Homestuck Feels like it has a Discomfort With Achillean Romance and Characters.

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Saturday, August 30th, 2025, 0:08 AM2 days ago

I should preface that this perspective is formed from the fact that four of the gay or achillean men that I knew in the fandom left around the time of the Epilogues; that wound up being a final straw for them.

It's a topic that we'd discuss from time to time and I felt it could be a valuable perspective to share.

____________________________________________________________________


So, to start off, the main focus point of this whole thing is going to be the characters of:


Dave, Jake, Dirk and Karkat; with minor mentions of other male characters who express homoerotic behaviors.


Dave, I think it's to nobody's surprise, is a brilliantly written bisexual man; but that is due to the fact his bisexuality is a retroactive reading of his earlier behavior. When Hussie started out with this webcomic, I do not believe for a second that there was intent for Dave to be interested in men in any sincere way. I think that was a decision that Hussie made due to interaction with fandom and retroactive perspective on their own authorship.

The "you're so gay" epithets and attacks on masculinity that Dave was prone to in the early comic, later become recontextualized as an internal fear of his own latent attraction, something which culminates in his confrontation with Dirk, where he not only realizes that Dirk and by extension his own guardian, is gay, but that the ascribed "masculine ideals" he perceived were not translated completely.

Dave assumes a degree of irony with what his guardian does and thus, as a defense to his own self, couches all his own interest in that very same irony, for fear that any genuine intrigue would be met with homophobia.

So far, so good.

The problems rise when his relationship with Karkat finally gets a chance to bloom. Dave's bisexuality is only really given breathing space in the last leg of the comic, where his newfound romance with Karkat mostly takes place off screen and is informed to us by external characters and external mediums like twitter and tumblr posts from people close to Hussie. That's not *too* bad, there's nothing wrong with it inherently and I don't particularly mind it, I think it was a nice send off for his arc and a subversion of expectations when it comes to the archetype he filled early on in the comic.

You can make some commentary around the fact that it's frustrating the only (at the time of the comic's ending) canon achillean romance is danced around so hard, with no explicit in universe confirmation, but it's not the end of the world.

Things take a turn for the worse within the Epilogues, though. Their romance is walked back multiple stages and we now find out the most they've managed to do is hold hands, which is fine if it means we're going to get a healthy exploration of their romance which we did not get to see on screen, but it comes at the cost of painting Jade as the invader and falling into a trope that Hussie also utilized with Dirk and Jake, where a woman is coming between them somehow. I don't think it's a particularly fair depiction for Jade and it's an even more awkward depiction of adults, given that Dave had a whole discussion near the end of Homestuck where he was asking Dirk for advice on how to come out to his friends.

It gets even worse when we consider that by the time Dave and Karkat finally kiss, the narrative threshold has been thoroughly taken over by Dirk and he is practically playing dolls and trying to force them into it, which to me as a reader and to my friends at the time, tainted the innocence of their former romance. We get explicit confirmation that Dave has his faculties in check as he shakes off Dirk's narrative forcefulness, but no such moment is granted to Karkat, leaving a sour feeling that the only reason it happened is because Dirk made it happen, which sucks. Male/Male romances in Homestuck seem to now just follow a trend of always being under some form of duress.


Bringing us to the allstar couple of Dirk and Jake.

The background we have on both of these men, before we even meet them, due to internal and external media, is that Bro Strider is an overbearing abusive guardian who relentlessly trained Dave for SBURB because he wanted Dave to be able to survive the lethal game, even at the cost of Dave having a happy childhood, whilst Grandpa Harley was a billionaire gallavanting around the planet learning all he could about the game (and seemingly having a lot of illegitimate children... thanks Hussie.)

The nugget we can draw from these Beta depictions is that Dirk at his core will sacrifice happiness and feelings for the sake of what he considers the greater good and Jake is avoidant of all responsibility, using adventure as a way to ignore any problems he leaves in his wake.


