#people tagging my completely unrelated one character meta posts with their fanon ships like i want to see that

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

.

[stormsbourne]

since dirkcourse is going on god knows I gotta open my mouth

I’m not trying to vague here cause god knows I hate vagueing but I want to weigh in on the current dirkcourse so here’s this. it’s addressed at all the of the dirk tag and current discourse going around. 

(for reference in this post I am defining soft dirk as a dirk who has the narrative/artistic focus more on his softer or gentler traits, his love for his friends or his desperate crush on jake english, instead of his manipulative tendencies or his facade of assholishness or his need to try and be stoic 24/7. it dwells more on his intense feelings for other people and self-sacrificing over perceived elitism or snide condescension, both of which are traits that I feel dirk only plays up as part of his “coolguy” persona. the appearance part is mostly unrelated aside from some stuff about hypermasculinity we’ll get into in a second)

anyway if it’s longtime fandom cred we’re going for, here’s my experience, as someone who’s read homestuck since 2010:

it was impossible to escape abuser dirk. 

people posted shit in the dirk and dirkjake tags on the daily reminding you that if you didn’t “acknowledge” how abusive their relationship was, you were an apologist. trying to counter this argument got you angry posts from various people in the group perpetuating that. you got called an apologist. accused of shouting over survivors. in the rare cases that survivors spoke up and asked to please stop getting called apologist for shipping something fucking fictional between teenagers, they were told to stop shouting over minors. they were told they needed to stop defining their lives by their abuse. they were asked why they hadn’t grown up and gotten over it. they had campaigns and crusades and mocking group circlejerks going after them for expressing a view of dirk that didn’t align with popular fanon.

I wouldn’t say this is the popular reading of dirk anymore. but the only reason I’d say that’s true is because the people driving this, the people making sure everyone knew abuser dirk was “canon,” aren’t into homestuck much anymore, aside from one or two of them. but you have to understand, this shit was inescapable. big names in the fandom lexicon, like shelby, treated dirk’s abusiveness as an obvious fact. you couldn’t write dirk meta without either dancing franticallly around the subject or just disclaiming it at the beginning with “I know dirk is an abuser,” even if you didn’t agree with it. if you didn’t do these things, you were guaranteed asks and condescending vague posts or callouts about you disagreeing. 

and for that matter, the idea that it’s completely gone away isn’t even true. landofsomethingsomething didn’t even get into homestuck until last year and didn’t start writing fic until post act 7 and still got an ask demanding why she shipped dirkjake, couldn’t she see how unhealthy and bad it was? didn’t she care about the opinions of survivors? 

all of this is without touching on how big masculine semi-wolverine dirk was the more popular version in fanart (especially in het, but also in slash) and how usually he looked like a miniature bro, often older than the other characters. this is without talking about how people deliberately read in the worst to everything he said, pointing to his “let’s go raiding” line with jake and shouting about how manipulative that was or him breaking up with jake as proof he was trying to force jake to hook back up with him. this is without touching on how the phrase “strider manpain” became a blanket mocking phrase to make fun of anybody who cared about dirk or dave’s feelings -- complete with mocking anybody who thought dave’s selfie shit was a semi-mental breakdown (which it was) or that dirk sitting on the edge of the roof was him contemplating suicide (which it sort of was, but to be technical, it was more suicide-plus-murder). 

artists left homestuck fandom because the discourse wore them out. several artists I personally FOLLOW deleted most of their dirkjake content because they didn’t want to deal with the discourse anymore and they were tired of being called apologist. one artist made a misstep with some of their art and got so bombarded by asks calling them an abuse apologist and rape supporter that they pretty much quit tumblr for weeks. several dirkjakes I know have expressed that during the 2011-2014 (or so, it depends) era they were outright afraid to participate in the fandom. even most of the popular dirkjake content producers (who I’m sure are on the list of “soft dirks”) bought into the dialogue that dirk was abusive. that’s without getting into how dudebros kicked it up, how dudebros talked about that andrew hussie only wrote dirkjake to mock slashers and “prove” to them that slash between two random dudes could never work. that’s without talking about how dudebros figured dirk, such a violent person, could only have black feelings for jake. that’s without talking about how dirk/uu people routinely either gave dirkjakes the runaround for “denying abuse” or talked about how dirk, as a gay dude, was OBVIOUSLY too hardcore and too kinky for a gentle cinnamon roll like jake. (and the “cinnamon roll jake” discourse is something I could write about 5 more posts about.)

it was inescapable.

look, I know fandom is gigantic and what you see depends on the following you curate, but keep in mind that applies both ways. just because you never saw it doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. I’m sure there were corners of fandom where this dialogue wasn’t mainstream and softboy dirk was. but in a lot of the fandom, abusive hypermasculine wolverine sideburns dirk was the only thing we saw. asshole dirk was all we could find because if you didn’t do asshole dirk, you were Problematic.

