okay since we’re veering into the territory of “how real gay men felt when reading about dirk” im gonna throw in my “qualifications“: i am a gay trans man. the reason i‘m mentioning the trans part because dirk being trans is a pretty common headcanon and i feel it does add to his character - i‘m personally fascinated by depictions that examine the way toxic masculinity and misogyny often interplays with queerness and the tension between the two.

dirk’s character has always had this tension - he’s an elaboration on bro, he says himself that every version of him is an extension of himself, they’re always elaborations on each other. and, after all, part of the reason for dave’s internalized homophobia is beta timeline’s dirk‘s upbringing, the toxic masculinity and lack of vulnerability being part of it. dirk has always been at tension between these two aspects of himself, he’s even resistant to being called gay, and while i think his reasoning for it has some validity, i also think he’s philosophising away his resistance to associate with the label and therefore larger cultural ideas of gayness, roxy even reacts to him doing this as if he’s being silly, because he kind of is.

i just feel like we’re projecting some cultural ideas about gay men onto dirk, despite the fact that dirk has always been a somewhat unconventional depiction of a gay man. homestuck proper already makes some commentary on how misogyny and gayness aren‘t entirely contrary ideas: caliborn‘s misogyny concludes with him becoming obsessed with “yaoi” etc.

the epilogues are all about ramping up the deeper internalizations the characters have to lay them bare and examine them, and i feel like we’re giving dirk too much credit and disregarding a lot of his internalized bullshit just because we have certain cultural ideas about gay men and by extension gay characters.