On Masculinity and Autogynephilia in the Homestuck Sequels
The Ultimate Clusterfuck
So, this is a niche article.
If I tried to explain all of the context behind what I’m writing about, the explanation would be longer than the actual content. Homestuck is a webcomic, its original run ended in 2016, in 2019 it was followed up by a series of two horrendous, pornographic and fetishistic epilogues written mostly by deranged fans, and at some point after this, a sequel was made called HS2. The fandom is rife with autogynephilic paedophiles with fixations on the young female characters featured in the comic. Although I am not making any claims about the actual demographics of the epilogue and sequel writing team, for whatever reason, autogynephilic sexual satisfaction is the lifeblood of the epilogue and sequel content: these works provide literally nothing of value unless you are a man getting off on the idea of being a young girl, and are inhabiting that very specific mindset (henceforth referred to as the Autogynephilic Worldview). If you know, you know; if you don’t, you might want to do some Googling; and if I seem deranged, well, the epilogues made me that way.
In the Homestuck Sequels (a term here referring to the epilogues and HS2 collectively), male characters are not treated homogenously: we are not in the territory, here, of “women good, men bad”. The fact that each male character is treated very differently as a result of their original-run personality is, in my opinion, a solid basis for understanding the mechanisms behind how autogynephilia and the Autogynephilic Worldview actually work. That, and I just couldn’t bear to dig too deep into what’s been happening with the Homestuck girls since 2016, because it is much worse, and they are too close to my heart.
So, here it is. An analysis of each male character’s relationship with masculinity before (“in Canon”) and after the Sequels, and why exactly I think the decisions about their Sequel arcs and characterisations were made according to the Autogynephilic Worldview motivation.
John Egbert
In the original canon, overall, John represents healthy masculinity. He is boyish: there is nothing very feminine about him, but he is sweet, caring, silly, fun. For the majority of Homestuck’s run, he is still a child and therefore not exactly “masculine” in that sense - there is a limit to how manly one can be as a thirteen-year-old. John is naïve, and sometimes needs to be rescued (by Dave notably, also, arguably, by Vriska), but this naivete and vulnerability is more child-coded than particularly feminine. For a teenage male character, John has a remarkable sensitivity to and awareness of other people’s thoughts and feelings. He is a good kid, and a good friend.
John’s relationship with masculinity is heavily influenced by his father. John does view his relationship with his dad as complex — interestingly, his dad is portrayed as being somewhat emotionally reticent with John, and yet still seems to be a better parent and male role model than most real-life parents. John’s father guides John to a place of high self esteem and explicitly prepares him for manhood, for “being a man”, which seems to involve arbitrary rituals like shaving and so on, but also the adoption of positive traits associated with fatherhood. John’s father instils in him the values of caring for and nurturing others, of valuing and respecting others, and of making other people feel special and lifting them up.
John’s relationship with women and girls is positive. He is respectful of his female friends, though seems oddly drawn to more domineering female personalities such as Rose, Vriska, and possibly also Roxy. It is also notable that, unlike the vast majority of Homestuck characters, John is essentially confirmed to be heterosexual, as he (famously) rejected Karkat’s romantic overtures on the basis of “not [being] a homosexual.”
In terms of the actual contents of the Sequels, I have very little to say about what goes on with John - his relationships, such as his marriage and subsequent divorce with Roxy - seem to be an aside to actual Plot Material about which I don’t care. The interesting element of John, to me, is the fanon conceptualisation of June Egbert, and the subset of fans who have essentially accepted this characterisation as canon in their minds, and who urge the Sequels team to finally “make it canon” after Andrew Hussie inexplicably said that he would on Twitter five years ago.
In terms of transcanons, it is fairly unusual for fans to feel so strongly about a portrayal of a character transitioning to the opposite gender - that is, a portrayal where a character would have to transition, and change, rather than to remain the same gender and have always been trans (such as with June Egbert’s compatriots, FTM Dave and MTF Jade). In the Autogynephilic Worldview, to offer a male character the chance to transition to womanhood is very generous indeed - it provides a sort of amnesty, a protection against the punishments against masculinity/maleness which will be explained in the analysis of every single other male character later. My question is, and has always been, why John?
Because yes, we all love John - of course we do! But even as far as fan-favourite Homestuck boys go, I would say that based on the fandom as a whole, Dave and Karkat each outrank John in popularity by a significant amount. My aim with this thought experiment, really, was to figure out what makes John different to the other male characters. Is it how masculine he’s perceived to be - or how feminine? Is it related to his personality, or looks? How do his relationships with others factor in?
What I’ve determined is that there are a few key elements at play.
John’s personality. He is not a deeply flawed character, and is portrayed as especially forgivable - for instance, nobody seems to blame John for the instance in Act 4 when a serious error in judgment on John’s part leads to Jade’s death and an alternate-timeline Dave and Rose having to sacrifice themselves to save him. John is relatable to the autogynephile’s self-perception: as a geeky, silly, socially awkward sort of person with an unquestionably good heart.
John’s values. As noted, the masculine values instilled in John by his father very directly relate to fatherhood - John’s father is apparently a sensitive and caring man and raises John to be this type of man as well. To the misogynistic reader, though, these values may instead read as explicitly feminine. John is reasonably comfortable with his masculinity, (as he was raised with a healthy, positive version of masculinity), and therefore does not aspire to masculinity (see Dave, below). This could easily be read instead as a rejection of masculinity, and embracing of feminine values, and perhaps even a sort of girlishness and femininity on John’s part.
John’s childishness. While John is technically the same age as pretty much every other Homestuck kid, the fact that he is the youngest of his friends, and begins the comic as a thirteen-year-old (while the Alphas, for instance, first appear as sixteen-year-olds) does provide him an extra level of innocence. In my opinion, the view of John as a child affords the potential of “fixing” or “rescuing” him before he the corrupting influence of masculinity and adult maleness can really get to him. This is despite the fact that John is, I believe, at least 20 years old in the Epilogues.