[slow-smiles]

How to Stop Giving Fucks About the Incompetency of OUAT Writers: A Step-by-Step Guide

I’ve achieved a level of zen with the show that still allows me to get my salt on about how bad everything is, but not have it take over my life and my blog. And for seven low payments of 39.99 USD*, this system can be yours to utilize! *unicorn soap dollars

Step 1: Do a mass unfollow. I'm not kidding. Clear your dash of most of your ouat content. Don't unfollow everyone, keep your mutuals and those blogs you know you can't live without. Maybe it doesn't have to be forever but if you feel so bogged down by disappointment or negativity or whatever feelings are overwhelming you, distance yourself from it. If you don't want to unfollow, blacklist tags and urls and set your blacklist so that blocked items don't appear on your dashboard.

Step 2: Wow, you completed step one! I'm a bit surprised, honestly. I started this post to be a joke but then I realized that people might actually need some advice on how to Deal and I think I did pretty okay myself. So anyway. Two. Give your unfollow spree some time to work its way into you. Follow at least three or four non-ouat related blogs. (I highly recommend typography blogs, the office/parks and rec/Brooklyn 99 blogs, photography blogs, Star Wars gif blogs, etc.) Pay more attention to some other fandoms or media for a bit. Something that you've seen before and you know is a happy spot for you. Read some fic that's not ouat based. You don't have to do cold turkey. Just mix other stuff in. You can still do spoilers and meta and headcanons and everything, just make sure you've got other stuff to fall back on. At my lowest I cared so much about ouat nonsense that I let it eclipse every other fandom I was a part of.

Step 3: this is a hard one but a big one. Stop watching the show. Start with not watching live. Maybe do something else fun on Sunday nights unrelated to ouat. I started with "blind blogging" the episodes (live blogging based entirely on the reactions on my dash and from friends). Then just... don't watch. You can look up the bits you're interested in on YouTube if you'd like. Did you hear that something fluffy or good happened to your fave? Go for it! Hear that the writers have pulled more nonsense out of their asses? Do. Not. Go. Looking. For. It. Gifsets and things that cross your dash are totally fine, but actively seeking out something you know is going to upset you or hurt you is not good. 0/10 would not recommend.

Step 4: at this point, you've cleansed your dash of a good chunk of your ouat content. You still get enough to get your Fave Fix, but not so much that you're being overwhelmed. You've diversified your dash. You've blacklisted enough that you're feeling comfortable. You've stopped watching the show live/have stopped watching the whole episode. Now it's time to just adjust. I dedicated about three years of my life to loving this show, talking about it with friends, dissecting it, complaining about it, creating things for it, and generally obsessing over it. You don't kick a habit like that in a short period of time. It took me all of the summer hiatus after 5b and all of 6a to truly divorce myself from the show. Throughout 6a I was still around, watching the relevant clips of my faves on YouTube and half convinced the show would do SOMETHING to bring me back until it finally managed to kick me after the mid season finale. It just takes time and distance to get away from it.

Step 5: shore up your blacklist. URLs you know you don't want to see, characters you know you don't want to see, edit tags you know you don't want to see, anti-whatever opinions you don't want to see, ouat spoilers, ouat speculation... Blacklist all of it. Get yourself into a comfortable zone of engagement with the fandom. Keep creating stuff! Keep chatting with friends! But you need to just do you and find your place of zen with the show. Trust me, handling disappointment and watching their incompetence is so much easier when you aren't as invested.

Step 6: get invested in fanon instead. Read fic to make up for the missed opportunities the people who write the show for a living aren't good enough to utilize or address. Luckily for us, we have a talented fandom. Now that you've found a healthy level of engagement, building your love for fanon versions of your ship or fave character is fun.

Step 7: send your unicorn soap dollar payments to Pawnee, Indiana c/o Leslie Knope. I'm not sure how much this will help anyone, but just know that there are better levels of engagement than blind rage or uncomfortable participation or overwhelming disappointment.