#like. to best understand 13yo me: terezi.

[seagullcharmer]

i wanna drawwww < person who has 20 art tabs open and is currently colouring

[tomatograter]

How much of jakes begging dirk not to leave in meat do you think is his own true feelings vs Dirks influence?

I don't think Dirk’s influence is enough to make anybody do anything they did not already have half a mind to do. I've seen this be debated a lot, but Dirk is... not The Word Of God. That's pretty much the biggest joke about his defensive posturing. Dirk barks very loudly, and asserts himself in audience-antagonizing overseeing orange voice - but he cannot force you to do something you really don't want to do. He’s only as powerful as your urges.

He struggles, multiple times, to make characters do the simplest things that go against their base instincts. Dave definitely had romantic feelings for Karkat, but he was so sure their relationship could stay and strive as platonic that he pushes Dirk away. He wasn't Right about this, but he was sure of his position.

June is easy. June wants an adventure. June wants to not be herself. June will take any excuse to abandon everything and get to live a cool life where the most pressing issue is “which bad guy do i have to punch” again.

Terezi's arc in homestuck proper is largely about her learning to listen to HERSELF, not the alternian laws or game rules or meddling undead sylphs or doc scratches or whoever the fuck else, and she mocks Dirk's narrator voice to his face. She recognizes the alien thought the moment she has it.

Kanaya has always feared she holds Rose back. She loves her wife deeply, and respects her even more, but her penchant to being attracted to explosive girls (Remember Vriskan? You should remember Vriskan.) Also doubles as Kanaya grappling with the fact that she cannot control them. It's part of the appeal, that they are forces of nature so large and unpredictable she cannot help but be drawn to their orbit like a moth to a flame. Kanaya letting go of Rose is an unspooling of her deepest insecurities, her habit of giving others more credit than she gives herself, and how she's relented to the years peddled position of "mom friend" - kanaya the spoilsport, kanaya the grub nun, kanaya the... Quite Dreadfully Just Regular, I’m Afraid. What could she possibly claim to offer when put up against the secrets to understand an universe? (She isn't right about this, either.)

And Jake? Here's a bit from Jake's confession that i believe has gone largely unexamined:

Take a moment to really consider the positioning of other characters towards Jake in the epilogues. Then a little bit more in the direction of HS proper this time. Jake is the subject of constant degradation at the hands of the cast at large. His plight is always unsympathetic, his role troublesome, and he acquiesces to claiming the guilt for "being a problem in his friendgroup" or "for being assaulted by a friend he ignored" or "for being too useless and stupid", yet even though he cannot let go of the pesky self-flagellating habit, there's... Dirk.

This is how Dirk is represented and this is what he is primarily remembered by in the deepest recesses of Jake’s brain. It could have been anything else, but it’s this instead. Brain ghost dirk is not a dirk with his edges cut off, he’s not a pliant wifedirk, he’s not a little helpful tutorial phantom that tells jake everything he wants to hear - he’s quite harsh and sarcastic As A Dirk, but he believes in a Jake that’s more than the facade he presents as. Truly and fully. This is a Dirk that loves Jake, and not quite platonically.

I think it’s a bit ignorant to suggest Jake has legitimately no reason for loving Dirk back when their canon designation is “Best friends” and “Complicated lovers”. Jake loves Dirk for his brightest parts. Jake has expected a love confession from Dirk ever since the very beginning of the above conversation, during his 13yo birthday, where the big joke is “WELP, i guess instead of dirk telling me he’s gay and that we’ve been flirting all this time, he just says he’s from the future instead!”

Dirk’s influence is only to blame here insofar as him doing such a good fucking job of screwing himself over. It’s stellar. Dirk thinks the AR forced Jake’s feelings, dirk thinks he’s predatory and irredeemable, dirk convinces the audience Jake cannot possibly have a single reason to love him back, dirk fully drapes himself in the capes of being a Bad Guy, but this is HIS justification, when faced with the fact Jake pretty clearly has feelings on the matter buried deep down, and he’s a glaringly /unreliable/ narrator. The biggest tragedy of this bit is the confirmation that the heel turn and the spiel are wholly unnecessary, they clearly had things they could have invested on to make this work, but dirk is too caught up on his high horse to listen. 

Like with Kanaya, Dirk is responsible for exaggerating a heavy mass of preexisting feelings, not creating them. 

Creation, as it happens, is more of Jake’s wheelhouse.