John’s likeability. Pretty much every Homestuck character is likeable in some way, but John is especially so. More than just being likeable to fans, John is extremely likable to the other characters. At the beginning of the comic, he has three loyal best friends, who each take the time to send him a thoughtful birthday gift despite all of them living very far away. Karkat, who initially despises John because of his mistaken perception of John’s role in destroying the troll’s Ultimate Reward, is soon charmed by him. Just about everyone who meets John seems very fond of him. John provides the fantasy of the loveable dork. He is evidence that one does not have to be particularly “cool”, or even have much of a life outside of their computer, in order to be liked and appreciated by others, which appeals to autogynephiles who are often socially awkward and terminally online.
John’s relationship with Vriska. The fact that John has a strong bond with Vriska is, in my opinion, crucial to his adoption as autogynephile fan favourite, because the only character that autogynephilies project onto more than John is Vriska. John accepts Vriska, despite her unlikeable demeanour and her past and present violent behaviour: he plays a role in upholding the fantasy of an ill-perceived, generally disliked, potentially predatory “trans girl” being accepted by somebody with a gentle and forgiving heart. Conversely, Vriska’s insistence on “improving” John is reminiscent of forced feminisation or at least egg-cracking. The imagery of Vriska initiating the unwitting John and guiding him to success in SBURB can certainly be read as a more experienced trans girl welcoming a younger sister into the fold.
John’s heterosexuality. Autogynephiles seem unlikely to identify with gay or bisexual male characters. Not coincidentally, every other prominent male character in the Sequels is gay or bisexual.
For these reasons, in terms of the Autogynephilic Worldview, John is viewed as what I’ll call a Redeemable Male: he is male, but he has not quite made a commitment to masculinity and could be feminised. Here, male characters exist on a spectrum where the Redeemable Male may be feminised with respect, feminised as a reward for their lack of masculinity — the feminisation is not supposed to be humiliating or degrading, it is supposed to be empowering, though certainly erotic. At the other end of the spectrum, Irredeemable Males must be degraded and punished because of their masculinity - sometimes in a manner one might regard as feminisation (see Jake) but which, in this worldview, is not actually feminisation because feminisation is a positive concept. What happens to them instead is a sort of ritualised sexual humiliation which we might culturally associate with women, but is in fact being done to them because they cannot become women. John, by virtue of his Redeemable qualities, is spared any such punishment despite not actually being a trans woman in the Sequels thus far. The other male characters, though, are subjected to increasingly extreme narrative punishment based on their place on the Redeemable-Irredeemable Male spectrum - or, put more simply, how masculine they are perceived to be by the autogynephilic reader.
Dave and Karkat
When I was initially compiling notes for this article, I was under the impression that I would have very little to say about Dave’s treatment in the Sequels, as he ultimately does nothing of importance and, because his character provides little appeal for autogynephiles, he is mostly ignored. Karkat, similarly, is so insignificant in the Sequels and particularly in the Epilogues that I was unsure whether to even include him in this article at all. On reflection, though, I’ve determined that although Dave and Karkat as individuals don’t receive much backlash for their maleness, Dave and Karkat together, as a couple, are on the receiving end of some of the most virulently homophobic and oddly misogynistic messaging I have ever seen. So, for the purposes of this article, they are being pushed together under one subheading, so that I can discuss their individual characters and their romantic relationship more easily.
Let’s start with Dave. Unfortunately, we’ll be starting with my least favourite kind of Dave: FTM Dave.
Like June Egbert, FTM Dave is so ubiquitous in fanon as to have achieved almost-canon status, though given the apparent priorities of the Sequels writers, I highly doubt that this will ever come to pass. According to Ao3 tags, Dave is the character most frequently portrayed as transgender in fanworks - more than even John or Jade. Other than the obvious reasons — that Dave is a fan-favourite, and that he possesses a sort of masculine androgyny due to his young age and Homestuck’s vague art style — the rationale for this, in my view, is largely related to Dave’s troubled relationship with masculinity.
Unlike John, who had a supportive and healthy relationship with his male role model, Dave’s male role model in his youth was, unfortunately for him, abusive. Bro Strider, in my view, can best be described as a stone cold psycho who hurt Dave physically, never allowed him to feel safe in his own home and, most importantly, destroyed his self esteem and self confidence by never letting him succeed. Their interactions largely revolved around ‘strifing’: the goal is for Dave to beat his Bro, a grown man, in actual combat. He can’t, because he is a child. Therefore, the basis of Dave’s entire view of manhood — becoming his Bro, or at least becoming like him — is never achieved. In the end, Dave can never live up to his brother’s expectations: because he is a child, initially, but then because he is a normal human being with feelings, and because he needs to function in society as a real person, a society which does not actually reward the extreme masculine values embodied by Bro Strider. Therefore, Dave permanently carries with his character a sense of failed masculinity.
Who can relate to the feeling of never being man enough, never being able to achieve what their male role models have achieved? FTMs, I suppose. In this case, Dave’s inability to reach masculine ideals is explained by him being literally biologically female. And, in the vein of FTMs in real life, it creates a version of Dave who will always be striving to be something he isn’t, to reach ideals of masculinity which do not come naturally to him and never will. This is the version of Dave which lives in the minds of many fans.
In terms of how masculine Dave actually is as of the Sequel era, this is difficult for me to quantify (not least because masculinity is subjective, gender isn’t real, and so on.) The fact that Dave does on some level aspire to an ideal of hypermasculinity — (of course, by the Sequels he has become deeply critical of Bro Strider, but his painful upbringing is inextricable from his character and will always be with him, as will, in my opinion, the expectations placed on him by his Bro and his pathos about never meeting them) — but fails to ever reach it simultaneously awards and deducts “masculinity points” in my opinion. Failing at masculinity is, of course, un-masculine. But aspiring to masculinity is also, in a way, masculine in itself. Regardless of my personal thoughts, in terms of the Autogynephilic Worldview, aspirations of masculinity are not only categorically masculine in themselves but unacceptable and, indeed, Irredeemable, regardless of whether one is actually able to live up to masculine ideals or not.
Now, on to Karkat.
Karkat’s canonical relationship with masculinity is interesting. On the surface level, Karkat is a character who does not struggle with masculinity solely because his home planet is almost completely devoid of gender roles. On a deeper level, the reader can understand Karkat’s struggle to come to terms with the expectations placed on all trolls as a struggle with masculinity, as trolls are expected to embody masculine values such as physical and mental strength, bloodthirst, and a near-complete lack of empathy for others. Karkat also feels self-conscious of his short stature and his ‘nubby’ horns, which are attributed to him being a mutant but can be considered emasculating traits for which he feels he must overcompensate with an aggressive and verbally abusive persona.