Dirk is a brilliantly written gay man, which when me and my friends first read about him, truly shocked us. I can count on one hand the amount of fictional gay men that I have seen, depicted facing the struggle of internalized homophobia in the way that Dirk experiences it; and that is to say, Dirk isn't disgusted with being gay, but he believes his homosexuality is the original sin that prevents his friend group from experiencing happiness.

He believes that because he is gay, he is screwing up the potential couples in his friend group. If he pursues Jake, he denies Jane the chance at him, since they both like the same man AND he denies Roxy himself, which stings even more when he considers that they are the last two living humans in their Earth. Brilliant. 10/10.

Dirk later discusses the idea that if he could be interested in women, he could give Roxy what she wanted, because he genuinely believes that she deserves it; it's a gut wrenching admission and at the time of reading it, I remember all my friends just feeling for him.

This moment however, arrives after Dirk has already been ghosted relentlessly, lambasted by his own AI assistant and allowed his closest friend to assault him because he loathes himself. Dirk kisses more women on screen than he does his own boyfriend (not that their kiss was not given any gravitas), but I do think it's supposed to be part of an intentional motif with his character; the fact he sacrifices even his own desires for the greater good, but when even the trickster juju doesn't "fix" him, he finally lets his true feelings spill.

And that's about as much as we get with regards to the whole thing. The Epilogues roll around and Dirk morphs into an unrecognizable creep, who winds up doing many fucked up things for god knows what reason.


Jake, on the other hand, fills the role of a "macho" man, which is supposed to highlight the irony that he really isn't any of that. He's sensitive and avoidant and wants to live up to his friends expectations but falls short all the time because he's also selfish and willfully ignorant; a trait which winds up ruining his relationship with Dirk, as they both press the wrong buttons.

Dirk won't *allow* him to be avoidant and Jake worries he'll never be as amazing as people expect, so he'd rather not try, than fail completely, ignoring that these are both effectively the same result. Jake also tends to get sexualized a lot, something which brings him his own discomfort, and is threatened with sexual assault (and later experiences it, but I don't really want to go into that. I don't think that plot point was done well). There's even a callback moment where, much like another Page earlier, he is lifted by a Serket and about to be kissed against his will.

All of that to say, Jake is rather prone to having people be creepy around him, and even though Dirk's convoluted plan to get them to kiss (orchestrated by HAL), is definitely CRAZY, there was never anything beyond that between them that screamed "creepy".

Until of course, the dystopian horror of Trickster Mode, where Jake, fueled by the JuJu, flaunts intense heterosexual desires in Dirk's face and flaunts the idea of them all having babies in some kind of big polyamorous quaouple. It's meant to be this viscerally creepy moment where Dirk is left as the last bastion of rationality, and even he gives in because he's depressed.

And that's where the comic leaves us for their interaction on screen. We get a minor "they might talk" after Dirk and Dave's discussion, where it seems clear Dirk wants to resolve things between them.


And then everything that happens to them and between them in the Epilogues happens, it's too much to list; but I do find it weird that not ONE M/M couple has any kids. Rose and Jade manage to have a secret child that is then ascribed to being Jade's attempt at having a child with Dave. John and Roxy have a child. Rose and Kanaya adopt a child and Jane forces a child with Jake.


This is where I'll segway in to discussing Rufioh and Horuss. The Dancestors were never all meant to be serious characters, and at the time of the story, they were parodies of random Archetypes, but the relationship between Rufioh and Horuss was meant to be a reflection of Jake and Dirk, with Damara acting as a version of Jane. A horse obsessed "creepy" guy who builds machines that is so overbearing he won't take the hint that the shy guy that EVERYONE has the hots for doesn't really want him anymore. I'm not entirely sure if Hussie was making that as an intentional commentary of their relationship or if it was supposed to be a parody of the way the fandom TALKED about their relationship.

