowhere near as oblivious as you first appeared, and that while you are far from smitten, you find yourself to be quite willingly bi-curious W.R.T. your good bro.
I love these kids so damn much. I love that Jake just proved himself so much smarter and so much more open-minded than I gave him credit for. I love that he just reasoned his way through Dirk’s feelings for him in the same conversation where he failed to spot Jane choking and lying to him on the very same subject – but it still makes perfect sense simply because Jake is a gentleman who would never dream of second-guessing the motivations of a lady who had explicitly turned him down. I think I loved Jane’s inner-monologue all through her conversation with Jake more than any other Jane moment we’ve had so far (Oh Jane, you poor, poor bastard). I’m… kinda still sorting out what I think of Dirk? He’s an arse, but when your arse-ish tendencies include such Crowning Moments of Awesome as his ‘The Prince is Awake’ message, you can get away with an awful lot of arse-ish-ness. I am very serious about my desire to make out with Roxy.
On a slightly more serious note, I gotta say the good ship Jake/Dirk is far from out into safe waters yet. LOL@ everyone out there who has thought even for a moment that these developments have sunk Jake/Jane for good – seriously, you’d think some of these people had never encountered a romance story with a second act complication before. If anything, the way Jane just flubbed her first chance to confess her own feelings would be the definitive evidence that she and Jake were the endgame of so many other stories. But since it’s Homestuck, you can’t assume anything so easily. We could end up with Jane/Jake*. We could end up with Jake/Dirk. We could end up with Jake/Scorpio-Troll-Girl. We could end up with Jake cloning himself via prototyped dreamself or time-travel shenanigans until everyone gets to be happy. We could end up with two or more suitors co-prototyping themselves into one being. Anything is possible, and that’s half the fun.
But the other half of the fun is getting to be in a fandom where the writer just took what could have been the archtype of the nudge-nudge wink-wink totally-subtextual slash ship between what every real fan knew were perfectly hetero guys, and then hired a skywriter to emblazon HEY WHY NOT in 80 foot tall glittering letters in the sky over their heads.
As that same late-blooming bisexual who only in her last post was griping about the lack of even-handed explorations of bisexuality in popular fiction, Mr Hussie, my hat is off to you.
* which I gotta admit would be about the one thing that would disappoint me at this stage. Nothing against Jane, but it’s damn hard to invest much in a ship based on a crush that developed off-screen for largely unexplained reasons, and which is stuck in limbo purely due to ongoing communication failures between the parties involved. (See also: why Karkat/Terezi does exactly nothing for me despite them being practically my favourite characters). On the other hand, all that plus an elaborate love confession plan likely to involve literal fireworks and then some? Hell. Fucking. Yes.
I seriously punched the air when I saw page 6501. Oh WQ, I never knew I would have missed you so much. Revenge is a dish best served with a large, blunt object. >D So that would bring the times when I have successfully managed to predict what was about to happen in Homestuck and spent the day before it hoping for that very event up to a grand total of…. 1.
Shh, I’m savouring my achievement here. Might as well, because as soon as I segue on to talk about the other things from recent updates that I have loved so very much, I’m going to have to admit that just about every step in that long string of revelations about the very real possibility of Dirk/Jake becoming A Thing can be filed under “things I was so sure not even Sir Hussie McTrollsalot would ever be good enough to give us that I was floored by each new development. But in a good way.”
It’s been quite the journey, and we’re far from the end of it yet. If I may be allowed to recap:
=> Dirk: Be ambiguously gay since approximately forever
No surprises here. It’s always been possible that Bro Strider maintained his collection of Smuppets and seedy websites purely for ironic purposes. It’s also possible Hussie was serious about his plans to give us an extra SBurb session populated by 48 Squiddles.
=> Dirk’s Auto Responder: Engage in a shameless display of sexual innuendo in your conversation with Jake.
Okay, so the thing is, when you have reached a place where one side of the conversation is essentially saying “goddamn, if you’re not leading up to inviting me over for sex right this damn moment, you’re going to want to start backpeddling right now because this is ridiculous”, we are beyond casual flirting. We are so far beyond subtext that the only way this conversation can be understood is that either character A’s desire to bang character B to be an open secret (or at least a long running joke), or that B is being messed with on an epic scale. Y’know, the kind of ‘messing with each other’ that forms the basis of probably something over half all notable character interactions that make Homestuck such a memorable read. And so it was that after grinning at those lines for I do not know how long, I shrugged, and fell face-first into the trap of assuming the latter.
Incidentally, does anyone know if any of the esteemed artists in this fandom have seen fit to grace us with an illustration for “Dirk: Rush to Jake’s location as nakedly as possible?” Because, dude.
=> Jake: Be embarrassingly oblivious. (Nonsuggestively!)