In terms of his personality, Karkat also fails to meet the masculine-coded expectations placed on trolls. He is averse to violence to a comical level, fainting at the sight of blood and viscera, and crying and “freaking out” over the deaths of two of his friends. This is an extreme reaction when compared to Terezi, for instance, who is unable to bring herself to shed a tear when she finds Tavros’ dead body - or Kanaya, who avenges her dead friends by killing Eridan herself. While Karkat’s lusus can’t exactly be considered a male role model, it does seem as though his upbringing was more gentle than other some trolls’ and therefore somewhat failed to prepare him for the (masculine-coded) brutality of troll society - compared to Vriska’s lusus, for example, which forced her to learn to kill.
In line with the Cancer zodiac stereotype, Karkat’s emotions are generally uncontrolled. He is unable to meet social (romantic) expectations of troll society because he feels pity and empathy for absolutely everyone, including Jack Noir, who had stabbed him, and Gamzee, who had recently murdered two people in cold blood - in his culture, this would be considered a serious flaw and a type of promiscuity. In a similar vein, Karkat has never entered a black romance with anyone, and seems incapable of sustaining hateful feelings for long enough to manifest a relationship on the basis of them - something which is quite literally required for survival in his society. He also, more blatantly, is very interested in romance and romantic comedies, and although interest in romance is not particularly gendered or stigmatised in troll culture, this of course strikes as a reader as a highly feminine trait in a teenage boy.
Karkat may be interested in romantic etiquette and in other people’s romantic dilemmas, but he remains very sensible and reserved when it comes to his own love life. He develops romantic feelings for a significant number of his friends, but doesn’t act on any of them, with the exception of his pale overture towards Gamzee, and maybe his eventual relationship with Dave, though it’s possible that Dave made the first move there. This gives the impression of Karkat as a character who is enamoured by the idea of love, and who wants to be loved, perhaps even to be swept of his feet - he is remarkably passive, and never aggressive, romantically. In the real world, these traits are not only un-masculine but explicitly feminine. Karkat is also, notably, bisexual.
Removing John from the equation, I would rank Karkat as the most feminine and least masculine of the male characters we’re discussing. In fanon and fanworks, he is often referred to as the “Mom friend” in any given collection of characters. It’s also worth noting that Karkat becomes more visually feminine as the comic and Sequels progress, with the exception of the eyepatch-wearing version of Karkat featured in HS2.
Of course, in a discussion about Karkat’s femininity, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the “nook” palaver. For the somehow uninitiated, Homestuck fanworks pretty much universally portray the trolls as being intersex, with full male and female (yet alien) genitalia. To my understanding, this is because of the fact that trolls refer to male genitalia as a bulge or bone bulge but also refer to something called a “nook”, while referring to assholes as “assholes” and never referring to vulvas or vaginas at all, creating the impression that a “nook” is, in fact, a vagina. The majority of information about troll reproductive anatomy comes from the testimony of Karkat, who uses the terms in a vulgar and sort of ironic fashion, but does at at least one point refer to himself as having a nook, whatever it is. Thus, although in this reading all trolls can be presumed to have exactly the same genitalia, Karkat is the originator of the concept of the male alien vulva and is therefore the most heavily associated with it, and this is such an overwhelmingly popular and frequent theme in fanon that I really believe that it has impacted Karkat’s portrayal, as not only in fanworks but in the Sequels as well.
Davekat, though, is more than the sum of its parts.
Davekat is an overwhelmingly popular pairing, and its status as canon was both surprising and delightful for many fans. It was initially popular for three main reasons:
It’s a canon m/m pairing. Obviously.
Dave and Karkat were both fan favourites at the time.
It established that Dave, easily the most popular character, is queer.
Davekat endures a short run to the end of the comic, and Dave and Karkat stay together in the original Act 7 epilogue video. This relationship is a reward for both characters, a “happy ending” after everything they’ve been through. While the Sequels (particularly the Epilogues) are “anti-audience” in nature, I do think some restrictions were in place regarding what they could and couldn’t reasonably mess with regarding this pairing. In one Epilogue branch, Dave and Karkat do break up after entering a throuple with Jade, though it seems reasonably amicable (Karkat attended Dave and Jade’s wedding, apparently). In the other branch, the original run is retconned and they haven’t gotten together yet, and are working together on Karkat’s presidential campaign while navigating a mutual romantic interest and a sexual tension not yet resolved.
Here’s where shit goes off the rails.
Woman-hating is at the core of the Autogynephilic Worldview. Dave and Karkat are not women (though maybe they are - we’ll get to that later), but female fans love Dave and Karkat and especially Davekat. Davekat has established itself as the m/m Homestuck pairing, with a dynamic which is fluffy and sweet and maybe a little boring. There is some potential for conflict, but there is always the promise of everything turning out okay. Ultimately, they are just two kind-of-androgynous boys in love. And girls like that.
But autogynephiles hate that. They hate that it is for women and not for men; that it makes women and girls happy; that it involves no fetishistic content involving women for them to identify with; that it involves Dave and Karkat being narratively rewarded and not, as men should be, punished. Davekat also has the sort of unproblematic purity despised by the autogynephilic corner of the fandom: after all, they aren’t related, and neither of them has a dog penis, so what even is the point of them?
Davekat represented a restriction on where the Epilogues could go, because the overwhelmingly female fanbase of Homestuck would have rioted in the streets if Davekat was treated as horrifically as certain other popular gay pairings were (to be elaborated on later). But Davekat also, paradoxically, represented an opportunity to fuck with female fans, to hate them, to degrade them. And so that’s exactly what they did.
In my view, Dave and Karkat are not punished narratively in the Sequels because they’re masculine — as noted, I’d rank both of them pretty low on the masculinity scale. I think they are punished narratively because of their homosexual relationship, which has absolutely no intrinsic appeal to the autogynephile, and also because of their popularity with female fans, which enrages the autogynephile. At the same time, I think that, because of their popularity, they could not be punished as overtly and brutally as some other male characters (namely, Dirk and Jake). Instead, I think the punishment element is enacted through homophobic and misogynistic narratives in the portrayal of their relationship in the Meat epilogue, and that these themes carry somewhat over into HS2, though more subtly.
