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.
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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.
i don't think how dirk acts towards jake in the epilogues is out of character or "out of nowhere" and the reason we don't get 'insight' on what went wrong with dirkjake is 1) dirk choosing not to tell the audience about it as a narrator and 2) it's pretty self explanatory if you're able to piece the very obvious pieces together lmao they had an on and off relationship for 7 years that collapsed after jake's lack of commitment and dirk simply had bigger fish to fry, he's obviously extremely resentful about it. the final scene of them is dirk hurting him in a cathartic way like very clearly and personally? i wouldn't have wanted an in depth explanation and exposure on their godawful relationship bc it would've been redundant LOL we see why they don't work in homestuck proper n we know they gave it a shot (or several) afterwards, what else is there to show? i still fail to see how it's homophobic writing
too many people answered n i can't give specific responses but here's a rundown: johnroxy is also meta commentary on how unfulfilling a heterosexual marriage is because theyre both forcing themselves into the role of Man and Woman that they DO NOT WANT given that they're both transgender. rosemary's issues aren't "dirk inflicted" and trying to reduce it to dirk the big meanie broke them up :"( feels frankly a bit misogynistic, i could go on about how rose and dirk have an extremely similar viewpoint on what's Necessary to the point of sacrificing other people and themselves to achieve it which is why dirk was able to feed into it and convince her to leave-- and even without his influence we see that rose cheats on kanaya and agrees to have yiffy because it would've been cosmically important or whatever, it is a mentality that she has independently from him. but on the topic of dirk and rose it is a codependent relationship that can't be reduced to "gay man grooms a lesbian" (??) it's both of them isolated from everyone else and they only have eachother left n i'm not downplaying dirk's abuse in this situation but it is completely in line with their characters it doesn't feel out of nowhere to me.
and about everything else, masculinity has ALWAYS been equated to abusive power in homestuck and gay men are not an exception? and i think the issue you're having is that you're reducing dirk to his gayness instead of seeing him as a character who is part of a bigger story. our introduction to dirk was as an extremely abusive older brother and you could argue that bro "isn't really" dirk but he is, you could argue that AR's pushiness towards jake means nothing and is independent of what dirk wants but he is also dirk and acts based on what dirk wants without the inhibition (or responsibility) of having to deal with it because he's 'not real'. dirk is an extremely fleshed out character in a way a lot of gay characters in general aren't i really still fail to see how it's bigoted that the epilogues chose to build upon and expand on the less digestible parts of his character that have been there since the beginning
i have to clarify that when i called dirk unconventional i was talking about him being unconventional in terms of gay characters, especially at the time, not commenting about him not being relatable or whatever.
i just think that your criticisms come from a place of personal attachment to dirk and his identity and disliking the direction the story took him in. like, dirk being a weird control freak who‘s emotionally repressed and both self-hating and self-aggrandising has always been his characterisation. the epilogues just go in the direction of pushing those flaws to their logical limit.
and as for the transphobia thing, i’m just gonna say that “it makes no sense for someone to be transphobic towards someone they love and care about” is just not how any of that works i’m sorry.
as for caliborn, i obviously was not saying that he’s secretly a gay man with a lot of misogyny to unpack. i brought him up because i think his yaoi shit is much more a critique of fandom misogyny, the thread there being that the logical conclusion for a misogynistic author to reach is cutting out the “pesky women” altogether, like if we look at it plainly it‘s somewhat on the nose that a guy who only wants to engage with homestuck in the form of drawing anime boys kissing is a notorious misogynist.
@cigarette williams i want to second your point about rosemary because while obviously there’s a point to be made that theres a degree of manipulation to meat rose, in candy, a timeline completely devoid of dirk’s bullshit, rose ruins her own marriage by falling into similar nihilistic patterns of thinking about things and personal relationships in “the grander scheme of things” and using a bunch of philosophising bullshit to basically just ruin her relationships with the people around her.
the truth is rose as a character is prone to the flaw of philosophising and overthinking her way into fucking up her personal relationships, i mean she spends her entire childhood doing that to her mother! while, yes, dirk is abusing her, there’s a reason she comes to him and keeps indulging in his bullshit. i feel like reducing a bunch of these characters to their sexualities and archetypes erases the grander nuance present in the narrative.
you seem really stuck on like the degree to which these characters sexualities make up their core character identity and I don’t really feel like that’s a productive way to go about things. Dirk is gay, and his relationship with Jake is important to various plot beats, but he isn’t The Gay One nor is that his singular defining trait. he’s very good with robots and technology, and as pointed out by others he’s a control freak, he’s responded to things with self decapitation enough times it was a meme on tumblr. The guy kinda has a lot going on. And id say that’s true for any of the characters mentioned yaknow? Dave is bi and it matters but it isn’t all he is or his main role in the narrative. Rose is a lesbian and it is very important in a number of places but I think regulating her to The Lesbian who can’t do xyz plot beats because of it would get you some strange looks.