Given that there's been endless shipping wars between JakeJane shippers and DirkJake shippers, as well as wars between DaveJade shippers and DaveKat shippers, it's not lost on me that it's easy romance drama to place the key women (namely Jane and Jade here) as the antagonist to these achillean romances, but it's kind of exhausting that it happens twice, even if in different ways.


I think I lost my train of thought here, but my final point is that there's not really any M/M romance in Homestuck now that don't involve some creepy element of coercion to them, which isn't exactly fun to read when gay men are treated as sexual predators IRL.

I just hope things can be different going forward, or things can be changed.


Dandy
Saturday, August 30th, 2025, 2:16 AM2 days ago

can you name a single non-mlm relationship that doesnt have manipulation or coercion

alex!
Saturday, August 30th, 2025, 2:30 AM2 days ago

arasol, fefsol, momdad, signless/disciple, latula/mituna?

This post was a Magic Mirror production. Problem Soothe, now playing in a theater near you: https://magic-mirror.neocities.org/problemsoothe/ps0000


Magic Mirror
Saturday, August 30th, 2025, 2:42 AM2 days ago

ok let me specify: relationships between main characters.

alex!
Saturday, August 30th, 2025, 2:45 AM2 days ago

also those are all het couples which is really funny. like more a result of hetero people being irrelevant to the text of homestuck and thus not having the narrative space to be manipulative and coercive but

the epilogues are the best part of homestuck

lowe Shawthorn
Saturday, August 30th, 2025, 2:56 AM2 days ago

re: alex!
implication being that aradia and sollux aren't major characters? who a main character is in homestuck tends to change as the comic goes on, do you mean the surviving cast or what.

clowns kissing

girl eridan
Saturday, August 30th, 2025, 2:59 AM2 days ago

I think a pretty solid argument could be made that Homestuck just finds the concept of teen romance gross and spends a lot of time either avoiding the subject or actively mocking it. like, Rosemary is prey to a lot of the exact same "it happened off screen" -isms that Davekat is; we only really think of it as a "real ship" because it has some legacy clout and therefore a couple extra years of fanfic under its belt, but the way it turns out in the Epilogues clearly demonstrates it's not in any way exempt from the story's Relationship Deconstruction Beam.


Mom and Dad are a joke ship. "what if Mom and Dad were in a loving, reproductively-motivated relationship" that is joke nonsense. the Signless and the Disciple I guess count as a healthy relationship if we take Scratch's monologuing completely at face value, but then we see that Kankri and Meulin's teenage relationship is dysfunctional to the point of near-nonexistence, so - again - The Beam strikes everyone eventually!!


there's a whole other corollary argument I could make about how men's coercive tendencies are a core theme in Homestuck and it's rare for a man to be in a relationship with ANYONE, man OR woman, that doesn't involve some unhealthy wielding of power. but I think everything above makes my point known well enough on its own

>eats somewhere other than olive garden once

>fucking dies

JakeMorph
Saturday, August 30th, 2025, 3:13 AM2 days ago

re: jakemorph
been a while since i read through the comic but correct me if i'm wrong:
rosemary was defined in the comic, a lot of their dynamic happened on screen. like they are defined partners for the latter half of the comic. so it's a bit dishonest to say the only reason it's seen as a real ship is because of fanfiction and legacy clout.

until the epilogues i only really remember them having issues with rose developing a drinking problem, and kanaya hiding her own vamp related drinking issue she was developing for a second. but then that got resolved.

kankri =/= the signless in the same way that bro =/= dirk

they are pre scratch versions of the latter character. so kankri's friendship with meulin doesn't really say much about the signless' relationship with the disciple. also not having any sort of relationship with someone doesn't make it dysfunctional outside of I guess it can't function if it doesn't exist?