In the Epilogues, Karkat is referred to several times with feminine terminology. He (and Dave) are referred to as “beta bitch[es]”. At one point, Dirk’s narration refers to Karkat as Dave’s “boywife”, a perplexing term which emasculates Karkat twofold, both by calling him a boy (he is an adult male) and, obviously, a wife. The narrative also at one point refers to Karkat’s “shoujo eyes” (shoujo being a genre of anime and manga for girls, with ‘shoujo’ translating to girl), and also to Karkat as “tsundere” (a trait usually associated with female love interest characters). In the same scene, Karkat’s penis, of all things, is referred to directly as “modest” and “feminine”. (Interestingly, ‘feminine penis’, a classic autogynephilic term usually meant to be appealing, here is exclusively used to mock poor Karkat.)
In canon, Karkat is allowed to be a boy with feminine traits, and these traits are presented as endearing, if a little amusing. In the Epilogues, he is emasculated deliberately in the narrative, almost to the extent of being portrayed as an actual female, and this culminates in a particularly bizarre paragraph narrated by Dirk:
Obviously, I’ve got an agenda here. It’s pretty clear to me what these guys want out of this relationship, despite the fact that both of them being bottoms evidently makes it impossible for them to pass whatever last ludicrous psychological obstacle stands between them and nonstop, animalistic fucking.
(And no, we’re not getting into whether Dirk is a reliable narrator or not. This strikes me as an incredibly flimsy device to get away with saying absolutely anything, including in this case homophobic rhetoric, because “Dirk said it”, not the writers. In the end, the writers gutted Dirk’s character because they wanted to say offensive and hateful things: here, Dirk is telling us exactly how they feel.)
While “bottom” is at least a term generally used to refer to men, the implication here is that Karkat’s more passive, feminine-coded nature means that he is completely robbed of sexual agency and he is, in a way, incapable of having sex. The implication too is that, had he not been a “bottom”, had he been a real man, he and Dave would be extremely sexually active, a trait stereotypically associated with gay men and gay male couples. Karkat is incapable of acting sexually as a male; so what does that make him?
The term “bottom” is of course also applied to Dave, here, and I am honestly not sure why. In an odd twist of logic, this demeaning commentary about Dave’s passivity seems to be a punishment for his lack of masculinity, while still withholding any chance of being seen as Redeemable (potentially-female), possibly because of his aspirations of masculinity (and therefore his proximity to it) or possibly just because they resent Dave for his association with female fans. Dave being described as sexually submissive is certainly not an invitation for him to ascend to womanhood (not least because women are, in the Autogynephilic Worldview, sexually dominant most of the time). It just serves to portray Dave as incompetent, impotent, and emasculated.
In this way, Dave and Karkat are both stripped of their maleness without having it replaced with (the reward of) femaleness. This is compounded by the fact that their relationship, in Meat at least, is portrayed as sexless (although they do eventually sleep together, the issue of their apparent sexual incompatibility lingers). Their relationship especially seems to lack a homosexual sexual element - it is without the stigma, the edge we see with Dirk and Jake in Sequel content (which is in itself homophobic, but in a way that at least acknowledges homosexual erotic feelings). Dave seems to not want anything in specific from Karkat (to fuck him, to be fucked by him), and vice versa. The labelling of them both as “bottoms” reads less as an admission of wanting to be penetrated by another male but rather to just… not have to do anything, to not participate in one’s own sex life. I’m not saying that I would rather have read about Dave and Karkat ardently lusting after intercourse with one another, but the lack of actual sexual desire at play does strike me as odd.
So, the result of all this is confusing. Davekat is somewhat straight-coded because Karkat is feminised and Dave, while also stripped of masculinity, is at least allowed to be “the man” in the relationship (Karkat is, after all, his boywife). At the same time, they are undeniably in a same-sex relationship which has a validity about as untouchable as anything in the Sequels. You also might even read their portrayal as lesbian-coded, given that they are both emasculated and feminised, and portrayed as incapable of having “real” sex with one another due to their shared lack of masculinity and their inherent sexual submissiveness - a lesbophobic trope. To me, in the Sequels, they are not gay, they are not straight, they not men, they are not women, they are just… nothing.
As individuals, Dave and Karkat don’t possess enough masculinity to be brutally punished for, (instead their reason for punishment revolves around female fan enjoyment of them and their relationship). Dave is just masculine enough to be Irredeemable. Karkat doesn’t read as masculine enough to be Irredeemable, and in his case I think the autogynephilic disinterest in him can be traced all the way back to the idea of him already having a vagina, meaning the autogynephile cannot identify with him and has no interest in granting him womanhood on that basis, therefore putting him in the Irredeemable category with the rest.
Crazy, right?
Speaking of crazy…
Dirk Strider
Listen, this article isn’t supposed to be about the overall narrative choices made in the Homestuck Sequels, but let it be said now: what happened to Dirk is insane. In my opinion, Dirk receives THE most bizarre treatment out of all the boys, and the most initially perplexing to me. In this crazy, backwards, autogynephilic world of creative interpretations of masculinity and femininity and sexuality and so on, I think it would be reasonable to expect that gay male character = feminised and degraded. But no. Apparently, it does not work like this.
Again, I think the treatment of Dirk comes down to the spectrum of Redeemable and Irredeemable Males, as dictated by masculinity. While Dirk’s masculinity is absolutely perceived and is brutally punished, he is not remotely feminised as part of this punishment - his masculinity remains very much intact. And while Dirk’s sexual orientation is certainly an issue for the Sequel writers — they are nowhere near normal about it — what ends up happening is way more complex than I expected it would be.
Let me start from the start.
Dirk strikes me as the single most masculine character in Homestuck, with the possible exception of Dad Egbert. I believe that what makes Dirk read as so masculine is his confidence in his masculinity, and his unwavering embodiment of it. Even at times when Dirk could have been made to feel like less of a man (such as regarding his sexuality, and his God Tier outfit, and his Trickster transformation), he doesn’t seem to feel any kind of threat to his masculinity or to his status as a man. God Tier Dirk, for example, is completely aware that he looks very silly in his poofy sleeves and pink shorts, but he does not allow this to make him feel insecure. It isn’t that Dirk possesses only masculine traits and no feminine ones - he has vanity, cleanliness, he’s highly emotional and sensitive (internally), he’s a romantic, he’s gay - but rather that no matter what happens, Dirk’s masculinity remains secure because he believes in it, which is really all that matters.
