#smashinf bottles over my head clawing the skin off my face eating glass the lot

[daevstroders]

i was smoking some top tier jake english crack ln and had some thoughts and much to ponder when i woke up so have some alloaro jake musings under the cut.

there is always the underlying element of not right not enough yet perfectly aligned and too much with these two. and i think what makes the alloaro jake narrative (which to ignore would be like ignoring his feminine coding imho (that is: impossible) really interesting is Love (capitalised to emphasise romantic from here on out, love sans capitalisation is not to be taken as romantic) is only what he believes it is, what he thinks it should be. what he's seen in his movies, of which he doesn't care for - he watches ACTION FILMS and SUPERHERO FLICKS, john and karkat are the ones who engage most with romcoms - and the kind of love he experiences is not the Love he equates to being 'real'.

everyone's experiences with aromanticism are different, and i think from jake's perspective its more so about his ideals of Love not matching his experiences. he's not shown to have anything more than passing interest and sexual encounters with others in the narrative, save dirk, and that is a whole shitstorm he can hardly bear to think about. its easier to renounce Love itself because to delve into these things would be to self reflect and jake english does Not. self reflect.

his love is destructive and selfish and reactive and obsessive and consuming. the kind where its you are Mine (and i guess that has to make me yours). i'll follow you to the ends of the earth because you're the only one who understands me and doesn't ask more from me than i'm capable of, but i won't force myself to appreciate the parts of you i detest and i don't expect you to do that either. the kind where i enjoy having you around but the domestic ideal i've seen sounds fucking boring and not something i'm capable of or want to be. i love you but i don't Love you. its more than i feel for anyone else and its too much, yet it is still not enough.

vs dirk who believes that his obsession and devotion is what Love is. he is the god of his own reality and the only word he can place on this emotion IS Love because he doesn't know anything else. he's just so much more intense than the rest, it doesnt matter if they don't understand it, because its Raw and Visceral and Real, more than their washed out depictions of Love. he's the same in the sense that the domestic Love for him is fucking boring and unsuited to his tastes but that doesn't make his Love lesser, it makes theirs. he again wants jake to be His but has a hard time accepting that to do so would make him jake's. they both want to possess and consume the other without allowing themselves to be possessed and consumed in return.

i just think both of them have incredibly thwarted ways of experiencing affection and the way they think about Love influences their perspective on the emotion. this is why jake so readily accepts his love isn't Love, assumes roxy's feelings for dirk are more real than his because the feelings there are selfless, unconditional, and passive. which aligns with what we are taught about Love, that it is hard work and unselfish and placing trust in another etc. his feelings are selfish, conditional, and active. he wouldn't want to put the hard work in to make something work with dirk because that would require self reflection, to accept difficult things about himself and accept unpalatable things about dirk. he wouldn't feel the same about dirk if he didn't keep him on his toes, fuck him around mentally and physically, he'd be as blase about the man as he is every other proposed Love interest. he can't sit still and let dirk move on without having his say, he needs to keep what's Mine while still trying to shy away from being His. everything he feels is a contradiction to what he assumes Love to be, therefore he can't Love. whereas as stated with dirk he assumes his Love to be real because it is so much more than what the ideal is portrayed to be like.

and i'm not going to go into it entirely because this is already so long but theres a link here to the cherubs i think. besides the dirk splinters and the english influence, the foundation of a cherub is two dichotomous beings sharing a body which i think is so so representative of dirkjake. they both live on inside one and another, they aren't soul mates or two halves of a whole, they are simply one. and the nature of cherub reproduction and 'romance' is so far removed from what humans would consider 'romance' which is the kind of romance that can be found in dirkjake but in a minor key instead of a major if that makes sense. same tune different sounds.

hussie consistently tries to challenge mainstream ideals of Love through quadrants cherub reproduction leprechauns etc so having a cosmically fated couple actually not fall anywhere on the scale of stereotypical Love is so incredibly on brand.

tldr maybe they are in Love. or maybe what they have is something different. and that is so cool.