#knightship.ship

[nekropsii]

canon davekat is my best friend and Fanon DaveKat is like if instead of coming back wrong they never died in the first place and some fucker cloned them like. Really Poorly. but everyone just decided that was about right and kept hanging out with the clone.

The part that gets me the most with modern DaveKat is the fact that they’re very aggressively in the spotlight. This… Is antithetical to the point of their relationship for me.

Dave and Karkat’s relationship started developing on The Meteor, earlier than some might think. Dave canonically thinks The Meteor is the place he grew the most as a person - it’s the first time he’s been able to really put his swords and shields down, rest, relax, and allow himself to love and be loved.

It is also the first place he’s ever had privacy.

Dave’s life has been absolutely fraught with constant surveillance. He never knows when there’s a camera on him, when Bro is watching, et cetera. Eyes, eyes, eyes. Eyes on him constantly. He never knows when his random fooling around in the walls of his own home are part of some creepy guys’s fetish material, he never knows when he’s going to be expected to pick up the sword and fight an unfair battle again, he never knows when he’s going to wander into some random traps burying him in his adult brother’s sex toys. Surveillance. Hypervigilance. Cameras. Cameras. Eyes.

His relationship with Karkat having been formed and developed largely offscreen… It meant things to me. Offscreen development is good sometimes, actually. This relationship, this thing that’s really helping Dave calm down and recover, is being done in private. Away from everyone’s eyes. Even those of the fans.

That’s perfect, I think. Their relationship being mostly offscreen really fits them.

But we’ve stripped all that away in favor of this fandom’s fetish for intensive, constant voyeurism. It’s worse, and it’s boring, and it sucks. Official material isn’t free of this criticism - I hate how DaveKat is so in your face these days. I don’t like that. It blows. I hate feeling the same as the cameras of his childhood.

[nekropsii]

thanks for putting "my opinions are my opinions" into your about me. i hate people who see others voicing their opinion about a specific side of fandom and thinking that the other person thinks everyone should think like that. and i hope davekat can recover from just being the uwu silly sanitized sexless gay couple with whoever tf """the mayor""" is being their silly childlike 4'1" third wheel, and actually become their own thing

No issue. I don’t think everyone should think the same way, diversity of opinion is what keeps humanity smart and alive. It definitely frustrates me also when people shout out their takes and then expect everyone to accept them, sometimes trying to threaten people into shutting up and believing it with the claim that simply questioning it or disagreeing in any form is an act of violence or bigotry, or indicative of being an Irredeemable Bad Person or something when it is not applicable.

I think DaveKat is fun, honestly. I enjoy it. In canon. I think it has a lot of narrative potential. I like how we first see it as a PitchRom, then it’s shown to us quietly in the form of a PaleRom in one of the walkarounds. I like how The Meteor is where Dave thought he grew the most as a person, I like how a lot of their relationship and development is done in private. The background development angle is perfect to me, since Dave’s lived his whole life in constant surveillance, with random internet strangers - adults, of which are here to fetishize him - acting as voyeurs to his whole life. It’s fitting. I don’t think it should ever really get too much attention called to it. I think Dave should be allowed one private affair, just for himself.

Get WV out of here, though. He for certain does not need to be the third piece to a romance between two teenage boys. He is a grown ass war veteran. He could be their fucking dads.

[nekropsii]

When it comes to "Fanon Stereotypes", which characters(aside from the Alphas because they're already criminally underexplored) do you think have it the worst? Alternatively; One misunderstanding or lie per character you see shown around as some weird truth?

As far as “Fanon Stereotypes,” as you’ve put it, goes… The first examples that come to mind that aren’t Alpha Trolls are Dave, Karkat, Kanaya, Dirk and Jake in tandem, and specifically how a lot of people portray June. John’s fine, people get weird with June specifically half the time, and I’m not talking about the discourse surrounding her…

For the “Misunderstanding Passed Off as Truth” part of your inquiry… Here’s a small and random assortment:

John has literally never used :B during the entire run of Homestuck. This is a Jane thing. That is a Jane emoticon.

Rose is not good at therapy. She’s never been good at therapy. She’s a 13 year old girl armchair diagnosing her brother as gay using Freudian psychoanalysis. If you take Freudian psychology seriously… I don’t know what to tell you.

Dave’s character arc is literally not about “overcoming toxic masculinity.” Yes, this is a trait he picks up from Bro, that is undeniable, but that’s genuinely not what the focus of his arc is. His arc circles around overcoming childhood neglect and abuse. It just so happens that being a little more forthcoming with his thoughts and feelings fell in line with that. Toxic masculinity, and the head-on tackling of it, was never the crux of his development.

Please for the love of god Jade is not stupid, and she doesn’t mean nothing to the plot. She’s just forgetful and also doesn’t want to be fucking miserable. She also doesn’t “get in the way of DaveKat,” because Dave and Jade legitimately had a thing going on way before Meteorstuck even happened.