As an example, Dirk has such reserves of confidence in his masculinity that he can, for instance, take AR’s advice about Jake wanting to be “a man of triumph”, to make himself the damsel in distress in order to pique Jake’s interest in him. This forces Dirk to be unbelievably vulnerable, putting his literal life in Jake’s hands… and he does. In giving up his power and control, he is brave, and that is even more masculine than if he dithered, or wasn’t able to do it. Dirk also does this moments after an extremely heroic yet seemingly effortless feat of rescuing Jane and Roxy, two actual damsels in distress, only to cut himself down in order to let Jake be his hero, because he (mistakenly, as it turns out) thinks that is what Jake wants. In this way, Dirk is giving to Jake in a way that is somehow portrayed as masculine-coded and not feminine-coded, solely because Dirk is the one who is doing it.
It’s worth noting that Dirk’s sexual orientation would have been a natural avenue for a crisis of masculinity, but this doesn’t happen. Dirk’s concerns about his sexuality seem to relate to his personhood, to his relationships, and to the perception of him as different or as inadequate - not as concerns about being viewed as feminine or unmasculine. His rejection of the word ‘gay’ seems to me one of the most striking moments of Dirk’s insecure feelings: he has heard Jake use it as a pejorative and chooses to reclaim it in this sense, but bristles at using it to actually describe his sexual orientation. This, again, seems to be about being viewed as less of a valuable and serious person in general, rather than concerns about being viewed as less of a man.
Reclamation and subversion seems to be Dirk’s main coping mechanism when it comes to issues with his sexuality. His insecurity about being gay manifests in this way: he has (ironic) displays of graphic kink and apparent bestiality in his bedroom television’s sideshow, almost as if to say, “You think being gay is depraved? I’m so much more depraved than just that.” And again, turning to pornography, to outward explicit expressions of graphic male homosexual interest (manbro bukkake theatre, anyone?), is a very masculine way of dealing with these feelings. It is externalised, and bold. It’s not that he is trying to be masculine to compensate for being gay, but rather that his inherent masculinity is evident in how he comes to terms (or doesn’t?) with his sexuality.
Dirk’s use of pornography in expressing his sexuality also serves to keep his friends guessing when it comes to his actual romantic and sexual interests. It’s almost like a diversion, using graphic (homo)sexuality to distract from what’s underneath: some extremely vulnerable feelings for another person. Behind his façade of perversion, Dirk is hiding normal feelings, normal crushes, and (probably) normal sexuality. The fact that, no matter how strangely he may act at times, Dirk actually has extremely normal feelings about love is key when it comes to analysing his portrayal in Sequel content.
Dirk also seems, surprisingly, to have healthier relationship with his male role model than one might expect. Alpha Dave was, after all, not physically present to influence Dirk in any way. This isn’t to say that what Dirk learned from Alpha Dave was great, (Dirk may be masculine without much effort but it is still toxic masculinity), but he at least seems to have avoided the Dave-trap of feeling like he is “not enough” of a man. Dirk shoulders a lot of responsibility, and feels like he needs to Be The Hero, but well... he is the hero. He is pretty badass. And he knows he is. Dirk drives himself crazy to achieve things, but he does ultimately actually achieve them. And somehow, I feel that even his heroism complex is not particularly gendered, is not even really about being a man, especially when compared with Dave.
Another key point relating to Dirk’s treatment in the epilogues is that, in a similar sort of vein to Karkat, Dirk cares. He cares about people - he needs to be the hero, to protect, to save, to die for them, all of which his Prince class implies. He loves his friends, and is loyal to them. In romantic situations, he is incredibly vulnerable to being hurt, and resorts to controlling behaviour in attempt to prevent that. He is, in the end, a sensitive kid, who cares very much what other people think about him. He is very invested in being liked, and loved, and this need is what motivates him to take many the actions he does throughout the original run.
Finally, we come to the matter of Dirk as a nerd. Dirk, in many ways, mirrors the stereotypical computer geek - he never leaves his house (because he can’t, but still). His interested in and skilled at programming and other computer science-related hobbies, and he has a bit of an ego about this - though he tries to be humble by claiming that he isn’t actually particularly talented considering the time period he lives in, I think he probably still enjoys impressing his friends from the past with his tech proficiency. He is apparently interested in anime and Japanese culture. He is also interested in pornography and kink to some extent, and to reference manbro bukkake theatre a second time, seems to glean some enjoyment from flexing his over-familiarity with online porn culture. While these latter two interests are supposedly “ironic”, the ironic referencing still requires some level of knowledge about the subject. But, in a similar vein to John, despite all these fairly socially taboo traits, Dirk is well liked - he is admired by his friends, and is the object of at least one person’s romantic affections. No matter how weird Dirk is, the other Alphas seem to just “get” him.
All of the above traits likely resonate with the average autogynephile, and this brings us to the first instance of the love-hate paradox of autogynephilia. Autogynephilic readers probably like Dirk to some extent - they appreciate the fact that he is sort of similar to them but a cool version, a socially-acceptable version. At the same time, they hate the fact that he is not like them - that he is a man and identifies one, that he is masculine, that he is homosexual, both in the sense of being physically and emotionally attracted to males (which autogynephiles are incapable of) and also that he is not attracted to women. Dirk has some Redeeming qualities, here - qualities which really might have qualified him for womanhood, but also the Irredeemable quality of being gay, which rules him out.
So here we are. The epilogues - the Ultimate Clusterfuck, you might say.
Here is where I mis-stepped in my assumptions of why Dirk is villainised and dehumanised so severely:
First, I think Dirk has been awarded the position of narrator and, to some extent, main villain (and therefore main character) because autogynephiles can, in some way, relate to him. Dirk is awarded more power and agency than any other male character aside from John, (though arguably more than even him), and although his position as a narrator is in itself a part of his narrative punishment, he is at least allowed to be one of the characters who exacts punishments on others, rather than having other characters exact punishments against him.
