THE DIRKCOURSE THREAD

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

But they DIDN'T write it. They SKIPPED it.

They didn't skip it. It hasn't been written yet. You know about SU criticals? They're like "Why haven't you addressed X yet? Don't they realize that Rose Quartz did a problematic?" and then later Steven Universe does. In another episode. You sound like that.

"It hasn't been written yet" seems like an extremely silly way of attempting to dodge criticism.

First of all, the Epilogues are a finished work of text. Whey were all dropped in one piece, with no indication there would be sequel/prequel.

they will believe they are on a quest to retrieve a wife and rescue a friend. but they will discover their true mission is of much greater cosmic significance than they imagined. the seer is firmly in the thrall of the prince and will not easily be pried away. and as regards the heir, though resuscitation remains a theoretical possibility for those still striving for it, the truth of his role is it has reached a greater sense of narrative finality than any of his allies will bring themselves to admit. his influence over canon has come to an end, as has this particular story. his ultimate sacrifice was made to put the missing keystone in place and avert the supreme dissipation of all that shall be considered to hold truth, relevance, and essentiality.

https://www.homestuck.com/epilogues/meat/43

The thoughts in her powerful brain race. What will they name the planet? How long will it take for the ship to arrive? Once the new race has established an advanced enough civilization thousands of years from now, who will the lucky kids be? The ones who get the chance to play what will arguably be the most important session in the history of Sburb?

https://www.homestuck.com/epilogues/candy/41

These are big-ass sequel hooks. If those weren't sequel hooks, I wouldn't know what was.

And with a hint of a sequel, there is a hint of a redemption arc. Of things not going exactly as other characters plan them to, especially not the plans of the narrators, because in their arrogance they are fallible. "Boy golly! I sure hope Dave kills me like I deserve!" Fuck no. "I'm so glad Egbert has perished so he can't ruin my plans." Nah.

You see, as long as you keep living, things can always get better. Circumstances change as the story goes on. There's no happy endings in real life. "Oh, because life is miserable and everything sucks?" No. It's because death is never happy.

DAVE: rose we dont have fuckin "arcs" we are just human beings

https://www.homestuck.com/story/7507

In real life, everything happens so much. It keeps happening, you could say. And you'll either die or get back on your feet. And you've been resilient so far, right?

I mean, there's geopolitical crises and war and poverty and illness, but if we're talking on the scale of a bad breakup? One where nobody is financially dependent? You'll fall in and out of love with someone again. It's not a big deal.

Of course, I can't convince you that you should've liked the epilogues. Despite all the heavy-handedness of these narrators who won't stop giving exposition, it's not spelled out that the endless cycle of despair is also the cycle of hope. idk.

also, i think it's pretty wild that you'd consider questioning one's gender in Steven Universe to be "bad writing." yeah, the show with the nonbinary lesbians? wouldn't it be wildly off track if there were nonbinary characters in it? i know you're smarter than this.

[SbIUsedToKnow]

These are big-ass sequel hooks. If those weren't sequel hooks, I wouldn't know what was.

And with a hint of a sequel, there is a hint of a redemption arc.

Uh, yeah, hinting "we or someone else might shit out something more in idk a year or two or ten" is... still bad writing? You took a gay man, made him a transphobe, without any precedent in the source material, and what. We will fix it? Someone will fix it? It's so bad we have to fix it? Then why write it at all if we have to fix it? Are we just pulling a Vriska again?

Those snippets can also be interpreted as "someone will write a continuation", with heavy implication that it would be in non official form, such as fanfiction... Which is like, a whole theme, of the epilogues. (HS2 don't interact, I did not, and will not read it. I consider epilogues as post canon content too but fuck it, can't avoid them apparently). Or even, fuck it, that "continuation" could have been the Fanon of the Masses, interpreting the events/filling in the gaps. Which would have been a much more favourable outcome, in my opinion. But as we see, in this very thread, fanon is not universal.

There was space and place to undo the damages, to a limited scope. They weren't undone. It is too late now. Homestuck ended with the credits, and Dirk is the best boy in Homestuck in fact, because bluh bluh something something make your own canon ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Of course, I can't convince you that you should've liked the epilogues.