clowns kissing

girl eridan
Saturday, August 30th, 2025, 3:22 AM2 days ago

I do like this analysis of their relationships, and I can somewhat agree that their relationships in the comics and epilogue are kind of handled poorly, and we just don't see a whole lot of them interacting or really working through all of the problems they have. I think, however, that this is largely because Homestuck was critiquing the way fandom prioritizes ships between men rather than women, since Homestuck really fleshed out the sapphic and lesbian relationships in its story. Like, a lot of what happens between Dave and Karkat in the epilogue is just one big meta commentary on how a lot of fans don't get their happy gay ship in the end because "a woman is getting in the way of it" lol which I have always hated, I can say many things about the whole DaveJadeKat situation and how it frames the ship DaveJade in a terrible light, how even when DaveJade shippers "win" there is nothing to see and they don't expand upon it at all and there's the whole Yiffy thing (it's a lot okay)


And I think there's something to be said about how Karkat is almost thrown completely to the wayside as an afterthought because he doesn't exactly fit the stereotypical mold for these kinds of Gay ships, he's literally not human first off, and his sexuality issues are so different from Dave's that it's hard to really "place" him anywhere. I guess if you haven't read a lot of Yaoi or old gay japanese manga that it isn't readily obvious that they by and large struggle to see who is the "top" during this whole dumb DaveJadeKat arc(this is a silly distinction but it matters to Fujoshi's a lot so bear with me </3) and because of just how different Karkat is from protagonists or characters in those kinds of stories, Jade trying to get them all to be in a relationship together just doesn't really work or mesh well because the narrative keeps trying to frame it in an even more archaic and human way. Even she kind of struggles with placing Karkat "in the ship", saying they have some kind of black romance but Karkat has never actually felt that way about her (unless I am forgetting I do know they definitely fought a lot and there was the whole "if you hate yourself so much why don't you just hate-marry yourself" thing from the comics, but I never read that as Karkat has a hate-crush on her idk I would have to reread that part)


Needless to say, I think the reason Karkat is kind of treated in this offhand way as just the secondary part to this gay ship is also commentary about how a lot of men in those yaoi stories are incredibly shallow and aren't really expanded upon as deeply as the "top" is. Their feelings about whatever relationship they get into doesn't matter, their sexuality is treated as a plot device and is never "confirmed" in a satisfying way even when they're with men, and even the way the story itself struggles to define "what they are" to each other is a common trope. I have always sort of disliked the scene in Meat where Dave and Karkat finally kiss because it felt too reminiscent of those shallowly written BL (boys love) stories where the "bottom" just gets together with their one true love or whatever even though we as the reader know absolutely nothing about them as a person and really they're just seen as a thing to be 'won' or because the author just thought it'd be cute to see them together lol. Even Dirk kind of places Karkat in this role while he is narrating the whole thing, which is why it is so "icky" to me. I feel like they'll lowkey break up in Meat because of this as well, but idk </3


I can't speak a lot on DirkJake because I am not a DirkJake super fan or whatever, Idk much about them to say anything so I'm sure someone else will come along.But I definitely agree with your consensus on DaveKat and it's why I tend to write a lot of fics about them just talking about their relationship because I just wish the story expanded on that end, but on the other hand I kind of get why they don't do that since so much of the fandom cared way more for this ship between men than any of the actual confirmed gay relationships between women.



Bloodstuck Advert, Read on AO3

elegantSpinstress
Saturday, August 30th, 2025, 3:26 AM2 days ago

RE:ValinaValina


Karkat and Dave's dynamic also happened on screen. it wasn't explicitly romantic most of the time, no, but neither is most of the stuff Rose and Kanaya do; their most explicitly couple-y moments are when they're fighting. that's my point. Homestuck is far more concerned with characters being funny together than having mushy kissy moments, and in this respect Dave and Karkat are one of the comic's most prominent couples.