As mentioned previously, autogynephiles seem to not care about male homosexuality very much. In this vein, they seem to derive no pleasure from the sexual humiliation of men at the hands of other men, only at the hands of women (see Jake). Sexual humiliation by women is the default punishment for Irredeemable masculinity in this Worldview but, I think, Dave and Karkat managed to largely avoid this due to their untouchable same-sex relationship, and Dirk is in possession of similar protections. As deranged as these writers are, they surely knew that people would not take well to their favourite gay guy (and Homestuck’s only gay guy) being raped by a woman. It would have been one step too far.
The thing about Dirk that is of primary interest here is that he is masculine. In my ranking he is the most masculine, in that of Sequels writers he is ranked #2, and this is still far too high to redeem, so here’s what happens: they do not use Dirk’s homosexuality to punish him, they strip him of it. Not by making him straight, or even asexual, but by taking maybe the single most vulnerable and human part of him — his capacity for love, particularly romantic love — throwing it in the trash, and leaving the rest. Which is… Dirk without love.
And without love, without that motivation, he is just a soulless megalomaniac, a control freak, a sexual predator, a horror show. A villain.
According to their own Worldview, they had to choose between Dirk being masculine and Dirk being human, and as we know, removing his masculinity to the extent of granting him womanhood would be a reward which he has absolutely not earned. So they removed the Human, and that is the mechanism too of punishing his masculinity, he can be A Man but he may not be A Person. And in a frankly bizarre twist, this really ends up removing his homosexuality too, in an indirect way. Dirk in the epilogues seems to have an unreasonable interest in other people’s sex lives, as a snide voyeur, and he himself is not actually involved in the proceedings (see this chapter, where he gives his unsolicited opinion about Dave and Karkat’s sex life). In this epilogue chapter (any many others), Dirk expresses clear sexual interest in Jake, but deigns not to sleep with him (having stating in this chapter, “I’m never going to fuck him again”). This functions to show the reader that Dirk may still want Jake physically, but doesn’t care about him emotionally anymore, and therefore decides not to fuck him, though he could have. In this way, Dirk finally gets control over his inconvenient, unmanageable, irrepressible heart, his feelings, (his sexuality, his homosexuality), and they call it his ultimate self, but it is really the least like himself he ever could be.
Jake English
I have to admit: Jake is my favourite character in Homestuck. Jake’s treatment in the Sequels was also the catalyst for my fascination about the strange gender politics going on in them, and the blatant autogynephilic influence on what happens to our beloved boys. While my bias may impact this statement, I really think Jake is subject to the worst treatment of any character in the Sequels, and is, after Dirk, the character who is the most transparently despised by the writing team. And so, much as I wanted to find out why John is spared the categorically horrible treatment of the other male Sequels characters, I more importantly wanted to know why Jake is subjected to the most overt abuse.
Let’s start from the start: fandom perception of Jake.
The “fanon” perception of Jake has nothing to do with Jake himself, and yet I think this is the most critical element of what’s happening to Jake in the Sequels. The issues with fanon perceptions of his appearance stem from two major misconceptions:
A) that Jake is some sort of actual tomb raider (rather than just fancying himself an adventurer while being a relatively normal kid who actually just loves watching movies and reading comics), leading to him being very physically fit and capable, and
B) that Dirk and Jane (and even Roxy) have/had crushes on Jake based purely or at least mostly on how he looks rather than because of his charming and gentle personality, his knack for accidentally (or maybe not accidentally!) flirting and leading people on, and less charitably, his status as, for Dirk, the literal only boy he has ever known, and for Jane, the only “viable option” in her friend group.
Everything about Jake (his indoor hobbies, his overbite, his glasses) leads us to believe that he is a probably not unattractive but is at least generally normal looking kid. But many fans have genuinely interpreted him as being a muscular hottie, a himbo some might say, with a fantastic ass, and this interpretation of him has been adopted pretty much wholesale into the Sequels.
Let’s pause here, because I’m sure anyone who has read the Sequels is thinking: Latefordinner, how dumb are you? Don’t you know that the sequels are supposed to be a self-parody, that things are supposed to “feel wrong”, that characters are supposed to be overblown and absurd versions of themselves, that the writes are making fun of fans who think Jake is masculine and hot? Well - yes, I do know that. But much like the characterisation of Dirk, authorial intent doesn’t matter here - especially because, again, the stated authorial intent is obviously not true. The Homestuck Sequels are not a parody or a clever joke, they are a horrible, autogynephilic, pornographic, malicious butchering of the original work. The Sequels writers chose to portray Jake in this way for their own reasons, which I will get into later.
What matters is this: on the basis of completely fanon nonsense, the Sequels writers have selected Jake as their sacrificial Most Masculine Man, and therefore the most Irredeemable and the most deserving of punishment.
Let’s take a moment to discuss my personal thoughts about Jake and masculinity, which are that he strikes me as honestly the least masculine character out of the four human boys and possibly even Karkat in the original run. Jake has absolutely no redeeming masculine qualities. His masculine-coded traits consist of his obliviousness and lack of concern for other people’s feelings, his self-centredness, his commitment-phobia… and even then, these are all remarkably passive traits. Even Jake’s interest in the outdoors, in adventure, guns, comics and so on are all portrayed through a lens of emulating female role models and therefore do not read as masculine in my mind, especially because he does not seem to actually be skilled in adventuring or marksmanship. This doesn’t mean that I think Jake is remotely feminine, though - he is still obviously more masculine than feminine, he is still a man. If anything, I think it’s safe to say he is boyish: that his immaturity is at least masculine-coded for the most part.
In terms of role models, Jake does not have a male role model, and to an extent this seems to be because of his unwavering adoration of his grandma (his primary role model in general), but it seems to be partly by choice. He likes Indiana Jones and Tomb raider but idolises Lara, not Jones; he likes Avatar but idolises Neytiri, and wants to be like Jake Sully only to the extent that Neytiri serves as a role model for him and Jake fantasises about interacting with her in such a way, as her apprentice. Jake seems to believe that women, maybe only women, can teach him the skills he values (strength, resilience, boldness). He likes women of action - that’s how he sees his grandma primarily, as tenacious, brave and brilliant, and as nurturing these qualities in him.
