#and frankly like. thats bc its such a perfect crystallization of his neuroses that i think it basically IS canon

[telaraneas]

im still in the process of PROPERLY reading all of Detective Pony because dirk im sorry but i have adhd i cant sit through all of those words at once. its not even that the concepts are too advanced, its just that im p sure he deliberately goes out of his way to be as obtuse and pretentious as he possibly can be (which is pitch perfect characterization sndjej)

ive read it in chunks out of order by skimming and then going back and forth, which is almost definitely cheating but also the only way i can actually digest everything going on here. detective pony is a masterpiece on about 5 different levels, it captures a very specific type of metafiction silly-to-crushingly-serious rabbit hole that i have seen over and over and which i'm struck by and fascinated with each time, even the most shallow and un-self aware of these kinds of works fascinate me (...so yes including stuff like the overbloated disaster mess that are the nostalgia critic movies)

detective pony is just unironically very engaging tho no matter how deep it goes into embarrasing dialectics and struggles with the admission of responsibility about the things you create and about how the entire book IS an extension of his psyche no matter how much he frames it like a struggle against him. the whole thing reads like a microcosm of his whole mental state and especially the fact that as he says. he set out to make a birthday present for jane and ended up just making a whole thing thats about himself and his ego and his struggles with that ego and the terrifying fact that no matter how much he says hes ashamed of it and that no one should read it, he is STILL in the active process of creating it and putting his feelings out there and arguing with himself in the form of socratic dialogue and that, in the end, he DOES end up giving it to jane

and i cant stop thinking about how jane DID READ IT. like i fully 100% believe she read every word

dirk and jane have one of the most interesting relationships in homestuck i think because they honestly care about each other and can be honest with each other in a way they struggle to be with the rest of their friend group, but in a way that's BECAUSE of how emotionally detached they tend to be. like, dirk has his whole mass of issues, but jane's deal is that she tries to be very Nice and conscious of other people's feelings, but because she's, yknow, not a perfect human being, she doesn't ACTUALLY believe everything she says, and she doesn't say most of the things she thinks, because she doesn't want to hurt others and doesn't realize this, too, is a selfish impulse, maybe moreso than actually saying what she feels

i mean. jane was SO committed to only saying what she thought was the most socially nice and appropiate thing to say, that she blew her chance with jake in the dumbest way and then kept digging her hole into the depths of the earth akdnsknd and then she dug in her heels and kept being A Good Friend against her actual wishes until her passiveness turned to passive aggression and then blew up into ACTUAL AGRESSION

I think jane and dirk kind of have similar yet opposite problems in a way, where, like... dirk doesn't want to burden others with his feelings and so tries to hide behind a billion layers of detachment and masks (to the point jake spends the entire story up to entering sburb interacting with dirk without ever actually TALKING to him directly much to his frustration), but despite that stated goal, his feelings and authentic self STILL wind up as the most overtly everpresent fact of the friend group's lives, because moderation just escapes him, so it's like the faucet is at full blast of dirk all over everyone while he stares at it wondering why the fuck he's like this

and then there's jane who is like... she WANTS to connect with others. she WANTS to understand others and be understood in return. she wants to be a good friend and a presence in their lives that they find worthwile. so with her the faucet is closed completely, other than the inescapable droplets that make her support come across as transparently condescending or passive agressive when her heart just isn't in it. jane has SUCH massive trouble expressing her actual, genuine, unironic 100% from the heart Feelings And State Of Mind to other people, and yet she's so miserable when people don't automatically KNOW where she's at

so... i think dirk would write that whole thing, which is esentially a static version of AR in that it's an encapsulation of him that is very much authentically him including the parts of himself he hates the most and never wants anyone else to see, but yet he puts it out into the world ANYWAYS because he can't bring himself to ACTUALLY hide any of himself no matter how much he wants to

and jane would 1000% read the whole thing, from the goofy violent doodly beginnings to the philosophically self-destructive metafictional cathartic end, and she would read it and absorb it and gain a clearer understanding of her friend's issues and what weighs on him, and she would definitely cry while reading it and feel deeply for her friend's situation... and she wouldn't say anything about it

she wouldnt reach out to him like HEY UH ARE YOU OKAY THIS BOOK IS KIND OF UHH CONCERNING, which is ABSOLUTELY what roxy and jake would do... and in my opinion, that's probably WHY dirk went through with it and gave it to her after all that waffling back and forth. because he can't handle honest confrontation about his mental state, but on one level or another, he WANTS to be understood

so like, i think thats why jane and dirk's relationship is so interesting to me. they Understand each other and find comfort in that passive understanding. i think it's also part of why they both went steadily downhill when they... well they never fought over jake, because again these two idiots are too avoidant to have a direct confrontation about it, but they certainly let that whole situation drive a wedge between them which resulted in both of them feeling even more isolated despite roxy's desperate efforts to hold the entire disaster gang together

man.... i just think about the alpha kids a lot........

#i realized im talking about it like detective pony the fan creation is 100% canonically the full thing dirk wrote in homestuck #and frankly like. thats bc its such a perfect crystallization of his neuroses that i think it basically IS canon #even if it wasnt literally the exact same work with the same words it would absolutely go down the same route #homestuck #dirk strider #jane crocker #sushi original