I'm not interested in having the "Bro =/= Dirk" conversation in this thread on top of all the other threads I've had it in already LOL. but Kankri exists to elaborate on the Signless' character. how Kankri and Meulin feel about each other offers insight into how their adult selves feel about each other. the same way we can tell "Mom and Dad" are a stupid couple because we know Roxy will literally fixate on the first "eligible" boy she sees. Homestuck Doesn't Care For Mushy Shit

>eats somewhere other than olive garden once

>fucking dies

JakeMorph
Saturday, August 30th, 2025, 3:32 AM2 days ago

However, I don't exactly think its totally fair to like, shit on Homestucks for wanting more gay male ships or whatever. Because fandoms tend to fill the holes that canon never "patches". If there's more girlxgirl in the media, but there's a few boys who could've been together or were friends, it's pretty common for fans to ship the boys together.


So its not evil or some shit to write a bunch of yaoi when the show has plenty or yuri. I kind of think Homestuck at times got to wrapped up in making fun of fans who wanted to see more Gay male ships that when it came time to actually write those gay male ships, it was as an afterthought something to be tacked on at the end essentially.


Bloodstuck Advert, Read on AO3

elegantSpinstress
Saturday, August 30th, 2025, 4:03 AM2 days ago

You won‘t see many Dirkjake fans being open about liking Dirkjake in the wider fandom spaces. Thats a ship that postcanon sunk so thoroughly its supporters either left the community entirely or else retreated into curated circles (as I have done) rather than have to deal with the majority opinion telling them those two are bad for each other and have no shot of making it big again like Davekat. Recently another flavor of Dirkjake fan has arisen that revels in the dysfunction in their dynamic that postcanon emphasizes, but I pass over that opinion as bringing back unpleasant memories of 2012-2013 discourse, which I have no desire to retread.


Here is one important issue i perceive. Healthy relationships don‘t make for good story material. If you’re starting off from a position of perceived placidity / stability, as the Epilogues did coming three years after the dust had settled in the Credits, and you’re planning on making your work a bridge to an official sequel (questions of canonicity and what that means bedamned), you’re going to have to break a few eggs to make that omelette. Stir up drama for the characters. Make it so Dave and Karkat weren’t actually officially together to introduce tension that needs resolving, and give room for Jade to interpose. Make it so Jake still refuses to clarify what the thing between himself and Dirk is, so that Dirk assuming his place as the designated villain is treated with the gravitas of the most dramatic breakup in Paradox Space. And so on.


I for my part will continue to root for a potential reconciliation between the pumpkin patch duo, or at least a long overdue reckoning if not that. Someone has to keep the fire burning.

And will we let the fire go out?

Is this the end for them now?

Sunken ship that has long gone down

Will we let the fire go.. out?

—DirkJake in memoriam

Saturday, August 30th, 2025, 4:23 AM2 days ago

i think gay relationships in homestuck are very compelling idk, everything listed by op don't really feel like writing flaws at all? like grandpa harley having a bunch of children is bad because...? bro and grandpa do provide a lot of insight on who dirk and jake are as people; dirk having control issues and jake having commitment issues is like, the main reason their relationship doesn't work and they just aren't compatible. i rly fail to see how it's problematic to show how two guys have a relationship that ends up not working, bc like mentioned before in this thread all of the relationships between the main characters end up Not Working in one way or another. that's life!


also the wording "tainted the innocence of their former romance" re:davekat is...? i don't know what to even say about it lmao. davekat's conflict in the epilogues absolutely doesn't come from jade being the evil woman getting in between the yaoiz it comes from both of them being too scared to initiate or commit fully. the whole jadedavekat situation couldve been avoided if they had a spine and told her no we're together and dont want you but they dont bc theyre scared to even commit or initiate something w one another. was dirk stepping in and giving them a push to get together out of line? yeah, but also he didn't really force them it's not like he brainwashed karkat into doing anything he was just making him act on stuff he already wanted to do


theyre both very compelling and nuanced relationships n i think this criticism would make more sense if like homestuck didnt also have other messier relationships, but from the main relationships there's not One we can say isn't "messed up" or doesnt have coercion/manipulation involved



cigarette williams
Saturday, August 30th, 2025, 7:23 AM1 day ago

The last time I thought about DirkJake was when I was digging into the story's terrorism motifs (Dirk sending a severed head and thereby imprinting on Jake's mind) so I don't have much to say. But epilogue!Dirk seething about how attrative Jake's Strength is was funny to me so here's a DirkJake doodle from Valentine's Day