(In another essay, a lot of things could be said about Dirk and Jake in terms of Jake’s appreciation of cunning and brave go-getters, but I’ll stop at suggesting that the closest thing Jake has to a male role model is actually Dirk, and this possibly ends up mirroring the ‘do I want to be them or be with them?’ conflict he seems to experience regarding his action heroines.)
So Jake is caught between two realities: wanting to be like the women he idolises, wanting to have these admirable and typically masculine-coded traits, and believing that he maybe does have them or at least may come to learn to have them — and the fact that he is none of these things and never will be, that he is passive, and afraid, and wants to be rescued, and needs to be rescued, and wants other people to do the hard things for him, and seems to fixate on these people (characters, at least) romantically in some way. In my opinion, this isn’t bad about Jake — he’s a passive class, a page, his role is to support his friends and believe in them! — but he certainly does not feel good about himself when he’s forced to reckon with his own limitations.
But here’s the thing: Jake does not, in his own mind, see these traits as masculine or relating whatsoever to his own masculinity. Jake doesn’t care about masculinity, doesn’t seem to value it in himself or in others — he values masculine-coded traits, but not their perceived attachment to masculinity or to being a man. This makes sense, because he’s never had a reason to think that being male is particularly special, or that particular positive traits are exclusive to males. Thus, I think that Jake is also rather immune to the failed masculinity complex which has befallen Dave.
(Interestingly, as an aside, Jake does have some consciousness of masculinity and male gender roles, but this seems to revolve around chivalry and mid-century values. So, Jake’s view of ideal masculinity seems to relate to being civilised, and courteous, particularly to women — and seems to have nothing to do with the male protagonists in the movies he likes, in contrast with his female fictional role models. He also seems not to be particularly invested in emulating these masculine roles: Jake’s gentlemanly ways read as about as ironic as Dirk’s dudebroisms, to me.)
Speaking of masculinity and to a lesser extent sexuality, I want to talk about Jake’s gradual lack of clothing throughout his arc. On a meta level this is clearly a reference to Tomb Raider and maybe also Avatar, portraying Jake’s unwitting emulation of the attractive action women he loves. (This could be read as a narrative punishment for his appreciation of women heroes, actually, this isn’t particularly relevant to this article as it happens in the original run). I have read analyses before that this is sort of a visual metaphor for Jake’s sexualisation and sexual victimisation at the hands of Dirk and Jane, and the impact this has on his self-esteem and self-concept. However, I personally am given pause by the fact that by the time Jake reaches God Tier and is wearing the least amount of clothes, his relationship with Dirk is already over, and his flirtationship with Jane has been dead in the water for more than six months. I’m not saying the interpretation of Jake’s clothing being linked to sexual objectification by other characters is wrong, but more that I think the whole thing is some confusing writing in service of a not very funny Tomb Raider reference, at Jake’s expense.
I think Jake’s lack of clothing is less about sexual objectification and more about vulnerability and weakness. Because Jake is weak. Because Jake has a pantheon of traits he views as strong, as worthy, and during the session finds that he possesses none of them, that compared to his brilliant and powerful friends he is nothing, and his self esteem is completely and utterly destroyed by that, so of course he feels naked, feels stripped of something, maybe even feels emasculated, especially in that scene where Jane is quite literally trying to take possession of what makes him male, his body, his virility. She wants him as a man though, she wants him to be a man, to be masculine, to be male. But Jake doesn’t have it in him to be what she wants, or to even want to be what she wants! And poor Jake can only cry and hope for Dirk, masculine hero dirk, to rescue him. What does that mean? I don’t know, but certainly not “Jake English is the most masculine character in Homestuck”, to me.
(It’s worth noting, too, that this is one of the first instances of overt Autogynephilic Worldview ingress in Homestuck, back in its original run. This is really the first instance of Jake being punished for his masculinity, being commodified, and objectified as a male, a theme which continues into the Sequels. It’s interesting, too, that this all happens because of Jane’s perception of Jake as masculine, as in possession of male sexuality, even though in reality he is playing the extremely feminine role of the helpless captive waiting for rescue, having one of the least masculine moments in his arc.)
All of this, too, plays into the hot mess that is both the fanon and canon interpretations of Jake’s sexuality, which flits between straight and bisexual and aromantic/asexual but regardless is themed mostly around being passive, being desired, being victimised, used, played with, by women and men. I think the general confusion about what’s happening with Jake’s sexuality comes down to the total lack of agency he has about it. And this does not bode well for him in sequels written by autogynephiles.
So these points are all variations on a common theme: I think we’re seeing a huge disconnect between what Jake is really like, and what the fandom (and therefore Sequels) think that Jake is like. This is sort of ironic, given that Jake’s arc in the original run largely revolves around people projecting their own desires onto him rather than seeing him as he really is. But anyway.
Here, we return to the issue of masculinity and punishment. I think that Jake ranks low on the masculinity scale because he does not embody traditionally masculine traits and does not even care about masculinity as a concept. Sequel writers seem to think the exact opposite of Jake: that he embodies masculinity both physically and mentally, and that he is both confident in and comfortable with his masculinity and male sexuality.
The combination of these perceived traits positions Jake as the most masculine, the most deserving of punishment, most requiring of disrespect, of degradation, of being put in his place as inferior and subservient to women as per the fetish of female domination central to the Autogynephilic Worldview. A pre-existing vehicle for this is provided because of Jake’s admiration of women, his passive nature (towards women, also in general), his revealing outfits, his open displays of fear and despair previously at the prospect of being raped by Jane, and, similarly, everything that has already gone down between him and Jane and her stated desire to marry and have children with him.
In the Candy timeline, Jake is once again embroiled in sexual slavery, in a forced marriage to Jane, made to father a child he doesn’t want. In Meat, Jake is a television personality and national sex symbol with a world-famous butt and a penchant for sleeping with many, many trolls. Whatever he is doing in any given universe, it is humiliating, and not just his sexuality (as in existence as a sexual being, maybe as a bisexual person) is held up and mocked, made an arena for punishment, but his masculinity, his maleness, is the catalyst for the abuse, the way people want and desire him for being this male ideal, and thereby victimise him, because his masculinity doesn’t afford him any kind of actual strength or power or agency, because in this world only women have that.