And we are in luck you don't have to exert the effort! I am an epilogue liker. I love evil Dirk, I like tragedies, my favourite stories are the ones where everyone dies, and are tortured or miserable forever. I honestly think the Epilogues, as they are, are entertaining. Snip out, black out, void anything around them, and they are an entertaining piece of text. They could have been my favourite fanfiction even, but alas, they are not a fanfiction. And I cannot ignore the damage they did on the fandom, nor can I ignore the characterisation mistakes (Jake, Jane, oh Dirk, Dirk can be made evil, very very easily I think, how do you even fuck this up? rhetorical question, twas the misoginy and transphobia), continuity errors(what sprites), bad taste(gamzee fucking vriska, really???), aggresivity(wub a dub dub, whoa cringe to even remember that one) or just their mean spiritedness.

also, i think it's pretty wild that you'd consider questioning one's gender in Steven Universe to be "bad writing." yeah, the show with the nonbinary lesbians? wouldn't it be wildly off track if there were nonbinary characters in it? i know you're smarter than this.

Wow such condescension. You good up there on your horse, dont bang your head on the street signs, so high it is.

Thanks for not reading the whole paragraph, missing the point too, and just picking the one line you had a pre trained response to? But I will gladly elaborate, internet character space is free after all. I can also climb on a very high horse, not sure if it will be quite as towering as yours :( . But I will try my best! :)

You remember the SU episode where garnet went to face homophobia that disallowed her compound gems to be together? I confess, it's been a year or three since I watched that show, god knows what's going on over there nowadays, but remember that episode where Steven got scolded by his dad for wearing pink? Or where gem got misgenderd? That whole episode about conforming to ones gender... Oh right, we don't, because Steven Universe is a show about a magical alien world where bigotry doesn't exist, or atleast it doesn't exist in the way we know it in real world, they instead use metaphors about alien systems to help introduce these heavy topics to young audiences. All the gems are female and it is never questioned, because magic rock aliens. Steven and Connie merge and it is never questioned nor elaborated, because again, magical world where gender isn't a big deal. Cool! What a novel and interesting concept I have never seen done this way before!

Is it now clearer why, if in a hypothetical movie called SU: the epilogues, the gems who up until now, exactly one episode-before-now, didn't have a gender (or had only one gender, idk how that works actually I'm not up to date to deep SU lore), suddenly went "I am a female woman now, it is very important that my gender is in accord with the human world one, and gem world genders are wrong and worse actually."(remember troll romance? My, how quickly we forget the troll romance.) ...would be jarring at best, a complete punch to the teeth to it's audience at mild, and a complete inversion and abandonment of the shows previously stated themes and motives at worst?

Surely you're clever enough to see the issues now :).
Now please, dear colleagues, no beef :) :) :) (:

[classpectanon]

Mod Note:

YOU STOP THAT.png (133.72 KiB) Viewed 67176 times

If we're not capable of having this discussion without attacking each other, then we're not having the discussion at all. Knock it off.

[BrobyDDark]

Dirkcourse: Dirk would be cooler if he wore a hat and popped his collar

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

Dirkcourse: Dirk would be cooler if he wore a hat and popped his collar

Dirkcourse: Bro wears a hat because he's balding.

[BrobyDDark]

Dirkcourse: Dirk would be cooler if he wore a hat and popped his collar

Dirkcourse: Bro wears a hat because he's balding.

take it BACK

[magnanimousLad]

Dirkcourse: Dirk would be cooler if he wore a hat and popped his collar

It ain't got a popped collar, but I did make this one time.



You're welcome.

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

Dirkcourse: Dirk would be cooler if he wore a hat and popped his collar

Dirkcourse: Bro wears a hat because he's balding.

take it BACK

his hair was a dragon and it flew away

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

Very well. I will stop smothering you with surprise noodles.
TT: Huh?
But only because I find you to be adorable.
TT: So creepy.
So cute.
TT: Yuck.

he was a good uncle

[calamityCons]

Uh. Ben I think you might have posted in the wrong thread.

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

Uh. Ben I think you might have posted in the wrong thread.

I think Uncle Arquius counts as a Dirk Strider splinter in some way. Discourse on whether Doc Scratch is a pedophile is fair game. I say he's not, but he acts that way because making statements that will be interpreted as pedophilia but are actually innocuous is one of his good pranks.

