for example, saying rose never had a respect for authority in the context of being vulnerable to parental abuse is, i‘m sorry to say, insane? throughout the entire story rose is haunted by her relationship with her mother, by the fact that she misunderstood her love and then her mom died so there was no hope to rekindle their relationship. her mommy issues even come up to this day, in the way the nymphs are as her creations! of course she’d be vulnerable to someone claiming to be her parental figure and saying she’s the only one that understands him.

Rose does have maternal issues! Maternal! They manifest in her elation to be able to have a relationship with Roxy, we see that come up on the lilypad! She doesn't have paternal issues. She doesn't even consider the idea of TALKING to Dirk on screen until the Epilogues. If the presumption that Rose has parental issues is a key point, you would assume more of her relationship to Roxy would be displayed IN THE EPILOGUES. It isn't! Rose suddenly fixating on Dirk being her dad and Dirk fixating on being her father are traits added by the Epilogue; contradictory to their prior on screen depictions.

the reason people aren’t really talking about the davekat thing is because it’s pretty simple to explain? dirk is manipulative and thinks he knows better and that’s been his characterization from his first introduction, the davekat thing is just an extent of that combined with the fact that in the epilogues his worst tendencies are just dialed up to the max. this is even something jade tries to do in candy, she’s just way worse at it. it has nothing to do with anyone’s sexuality?

Again. I'm not fixating SOLELY on how the Epilogues address Davekat, I'm discussing how the Epilogues don't help the portrayal OF Davekat. Dirk *is* manipulative and does think he knows better, but none of that depiction has ever been wrapped up in sexual violence towards his friends and family. I'm sorry but I don't know how you can continue to just separate Dirk's sexuality from this conversation as if it's inconsequential to his depiction. I'm 100% of the opinion that if the role of author for the Epilogues was given to someone else, there wouldn't be nearly as much homophobic rhetoric thrown into the sexual violence that is lambasted towards the queer men in the story. [Excluding Hussie, since they previously did that anyway.]

and as for the misogyny thing, did you just like, read homestuck with rose tinted glasses? again, the whole point of the epilogues is taking the underlying tendencies dirk already had and dialing them up. did you think dirk was indulging caliborn’s requests of drawing “filthy whores” aka his friends in “pornographic“ scenarios just because he fully bought in the fake saw game framing? like at this point i’m just not sure you ever understood dirk’s character beyond being gay in the first place, and now the epilogues are putting all his worst qualities on centre stage and you’re uncomfortable because your comfort gay guy has turned out to be not a very good person.

I think you're being weirdly hostile about this, nowhere did I call Dirk my comfort gay guy. This whole post has been about more than just Dirk, people are fixating on that point of the story when I've been trying to discuss how Homestuck as a WHOLE BODY OF WORK treats male queerness. Dirk just happens to be the most prominently queer because his identity is a main fixture since we meet him, versus someone like Dave whose sexuality becomes a prominent character point later in the story.

Dirk indulging Caliborn's requests because he isn't taking them seriously IS misogyny. Is that the same kind of misogyny that's present in the Epilogues? No. Because Dirk doesn't think Caliborn has the ability to actually affect anything and Dirk isn't the one calling his friends "filthy whores"; his lack of calling it out is not the same as actively being the one to wield the cudgel. At the same time, the context of that story is that Caliborn and Calliope present themselves as having future information that Dirk is desperately mining for; he indulges Calliope's fanfiction and art because he's curious as to whether it'll confirm he winds up dating Jake; similarly he had a drawing of him and Jake ready because he's hoping that Caliborn will slip up and confirm that they work out, since they both have future knowledge. That was the whole gag of that scene.

He's pining after the sole man he can actually attain and is stuck drawing EVERY POSSIBLE PAIRING other than the one he wants. Again, the gag is that Dirk is gay and unfulfiled.

Where in this whole conversation or general depiction of Dirk you see some egregious underlying misogyny, I have no clue. Even by the time they god tier and he's been assaulted by Roxy, he's still singing their praises as the most mature person in their session and declaring Roxy ABOVE him.

as for hussie being a reactionary author, nobody’s denying that their writing features some downfalls of the edgy internet culture of the time, but hussie’s also undeniably queer. you seem to extrapolating a lot, and seemingly making the argument of “hussie used slurs in early homestuck therefore their writing when it comes to queerness is also reactionary”. this just doesn’t hold up? like, do you think hussie made homestuck good on accident??

I'm sorry, but do you think Homestuck is good because of how it depicts queer people? Homestuck didn't indulge queer identity until Rosemary and even that wasn't given as much poignance as it could be given. By the time Dirk is brought on to the screen, Hussie is STILL doing reactionary depictions [Otherkin/Mituna and ableist slurs/Kankri and SJW's] and racial charicatures [re: Damara, re: tweeting "all characters in trickster mode are Canonically Caucasian"].

Homestuck is a subjective piece of media that people will mine for their own value. The overall body of work is impressive because of it's length and ability to juggle multiple narratives, as well as Hussie's incredible output and ability to pivot earlier throwaways as foreshadowing. They have a great understanding of character voice and tone and use a lot of methods to distinguish identity that have had a longstanding impact on creative works going forward. I don't think Homestuck is "good".

I also think that it is noble of Hussie to recognize these shortcomings and bring in external perspective to IMPROVE the story.

and the fact that this theme is often explored with gay characters is a side effect of the majority of the male cast of homestuck being queer.

Dirk is the only canonical gay man. I feel like I have to be very specific with my verbage because I'm discussing how gay men get portrayed and how male queerness is "Treated" by the story. Two different topics that intersect, not one topic.

As for how the Epilogues walked back Davekat in order of on screen mentions: Vriska and Terezi remark on how they're happy that Karkat and Dave are settled into a relationship. Roxy asks Dave about who he is romantically involved with and Dave dances around the topic, with Rose being coy about the same thing because she obviously knows. John clocks that something is going on between Karkat and Dave and Karkat interrupts the discussion. Jasprose EXPLICITLY tells Nepeta that Karkat is in a red relationship with somebody else now and then Davepeta discusses how they are surprised their attraction to Karkat isn't objected to by the side made up of Dave and Jasprose sarcastically remarks to the introspection. And finally, Dave hints at the topic and then asks Dirk how to come out to his friends, specifically John and Jade, because Rose ALREADY KNOWS.

(I might have a few of those lilypad orders wrong.)

This also all ended with iirc Hussie releasing a vine holding a paper saying "Davekat is canon". (The vine might have come before those story beats, vine is gone and I don't remember dates.)

The epilogues inarguably walk all of that back and basically make it so that all they did was hold hands and never really discuss their feelings to one another, which kind of contradicts how every other character and Dave himself depicts it.

And again, it's not BAD to walk that back, by any means, sure, give us a deeper exploration of it. But the exploration we got is one that culminates in a very disgusting portrayal of a gay guy forcing two men to have sex and posits Jade as some kind of invader to their relationship (which to me feels like an obvious allusion to how the fanbase was at the end of Homestuck either team DaveJade or team Davekat and Jade had to basically foot the bill for that.)