Jake kisses Dirk, who is on tiptoes to reach


"Malo" is fine
Saturday, August 30th, 2025, 8:01 AM1 day ago

this is because homestuck is fundamentally about women & lesbians. i hope this helps

on a more serious note i genuinely just... don't think your logic is sound here? davekat is extremely well established even if theyre not making out on screen, and have like... way less canon relationship issues than rosemary. you could make the same argument that homestuck has a difficult time dealing with sapphic relationships since rosemary almost crashes and burns and vrisrezi detours towards m/f pairings and are only able to succeed in a literal alternate timeline.

the epilogues are a different story because its literally made to mock fanfiction. everyone forgets this. dirk is a fujoshi

-- real slim shady

junedave
Saturday, August 30th, 2025, 11:37 AM1 day ago

Sorry, but how and why did we veer off into referring to gay couples as "yaoiz"?


I don't think Dirk and Jake being dysfunctional individuals is bad writing, I also don't think their relationship having PROBLEMS is bad writing. I'm expressing that as someone who spent a lot of time around gay men whilst reading Homestuck, a lot of the content came off as if it is scared of giving M/M relationships any respectability, constantly veering the relationships into either "jokes" or creep factors.

Also, as much as Roxy and John is a "bad" relationship by the Epilogues, they weren't coercive towards one another; and whilst RoseMary gets its share of drama in Candy, with Rose cheating, Meat doesn't lay the blame of their dysfunction on that, it lays it squarely at Dirk's feet. Kanaya is still seeking her love and Rose has been "tricked". Likewise, Callie and Roxy get to have a stable relationship in Meat.

Comparatively, Dirk and Jake are either living in a situation where Dirk has decided to wield ungodly narrative control over him, to exact some kind of weird "Revenge" for ???, or Dirk is dead and Jake has been stuck in an unhealthy relationship with Jane.

And when it comes to Dave and Karkat, either Dave is dead and Jade and Karkat are arguing over what could have been, with both of them laying the blame at each others feet, or Dave and Karkat got together but only because Dirk spent an entire chapter narratively controlling them to do so, and we only get confirmation of Dave's autonomy in that scene. We had a relationship that was *fine* and then had a coercive element dropped on it for no reason other than giving Dirk more villain chops.


To me, that sucks.


I think when I started writing this, it was because I was also going to elaborate that the perspective of Homestuck at the time, where Hussie was using Dave as an in universe reflection, kind of echoed a degree of that discomfort a lot of "edgy" people have WRT to male queerness. It's evident that that perspective changed as the story went on, because Homestuck also kind of acts as a reflection of Hussie's own growing POV.


Additionally, Callie and Roxy are doing just fine.


And I'm going to be completely honest, I do not for one second believe VrisRezi will end in tragedy. They have been the beating heart of pining lovers for the comic and their dysfunction really does rise from trauma and miscommunication. Terezi's despondence is because she misses Vriska and feels she did wrong by her and Vriska's continued presence is because she deep down wants to reconcile with Terezi. [S] Remem8er would have been a send off for that, but given Vriska got a second run at her own character arc, I don't doubt we'll get a reunion that's going to fight to surpass that.


Dandy
Saturday, August 30th, 2025, 2:20 PM1 day ago

Some of the takes here are exactly why I don’t feel at ease talking about liking Dirkjake in wider fandom spaces. Being committed to the more positive reading of them from circa 2017-2018 even in the face of postcanon material choosing to focus on and emphasize the dysfunction between them is very much an Endless Climb in an Upward Movement.



@pearls / Dandy

In Meat it is my understanding that Jake has been behaving quite irresponsibly, avoiding the question of where he and Dirk’s relationship stands while sleeping around with so many women he’s been having to dodge paying child support to some of them. It’s no surprise then that ultDirk’s departure from Earth C is treated as basically the most dramatic breakup in Paradox Space.