Like there’s that thing where it feels more fine if characters fall into certain stereotypes so long as there are multiple other characters who are that same identity but aren’t doing that and are doing their own thing? I do think there’s a little bit of that happening here but it’s also a bit strained by the limited cast. because like we can see how a character gets from point a to point b it makes sense for them, but then saying they can’t do it because they are The Gay One makes sense when they are the only gay character and that’s 90% of who they are narratively… but less so when there’s other gay characters who are doing their own things (though this is homestuck so most of those things are probably self destructive in some manner anyway lol) and that the character in question has more going on. they aren’t Solely Defined by one aspect of their identity. am I making sense??
Again, people seem to be walking past what I'm saying. I'm not saying you can't have characters do these things, I'm saying that Dirk's sexuality became a KEY POINT of his arc and story. Dirk isn't incidentally gay; being gay is directly involved in his arc. So he does become "The Gay One" if that's how you want to put it. His story is about being The Gay One who doesn't fit in (or so he perceives). It all culminates in the Trickster Arc and then concludes with Dave asking him for advice on HOW TO COME OUT.
You can't unweave these things from his story without fundamentally rewriting who he is and what his contribution to the story is. And you can't make that a fundamental part of his story and then pigeonhole him into a sexual predator and groomer. It's irresponsible writing.
There is literally no other man in Homestuck who has an arc around his sexuality, around being gay, like Dirk. Dirk is quite literally the ONLY textually confirmed gay man.
Similarly, gender identity is now going to be a key part of June's character arc and story. I think an author that chooses to do that, has a duty of care with regards to how they depict that character.
You can write whatever you want, but people are allowed to feel how they will. And I feel that Dirk's overall story now is one tinged in homophobic themes; and I'm not really going to give Hussie good grace on it because they also used a heap load of slurs when this comic started and have discussed at length even in the commentary that their perspective on characters and their identity has been fueled BY how the fandom perceives them when it comes to exploring more progressive depictions.
Gay Villains is not my issue. Gay men being typecast into homophobic depictions is.
Also, I want to make it very clear. I don't care if Dirk and Jake is endgame or whether their relationship fails.
I care about the WAYS in which Dirk and Jake get portrayed, though moreso Dirk given that his sexuality is a core characteristic of his on screen arc.
Dirk exacting sexual violence on Jake, Dirk being sexually coercive towards Dave and Karkat and Dirk "grooming" Rose are all written in ways that echo homophobic stereotypes that surround gay men.
Particularly the way he handles Dave and Karkat.
All of these moments don't just exist in a bubble and the story doesn't exist agnostic to our sociopolitical climate. For better or for worse, Homestuck exists in conversation WITH the real world and I think it was an irresponsible choice to put those elements in to Dirk's story and it reeks of homophobia.
I feel like I'm either not making sense or I'm skipping over things, but when I talk about Dirk's sexuality being integral to his character, I don't just mean that it's important because his relationship with Jake is part of the story, I'm talking about how Dirk's sexuality INFORMS how he behaves with Roxy and Jane as well. The fact he only likes men makes him feel like he's denying Roxy of the chance at love, and puts him at odds with Jane since they both like the same man, thus IF he dates Jake, he's denying HER happiness as well.
Dirk's whole relationship with the alpha kids does boil down to the fact his self loathing stems from him feeling like the odd one out for being gay. (And the irony is, all 4 of them feel like the odd one out for their own reasons; Roxy is just the only one who was able to directly confront that in due time.)
And that whole arc regarding his sexuality finally reaches a conclusion when he's able to see that his identity HAS a positive force behind it: He's able to provide Dave guidance on coming out. It's one of the many threads regarding how Dave and Dirk's eventual meeting was always going to be a cathartic one. Dave is meant to show Dirk that there IS good inside of him that he doesn't recognize BECAUSE he's nothing like the man Dave feared and Dirk is able to provide Dave closure on his anxieties regarding his own identity, having existed in the shadows of a man who abused him and whose identity he also misunderstood (like how all the beta kids misunderstand key aspects of their guardians.)