Karkat’s arc isn’t about overcoming toxic masculinity either. What. His arc is about how he was born a Mutantblood and raised in a society that hates him. He’s the fucking Second Coming of Troll Christ. There’s so much pressure on him, and none of that pressure is focused in any way on his personal expression of/experience with his own masculinity.

Dave and Karkat do not have arcs that parallel each other at all. They aren’t narratively fated to be together, they aren’t masterfully foils, or star-crossed lovers or anything. The only ways they truly parallel each other in writing is due to the fact that they’re both Knights, and therefore are both interacting with what’s most important to them in generally the same or similar ways. That’s how Classes work. Revolutionary.

Kanaya isn’t stuffy, or boring, or overly-wordy. She isn’t a “mom friend” either. She’s just an extremely awkward girl who cares a lot about her friends and is very bad at social situations. She also isn’t fashionable or cool. I implore you to look back on her dialogue and on the outfits she wears. She is a mess.

Terezi is not a manic pixie dream girl. I’m in pain. This is still going on…

Jake’s character actually does extend past him being Dirk’s arm candy, actually! Jake isn’t just a “Sexy Lamp”! He’s very, very interesting, and he can exist outside of the concept of shipping- in fact, he canonically really, really wants to exist outside of the concept of being people’s object of romantic affections!

Tavros did not reciprocate Gamzee’s feelings. I’m not knocking on people who ship them, because I genuinely could not fucking care less, but I have seen people say that Tavros reciprocated those feelings, which… No, he didn’t.

Nothing to do with a character, but Moiraillegience is a romantic quadrant. It’s inherently romantic, just in a platonic way. It is not just “best friendship”- it’s more comparable to a Queerplatonic Relationship than anything. It is, in fact, weird to Paleship two siblings.

[nekropsii]

in reference to the rosemary post, i think you have it completely right with the last sentence in all honesty. they really are a dynamic that suffers in fan content since its so common for them to be written in a way that reduces them to either Davekats Best Friends (or whatever pairing a writer prefers, but most commonly davekat) or enigmatic serious goths who say dear and like drinking tea and had no strains in their relationship at any point.

A lot of people seem to forget that they are 13 years old and turn them into 40 year old tea-drinking British mothers. This treatment would be comical if it weren't for the fact that it's indisputably a result of misogyny on a fucking Freudian level. And if it weren't for the fact that every sapphic pairing, regardless of their importance, gets completely kneecapped by the fandom in favor of whatever random 2-seconds-of-screentime MLM pairing people have decided to drool over for the next 5 years. And if it weren't a boring, tired trope that's been plaguing fanon for over 10 years now. Lol.

[nekropsii]

I hate the fannon perceptions of almost every character. I can’t even give examples, but i’ll lost my favorite characters so you can get a taste of why i hate fannon interpretations. Karkat, Mituna, Gamzee, Dirk, Roxy.

The noise of agony that I made when I read the names… King, I am so sorry. I share some of these favorites- being Mituna, Roxy, and Dirk- but I know for a damn fact that fanon Karkat and fanon Gamzee are both awful, too.

Poor Karkat doesn’t even have a personality outside of Dave anymore… It’s hard to watch the fall from grace happen in real time. He’s still a fan favorite, sure, but… People don’t seem to like Karkat for who he is anymore. He’s a part of a set, now, for the most part. I get it, MLM representation is important and good, I understand this, I’m literally gay, but… Eesh. Boiling his character down to “Dave Strider’s Bitch,” essentially, is… Something else. Especially when he’s… So, so much more than that.

[nekropsii]

fanon frustration: characters who barely exist outside of being the object of ship content nowadays. (not as a bash to ship content, just that sometimes characters should be allowed to exist on their own too)

Omg, I literally have a draft saved about this!!!!

Ship content is cool, relationships are an incredibly important aspect of the story, but… As you said, yeah, a good handful of characters now just about only exist within the realms of shipping, and it’s extremely hard to find content of them being allowed to exist as their own character. Especially when it’s devoid of any implication of shipping.

DaveKat/Knightship is the #1 most prominent example of this, currently. DirkJake/Skullcap is second, I feel- But DaveKat’s got the added fuckery of the fact that both characters are typically hugely mischaracterized in this content. It’s like a game of telephone at this point- no one wants to reread Homestuck, nor do they want to even acknowledge it outside of fan content, so their interpretations of these characters is slowly getting warped to the unrecognizable.

It’s sad and aggravating. The deeper you get into fandom, the less of a grip you have on canon.

[nekropsii]

It’s.... Very interesting how I almost only ever see certain characters in the context of ship art.

This is no hate against ship art- I do enjoy a good romance, there’s a good deal of it on my blog already, and I make a lot of it myself- but I rarely see Dave and Karkat being allowed to exist outside of being package deal, implied or otherwise.

Jake, too. Specifically the Jake part of the DirkJake equation. And... I kind of just want to acknowledge for a moment how ironic that is? A whole thing with him in Homestuck is how he wanted a break from being romanced and sexualized constantly. Jake specifically wants to be seen as his own person. He wants to be able to vibe independently. And he’s rarely recognized in fandom outside of shipping. It’s almost a little sad.