[TobeWonInToronto]

Why is Dirk Strider just Venom Snake


Like yeah he's Big Boss, he kills people, it's just not sexy and he's a fucking impostor

[rookie1978]

Dirkcourse: Dirk would be cooler if he wore a hat and popped his collar

always thought it was weird how he had a hat on his shirt but but no hat on his head

[Darth_Energon]

Dirkcourse: Dirk would be cooler if he wore a hat and popped his collar

always thought it was weird how he had a hat on his shirt but but no hat on his head

Yeah that always seemed like a weird symbol to me

[JakeMorph]

i thought it was a pretty obvious ironic gag. it's not like it goes unmentioned by the text, either

You'd consider wearing [a hat] now and then, but they don't really fit the dimensions of your head yet. And anyway, it would be criminal to mess up your perfect hair. Instead, you do the next best thing, which is wearing a picture of one on your shirt. And by the next best thing, you're pretty sure you mean the vastly superior thing.

[rookie1978]

i thought it was a pretty obvious ironic gag. it's not like it goes unmentioned by the text, either

You'd consider wearing [a hat] now and then, but they don't really fit the dimensions of your head yet. And anyway, it would be criminal to mess up your perfect hair. Instead, you do the next best thing, which is wearing a picture of one on your shirt. And by the next best thing, you're pretty sure you mean the vastly superior thing.

bro wears a hat, so when does dirk ultimately decide wearing a blank shirt but hat on head is a better option
dirk switching to hat mode means ascension further than ultimate self
that's like goku going from super saiyan to super saiyn plus ultra mega mode
this is canon

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

I said I'd make a thread the next time I talked about DirkJake, but I don't intend to talk about the Jake part so I hope it'll be fine this time.

https://www.homestuck.com/story/4492

TT: If it's me going through with this, hypothetically,
TT: I'm not dropping some limp wristed shucks buster on his ass, and praying to the horse gods of irony for reciprocation.
TT: There will be no rocking back and forth on pigeon-toed feet, while my face flushes with the blood of a thousand timid bishies.
TT: I will not hold one tentative hand behind my head like a flustered asshole from an Asian cartoon, nor will an oversized bead of sweat overlap ludicrously with my visage.

https://www.homestuck.com/story/5514

TT: I don't know if you just want a little solitude.
TT: Or if maybe you finally just got like,
TT: A case of Strider fatigue.
TT: I could understand that.
TT: I mean, not to get all neurotic on you.
TT: I'm just saying I get it, if that's what's going on.
TT: But for real, if you gotta sneak away for a few days, that's cool.
TT: Just might be kind of dope if you at least would let me know which planet you scurried off to.
TT: And by dope I guess I mean considerate?
TT: Really not trying to be a drag here.
TT: Wondering what's up is all.
TT: Want to meet up soon?

He really is praying to the horse gods of irony for reciprocation in that second Pesterlog.

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

At the same time, Epilogue Dirk isn't made out this way, his actions are painted in a completely negative light. He's made to be a transphobe, we don't get to see him be vulnerable,

I think his transphobia does count as an example of him being vulnerable.

Jade looks at where her hands are folded in her lap. Bites her lip. She has her own concerns about this, her own thoughts. Reasonable thoughts, I’d say. But I’ll refrain from any further comment. I’m staying away from this subject, from now on.

If were allowed to look into Jade's mind, we'd likely see thoughts that have similar levels of transphobia to those of Dirk. However, since Dirk is letting her keep those to herself, we don't judge her the same way as we judge him.

[Leddy]

Jade looks at where her hands are folded in her lap. Bites her lip. She has her own concerns about this, her own thoughts. Reasonable thoughts, I’d say. But I’ll refrain from any further comment. I’m staying away from this subject, from now on.

If were allowed to look into Jade's mind, we'd likely see thoughts that have similar levels of transphobia to those of Dirk. However, since Dirk is letting her keep those to herself, we don't judge her the same way as we judge him.

What makes you think this about Jade, at all. Even with this quote.

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

I'm assuming that it'd be worth narrating them if they weren't offensive, so we could get a better look into how she feels. See, she gets to have that ambiguity, but he doesn't.