You can't divorce Dirk being gay from his story in Homestuck; and I think Hussie is at least aware of that, otherwise Dave could have asked Rose for coming out advice, but they particularly chose Dirk for that discussion.
I really don't see Dirk's arc being about his sexuality at all. Dave's arc, for example, is largely about trying to move past the ideals that were forced on him growing up, and accepting his attraction to men is a big part of this. In the epilogues, Roxy doesn't even get much focus but it was made very obvious that his gender was the main focus of that character there. Dirk's gayness, in comparison, just seems like a simply fact of the character. Dirk doesn't have to discover it, or come to terms with it, he starts the story already in that position. The only time Dirk's sexuality really factors into character arcs is in Dave asking him to help come out (which is obviously more about Dave) and in Roxy's former lack of respect towards his sexuality. The situation with Roxy is the only place I really see it factoring into his character, with him being unwilling to call him out on it, but I think that reflects more on his own negative view of himself than of a negative view of his sexuality. He doesn't blame Roxy or call him out on it because Dirk sees himself as the one in control, as a manipulator who is constantly at risk of harming his friends, which blinds him to their possible faults. The only reason I think Dirk could be seen as "the gay one" is because being gay ISN'T really a big part of his arc, he is just openly gay the entire time we know him (unlike other queer characters who have to figure it out to some extent).
Wait actually you brought up some good points regarding the importance of Dirk's sexuality to his arc in your last post that hadn't loaded when I made mine, my bad. I still think that his guilt is more based in seeing himself as a harmful influence and his qualms with his sexuality are a result of that, but his sexuality is definitely a big part of his character arc, sorry.
@slothArmy
I don't have Homestuck pages handy, but there are MULTIPLE moments Dirk's sexuality is brought up and made a key point of the story.
His conundrum with regards to how choosing Jake denies Jane a romantic partner.
His conundrum with how being gay denies Roxy a romantic partner. That elaboration comes later, our first interaction comes at the hands of Roxy pushing Dirk to discuss the idea of them dating, despite how uncomfortable it makes Dirk, but Dirk is also reluctant to say that he's gay because once again he'd rather provide the false image that SOMETHING could happen with Roxy, than outright say "no, leave me alone."
His issues with how HAL will flaunt erotic roleplay in his face, because HAL doesn't care in the way Dirk does. (Or perhaps HAL is a version of Dirk who isn't 100% figured out on his sexuality, it's not entirely clear, but either way it's used to taunt Dirk about something Dirk will never do.)
The whole trickster climax is Roxy forcing Dirk into a kiss, after Jake comes around and talks about how great it would be for them all to have babies together. Roxy literally tries to force a ring on Dirk's finger.
His eventual discussion with Dave, on the rooftop, which as I said culminates in the advice re: coming out.
Multiple moments of the story feature the irony that Dirk is kissing women, something which the story draws attention to by censoring the moment it happens (to also build up the climax of Dirk and Jake kissing.)
Obviously there are other elements to Dirk's character and story, but being gay is directly woven as one of the main ones.
I guess I'm mostly just confused as to what the alternative solution here is, if Dirk acting this way is inherently problematic. Is it an issue of execution, or are these tropes just completely off limits to portrayals of gay men because of the ability to be read as bad-faith stereotypes?
I totally accept that Dirk being a) gay and b) manipulative and struggling with both of these aspects is core to his character. I'm also going to state my biases upfront: I echo the sentiments that Dirk in the Epilogues doesn't come out of nowhere: Dirk struggles with being manipulative throughout all of Act 6, and his arc in HS proper ends fairly positively with him becoming more aware and striving to Not Be Like That in the future; the Epilogues just present an outcome in which he doesn't live up to that and takes his worst tendencies to the absolute limits.
So is it being a "gay manipulator" that's the issue? Or is it the specific instances and interactions? Like, I understand the idea that Dirk manipulating Dave and Karkat plays into the homophobic stereotype of gay men grooming young men into becoming gay. But there's other things going on there like Dave's repressed bisexuality, Karkat's emotional detachment, and on a meta level with Dirk as an author insert, the commentary on the authorial and fandom impulse to aggressively ship characters. If you ignore ALL of that, then yes, what's left is homophobia. Personally, I think the other things going on here are way more prominent than what is a frankly ridiculous stereotype of gay men. It isn't that I don't think the presence of that stereotype in society is harmful or a problem. It's just for me, centering the stereotype above everything else gives it more power than it deserves and is a limited and reductive way to look at the story.