Oh boy, you can actually see John’s DNA at work, can’t you?
=> Roxy: Clearly state, for the record, that, Your Honour, Mr D. Strider is a gay gay man who is totally gay
Hee. Pretty sure we all saw that coming, but it was nice to have it all out in the open where there can be no possible further argument about authorial intentions. Hey, I wonder if I could ship him with one of the trolls-
=> Auto-responder: Warn Roxy that Dirk is planning to confess his love to Jake within the day via the most dramatic overture imaginable
WHAT
=> Auto-responder: Admit you’ve been dropping hints to Jake about Dirk’s interest as loudly as possible at every opportunity
YOU ARE SHITTING ME
=> Roxy: Clearly state, for Jane’s benefit, that just because Jake is old fashioned and has his well-known fixation on blue ladies that does not have to mean he would necessarily turn Dirk down.
HOLY. I. WHAT. OH MY GOD.
ROXY IF YOU WERE REAL AND NOT SO FIXATED ON THE MENS I WOULD MAKE OUT WITH YOU RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW. <3<3<3<3<3<3<3
(I mean, it’s Homestuck, that series with the whole race of bisexual space trolls, but the fact remains that Dirk really has been implied to be gay since before we’d ever met the guy and Kanaya’s preference for the ladies was being established way early in her arc and even Rose was in the ‘no information whatsoever’ box until she developed all that smouldering chemistry with that lovely troll lady and heck all the trolls basically get a free pass on account of being aliens. Meanwhile, John is Not A Homosexual. Homestuck has never before gone out of its way to subvert expectations on this level it is now doing with Jake.)
But the ride does not stop there.
=> Jake: Confess your suspicions that Mr Strider may have feelings for you that are not entirely platonic
=> Jake: Confess that you have noticed that his Auto-Responder has particularly gone out of its way to drop hints to this effect, likely out of some variety of bizarre matchmaking attempt
=> Jake: Confess that were Mr Strider a girl, you would be totally into him
=> Jake: Confess that the thought has occurred to you that perhaps the ‘not a girl’ doesn’t have to be the deciding factor
=> Jake: Confess, in short, that you are nowhere near as oblivious as you first appeared, and that while you are far from smitten, you find yourself to be quite willingly bi-curious W.R.T. your good bro.
I love these kids so damn much. I love that Jake just proved himself so much smarter and so much more open-minded than I gave him credit for. I love that he just reasoned his way through Dirk’s feelings for him in the same conversation where he failed to spot Jane choking and lying to him on the very same subject – but it still makes perfect sense simply because Jake is a gentleman who would never dream of second-guessing the motivations of a lady who had explicitly turned him down. I think I loved Jane’s inner-monologue all through her conversation with Jake more than any other Jane moment we’ve had so far (Oh Jane, you poor, poor bastard). I’m… kinda still sorting out what I think of Dirk? He’s an arse, but when your arse-ish tendencies include such Crowning Moments of Awesome as his ‘The Prince is Awake’ message, you can get away with an awful lot of arse-ish-ness. I am very serious about my desire to make out with Roxy.
On a slightly more serious note, I gotta say the good ship Jake/Dirk is far from out into safe waters yet. LOL@ everyone out there who has thought even for a moment that these developments have sunk Jake/Jane for good – seriously, you’d think some of these people had never encountered a romance story with a second act complication before. If anything, the way Jane just flubbed her first chance to confess her own feelings would be the definitive evidence that she and Jake were the endgame of so many other stories. But since it’s Homestuck, you can’t assume anything so easily. We could end up with Jane/Jake*. We could end up with Jake/Dirk. We could end up with Jake/Scorpio-Troll-Girl. We could end up with Jake cloning himself via prototyped dreamself or time-travel shenanigans until everyone gets to be happy. We could end up with two or more suitors co-prototyping themselves into one being. Anything is possible, and that’s half the fun.
But the other half of the fun is getting to be in a fandom where the writer just took what could have been the archtype of the nudge-nudge wink-wink totally-subtextual slash ship between what every real fan knew were perfectly hetero guys, and then hired a skywriter to emblazon HEY WHY NOT in 80 foot tall glittering letters in the sky over their heads.
As that same late-blooming bisexual who only in her last post was griping about the lack of even-handed explorations of bisexuality in popular fiction, Mr Hussie, my hat is off to you.
* which I gotta admit would be about the one thing that would disappoint me at this stage. Nothing against Jane, but it’s damn hard to invest much in a ship based on a crush that developed off-screen for largely unexplained reasons, and which is stuck in limbo purely due to ongoing communication failures between the parties involved. (See also: why Karkat/Terezi does exactly nothing for me despite them being practically my favourite characters). On the other hand, all that plus an elaborate love confession plan likely to involve literal fireworks and then some? Hell. Fucking. Yes.