Okay, so there are some obvious similarities between these three relationships, let me just summarize them really fast:
- Horuss, Vriska and Dirk all played some part in teaching their counterparts how to become stronger - Vriska and Dirk by putting Tavros and Jake into difficult circumstances to force them to become stronger, and Horuss by actually teaching Rufioh more normally while they were in the woods, it sounds like
- Horuss/Rufioh and Dirk/Jake: Brobot & Horuss' version of it
- Horuss and Dirk both saved Rufioh and Jake to some capacity: Horuss by reviving Rufioh by kissing his severed head or whatever, and - while Jake did the same thing with Dirk, Dirk had previously saved all of his friends' lives with his crazy planning skills
- Rufioh and Tavros were both reluctant to be with Horuss and Vriska for a while - Vriska was trying to get Tavros to express romantic feelings for her for ages before he eventually apologized to her on Karkat's memo for not feeling the same way, though now he's flushed for her. With Rufioh and Horuss, it was flipped, with Rufioh being flushed for Horuss at first and those feelings eventually vanishing. With both parties too there's this element of... manipulation? I mean, Vriska kept trying to get Tavros to react the way she wanted in their relationship, and Horuss just doesn't listen to Rufioh when he says he wants to break up, or is all mushy and then Rufioh doesn't want to hurt his feelings...
Another small aside is Horuss and Equius both making a robot body for Rufioh and Aradia - before Aradiabot blew up, it was sort of established that she had spent a ton of time with Equius, but instead chose to spend her last few moments with Sollux, implying that maybe she didn't actually care about Equius all that much after all?
Anyway, my point is that all this makes me not feel very good about the Dirk/Jake ship. Like Rufioh and Tavros did, Jake seems to feel like he's being pulled into a relationship with Dirk without him having much say in the matter:
I mean, that doesn't sound like someone who's mad into the idea of dating someone... he actually sounds more enthusiastic about Jane, and she didn't even have to do anything to put those thoughts in his head:
But yeahhhh I don't know where I was going with this. Basically I just want Dirkjake to be canon sooo bad and I hope it happens and that they don't just date awkwardly for a while before Jake decides he wants out ;_;