And will we let the fire go out?

Is this the end for them now?

Sunken ship that has long gone down

Will we let the fire go.. out?

—DirkJake in memoriam

Saturday, August 30th, 2025, 2:31 PM1 day ago

so obviously I can not speak for elegantSpinstress but from what I read of her posts she does differentiate between like general m/m relationships and fandom yaoi relationships. like a big chunk of the initial post talks about how to a certain fandom subculture(?), Fujoshi, the specific dynamics of a ship is EXTREMELY important. like will write entire essays over whose name should come first in a ship name and how terrible you are for seeing it any other way. ship manifestos!! those were so common once upon a time there’s a whole Term for it! i think she has a solid point that this type of fandom-work dynamic is important to keep in mind when discussing relationships in the work. like oh my god idk if yall were on tumblr for the rose/kanaya on-screen kiss but so many people who were just used to m/m stuff dominating fandom lost their entire MINDS because outside of like specifically sapphic works that was like. unheard of. it was (at least within that tumblr culture bubble) a Big Fucking Deal. People were starved and here was an oasis. That a lot of people walked past bc fandom still has a m/m bias just like. Go and sort homestuck ships by number of works on ao3 or whatever booru is popular right now idk. Search ANY fandom really and see the stats. The bias is Super Real and I’m only bringing this up because it strengthens the point being made: it’s all on a meta level in discussion with fandom and how it treats character relationships and messing around with those expectations. Kinda weird to single her out for this imo when like yaoi fanbase expectations vs how actual m/m relationships work is like. A commonly joked about thing (at least in my stomping grounds anyway). Like have you ever seen those jokes about taking a fujo to a gay bar on bear night and the fujo freaking out because it’s not some twinks? If you haven’t that’s whatever but like. Yaoi, fujoshi, and their history both in Japan and in the west have very frequently come under scrutiny for unrealistic and highly specific expectations to the point of fetishism and sometimes even homophobia. Fujoshi gets thrown around a lot these days but at one point it carried some Connotations not just “someone (usually a girl) who likes gay media” (and also if you didn’t already catch on yaoi is technically its own thing. bara/geicomi is lumped in under the yaoi name in the west but that is not the case in Japan and those are the terms (bara is a bit older and mostly fallen out of use but yaknow) you probably actually want to search for on manga sites to get stuff about like older men, harrier men, and yaknow just like grounded slice of life stuff? higher likelihood of being written by a gay guy with other gay guys as the intended audience yaknow)


And also I don’t want to like repeat what a lot of people already said but to be brief shitty messy relationships is par for the course with homestuck it’s kind of what you need to be able to handle to get through the work. It’s called difficult for a reason. Many reasons actually but this is also one of them. And you keep bringing up how this whole thing is based on how some friends of yours were unhappy with this aspect of the comic, but like. What about you? How did you PERSONALLY feel about all this? Yeah you point out certain scenes or elements you think suck or are uncomfortable but on the Whole is this something you truly believe is wrong and bad… or are you just speaking for some friends of yours that bounced off the work and moved on. Like… Just because some of your friends didn’t like this specific thing about it doesn’t make it bad. It could be better sure, a whooole lot of things in this comic could be better… but it doesn’t make it bad. ppl can just dislike things. and friends can disagree on what they like and don’t like. idk maybe im just reading the vibe wrong

A drawing of a red anthro wyvern holding a stylus with arm-wings open captioned "> Autumn: Retrieve wings."

Autumn
Saturday, August 30th, 2025, 2:59 PM1 day ago

The idea that Homestuck does well with lesbian relationships , mentioned earlier, is funny to me. Does it have great lesbian SHIPS, yes of course. We never see Vriska or Terezi paired with anyone except men in postcanon and only faintly alluded to in precanon. Postcanon Rosemary seems to like... exist primarily to mock lesbians for enjoying a lesbian ship too much? Callie and Roxy is specifically not a lesbian ship in postcanon.