Or with Rose, yes he is manipulating and "grooming" her. But the stereotype is gay men grooming other men into sex and that's not at all what is going on here? The relationship here is more akin to father/daughter with Dirk trying to get Rose to be his accomplice or subservient to him and break up with her girlfriend he doesn't like (and also the subtext is Rose is also using him but I can put that aside for now).
But like, Dirk is also VERY forcefully manipulating John the entire time. Is that one ok because he's not family? IDK!
And I don't mean to be rude or anything but I find it weird to keep going back to not trusting Andrew Hussie's writing when they just outlined the Epilogues and the bulk of the writing was done by a bunch of queer women who are bringing their perspectives to characters like Rose too? But then on that same note, that means no gay men worked on the Epilogues and maybe that's another problem, lol. Those perspectives probably could improved some of the writing, even if I don't really have an issue with most of the broad strokes.
Dirk behaving like this isn't inherently problematic; like, my gripe on homophobia isn't because Dirk is gay and does these things, but rather that Dirk the only character who is explicitly gay and explicitly has that identity explored as a FOCAL point of his character and then gets tarnished with the worst of bigoted gay portrayals. If Dirk's sexuality was just an incidental part of his character, would it still suck? Sure, but I don't think it'd feel as egregiously homophobic.
Dirk absolutely struggles with being manipulative; he worries that he is an inherently evil person and he is prone to keeping his friends in the dark because he wants to handle all the negative and "hard" decisions, to keep them "innocent" or out of harms way, ignoring how he basically disregards their autonomy and their input. He winds up even manipulating his own actions by wayside of HAL. The end goal of the Epilogues can be achieved WITHOUT Dirk doing half the shit he does; especially what he does with Dave and Karkat.
Dave's repressed bisexuality is an arc that by the end of Homestuck ends with Dave asking him for advice on how to come out; a clear idea that there is some kind of positive resolution going (and also, the comic ended staunchly with the idea that Davekat has ALREADY HAPPENED. They even went on to tweet about it being canon.) The Epilogues walk all of that back and decide to take the conclusion of Davekat OUT of their hands and put it firmly into the grip of Dirk's narrating; where he lauds over the story with a LOT of homophobic language at times too, IIRC he even refers to Dave and Karkat as "bottoms" derisively, and as I said before, we get confirmation of Dave's autonomy in this moment, but nothing for Karkat. It feels like a really bad parody of gay men trying to groom younger peers. It wasn't NEEDED in the story. It really wasn't. The entire moment exists for shock value.
Dirk's story and the greater story of how queer male sexuality is handled by Homestuck is a conclusion I'm drawing based on the whole tapestry we have available now. I don't think it's far fetched to state that Hussie started out with some edgy and bigoted views that they obviously worked through AS the comic was releasing, but that doesn't also mean that they've become a paragon in writing because they've owned up to some things. I still think they have a ways to go to unpack the way they write about homosexuality around men in the context of the story.
(Also, people are fixating purely on Dirk but my post was about how sexuality is handled for ALL homoerotic interactions between men.)
As for not trusting Andrew's writing, the outline of the Epilogues was penned by them, it wasn't a story invented by the people Hussie commissioned to finish it and they haven't exactly elaborated on who was responsible for those particular Dirk scenes, so I'm not going to harp about authors I can't ascribe and I don't think it's even useful to do. It's Hussie's IP and they cosigned the release; if they found it particularly objectionable I feel like they would have asked those scenes be excluded.
I'll leave it up to sapphic individuals to decide how they feel about Rose's story, though some of the people I know found it beyond a bit fucked up that the story now has a trans woman (if that's the route they want to go with Jade, I'm still not sure where the official canon lies because as much as the epilogues are progressive, they lack hard on the trans woman front) and a lesbian decided to come together and sexualize the name of their child as if that's a completely normal thing to do. [Addendum to this, I think the current team are trying to recontextualize the naming choice, but it's still just a bad character decision. It feels more like a name Caliborn or Gamzee would pick out for a baby.]
Whether any gay men being involved in the writing or story crafting would have changed what Hussie eventually wanted to say, we'll never really know; hypotheticals aside, we exist in the timeline where this is the story we have.