To me, Jake’s treatment in the Meat timeline is particularly horrifying. In this universe, he has spurned Dirk in a major way, apparently by breaking up with him — unlikely the original Dirk/Jake breakup, we are led to believe that Jake was solely to blame this time, that he broke Dirk’s heart and then proceeded to sleep around with maybe hundreds of aliens. Dirk, having mind-control powers, exacts his revenge on Jake first by forcing him to humiliate himself on stage in front of a crowd of carapacians, stammering over his words and then sobbing a confession of love for Dirk, before shitting his pants (really) when Karkat and Dave attempt to put a stop to this.
Subsequently, Dirk visits Jake at home and encounters a Jake who is despondent, who misses him, and who is also willing to sleep with Dirk at the drop of a hat. It’s unclear to me whether this is, again, a result of Dirk’s mind control, because Jake does act ridiculous even when he is not being mind-controlled - but regardless, what the reader sees is a pathetic, sexually available Jake English, and a Dirk who, as described in his section, appreciates his sexual appeal but ultimately rejects him. After this, Dirk (again, possibly using his powers?) informs Jake that his life will now involve sexual service to Jane, and a frankly horrible scenario of repeated rape and siring of many children, who will all grow up and die while Jake, immortal in God Tier, will have to watch this happen, over and over again, producing more children, and someday losing them.
Jake cries openly at the prospect of this future, and Dirk kisses him for the last time and leaves.
It’s notable to me that Dirk’s revenge against Jake isn’t sexual on Dirk’s part - even the shitting-himself business doesn’t read as kink-related to me, just sort of an immature, badly-constructed imagining of a non-sexual humiliation punishment. However, on Jake’s part, the revenge (for rejecting Dirk, on a surface level, but in reality for being a promiscuous male, and a masculine and attractive one) is extremely sexual in nature, culminating in rape at the hands of a dominant female.
What did Jake do canonically to deserve this? Well… in my view, nothing. I think this is all a punishment for his fanon masculinity. And it is extremely interesting to me that it is the fanon, not canon, portrayal of Jake that has generated such wild and unadulterated resentment towards his character - that even as the Sequel writers claim to be aware that this version of him isn’t “real”, this is the version of him that triggers this sexually violent hatred and therefore is the version of him that had to be included in the Sequels so that he could be punished by rape.
Awful.
Gamzee
Gamzee has been excluded from this analysis so far, simply because I do not want to read anything more about Gamzee in the Sequels than I already have. However, Gamzee as a foil for Jake is sort of interesting, at least insofar as it provides an insight into the autogynephilic mindset. I am just going to straight up say that the Sequels are an absolute mess of disturbing and racially-coded content regarding Gamzee and his sexual behaviour, culminating in Jake being sort of cuckolded by him. This serves to degrade Jake somehow even further because even though he is technically having sex with Jane, he does not in any way get to possess her, though Gamzee sort of does.
Jane wants Gamzee against her own better judgment; her female sexuality dictates that she wants to be dominated by a man, and as per pseudo-bisexuality, it’s better if this is not a Real Human (or troll) Man but an Archetypal Man (brainless, aggressive), a man who functions in the Autogynephilic Worldview as as much of a sex object as women do, because his function is only to make one feel small, feminine, and satisfied. The autogynephile identifies with Jane here, and enjoys that she is powerful but ultimately at the mercy of her own body, reinforcing in their mind that no matter how powerful a woman may be, she always wants to be fucked. Just not by Jake.
This brings us back to the paradoxical, nonsensical love-hate dynamic of autogynephilia. The autogynephilic reader likes Jane because he identifies with her: she provides the fantasty of the dominatrix who can have sex with whomever she wants, whenever she wants. At the same time, the autogynephilic reader hates Jane because she is a woman, and doesn’t want to see Jane get too big for her boots, so to speak - she must be humiliated at the hands of Gamzee, and she must enjoy it. The autogynephile desires and despises women, and the autogynephile desires and despises himself as well.
Jake and Gamzee can be viewed as sort of similar characters in the Epilogues, at least in terms of them both being portrayed as mind-numbingly stupid (Dirk comments constantly on how idiotic Jake is; Gamzee seems to have sustained some kind of brain damage circa Act 6 and never really bounced back). They are also both portrayed as hedonistic, sexually-driven males: while Jake’s sexual interests lie in having numerous no-strings encounters with trolls, Gamzee seems more specifically fixed on his erotically-charged kismessisitude with Jane. It’s hard for me to label Gamzee as ‘masculine’, especially because I don’t know/care much about what happens with him in Sequel content, but he is at least violent and sexually aggressive.
So I don’t know what, in their minds, would differentiate Gamzee’s masculinity and Jake’s, here, resulting in such wildly different treatment, except… well. To me, there is that undeniably problematic coding of Gamzee as animalistic, without feeling, driven quite literally only by sex with women, with Jane - and given that he is positioned as the “bull” in the Jake-Jane scenario, and given that he is actually a different species (or race) from Jake and Jane, and given that autogynephiles notoriously fetishise the notion of a sexually dominant black male, I am putting it out there that this is probably just, like, super racist.
Miscellaneous Points
Notably absent from my analysis of Karkat’s masculinity is his eventual status as a rebel fighter in Candy/HS2. Here, Karkat does receive quite the masculine glow-up, but it’s worth noting that the difference between Candy and Meat is that in Candy, Karkat no longer has a boyfriend of any kind, and is instead in a romantic and sexual relationship with a female, Meenah.
It also might be worth noting that in Candy, Dave and Karkat are joined in their relationship by Jade. This is a pretty common pairing in fanon and unfortunately, in my opinion, plays into the idea that two same-sex partners might on some level need someone of the opposite sex to “balance” their relationship. In the context of the Sequels, Jade’s presence in their relationship might actually be because, in this hellscape of a webcomic, Jade is in possession of a penis and Karkat and Dave, as two alleged “bottoms”, may benefit from that. However, I refuse to actually read this route to find out whether this is the implication or not.
So, there you have it. This is my own personal interpretation of how autogynephilia, terrible writing, and an outright hatred of female fans has impacted the characterisation of the male characters in the Homestuck sequels. I’d love to know what you think.
I know very little about Homestuck outside cultural osmosis but this was a fun read anyway! I've wondered if anyone else was interested in the ties between modern (post-2010) pop culture and gender politics, since they overlap among young adults.