These issues don't apply to the main story. And you can repeat the idea that relationships never ever work out in Homestuck, but this begs the question: Why? It's not realistic, for one thing, and if even slight realism isn't the goal, then it's certainly not *interesting*. And honestly, it starts to feel almost like. Moralizing. Like relationships are this impossible hurdle that such damaged people would be fools to even attempt.


And look, I'm not saying postcanon has no positive qualities by saying this, but its bizarre treatment of every type of interpersonal relationship--a world devoid of genuine love, a world almost completely empty of friendship---has to be one of its worst parts. And its undeniable that gay and lesbian relationships have endured the brunt of that heavyhanded, exhausting writing approach.

This post was a Magic Mirror production. Problem Soothe, now playing in a theater near you: https://magic-mirror.neocities.org/problemsoothe/ps0000


Magic Mirror
Saturday, August 30th, 2025, 3:01 PM1 day ago

@autumn My post was more about how the reason the relationships for gay men in Homestuck are portrayed in this way is because of the prevalent Fujoshi culture in fandom spaces, and how sometimes I think the narrative spends more time treating these relationships as unserious and silly because they are too busy making fun of the fans who wanted to see these ships become canon in the first place. Homestuck spends a lot of time fleshing out its female characters and their relationships to a degree that I have to say is just treated with more care than a few of the other ships. And this is not to, like, compare them or whatever or accuse the Homestuck team of being man haters or something lol, I am very well aware of how fandom is so male-oriented and how fandom will prioritize men over women to a strange, and comical degree.


I think this is part of the larger issue, which is just that these relationships are kind of pushed to the side, and we just don't really see a lot of them in the main story. And when we do see it in the main story, it is mired in mockery of an internet culture that I don't actually think many modern Homestucks are even really a part of. I am not saying that Homestuck should become the Davekat show either or whatever lol, but that if we are going to get Davekat and DirkJake moments in the future, they could at least drop this part of the narrative at least. The joke is pretty tired, and for what it's worth, I think the way Davekat is portrayed in Meat is really good. I liked that they had the conversation in the washroom; that was nice. And really, I only brought this up because the comic itself does this specific commentary with these specific ships, there was that whole scene with Caliborn learning to draw anime, lol.


I didn't just bring up Yaoi for no reason. But I can definitely understand how something like this could put actual gay men off from kind of liking the ships because if every time you got to see them together it was just content that's not really geared towards you, or it's jokes made about a community you might not even be a part of, that can be frustrating and at times kind of offensive. I think there is a way for Homestuck to have good representation for both lesbian/sapphic relationships and gay male relationships without bogging one or the other down with all this commentary on fandom. But that is just my opinion.

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elegantSpinstress
Saturday, August 30th, 2025, 3:58 PM1 day ago

I think the idea that Homestuck is not interested in teen relationships or is doing them to "mock" people who like them is pretty wild...yes, things like Troll Romance are dripping with irony but at the same time, the relationships between the characters are so integrated into the core of the comic. Call it post-ironic or a parody or whatever you want but you can't ignore the relationships on purpose.


And not to be an old they about this but back in the day when the comic was updating, there were tons and tons of anti-shipper fans who thought the inclusion of any relationships at all was a betrayal and Hussie bowing down to or getting corrupted by the shippers. Just wild deranged shit. So I could just as easily make an argument their inclusion is out of spite to these fans.


But I think something that's definitely true is that Homestuck is less interested in portraying healthy relationships than it is showing relationship DRAMA. Homestuck loves the mess but we simply don't spend a lot of time seeing the healthy parts of relationships. It loves to represent flawed characters. It's not done out of spite (well...maybe a little) but I think it's really just a mismatch of comic/audience interests.

heroicDivergent
Topic: Homestuck Feels like it has a Discomfort With Achillean Romance and Characters.