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windsorgirllove · 5 years

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The Prince and The King: Dirk Strider and Kazuaki Nanaki

It may be 4 whole months after the Epilogues came out, but guess what - I’m still thinking about Dirk Strider. And who can blame me, considering… well, everything. Dirk caused a lot of different reactions from everyone, but the way that his character finally clicked for me was watching him take over Jake’s mind and realizing “oh, he’s trying to ‘all will be one with the King’ them”. And then I realized that that would make sense to literally one other person in the whole world, so I decided to write an essay about it. As you do.

Spoilers for Homestuck, including the epilogue, and Hatoful Boyfriend and Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star.

I. Who are these nerds?

For those of you who don’t know, I’ll give a quick summary of these two characters before I start comparing them.

A. Dirk Strider

Dirk Strider is one of the human characters in Homestuck. He is the biological father of Dave Strider and Rose Lalonde, and is an alternate Universe version of Bro Strider. He grew up alone in a post apocalyptic world after an alien queen took over Earth. He is the Prince of Heart and a Derse Dreamer. He is a big gay nerd. In the Homestuck Epilogues, his worst traits come out: his self obsession and his splinter selves that come about due to Heart shenanigans, which led to him making some… morally dubious decisions. By which I mean obtained ultimate power and started rewriting the wills of his friends because “he knows best”. Also he’s aware of the fact he’s in a story now, so he became the narrator. And in one of the timelines present in the Epilogues, he killed himself.

B. Kazuaki Nanaki/The King

Kazuaki Nanaki is a bird featured in Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star. He is a depressed college student studying literature. He fell in love with a boy who ended up pushing him further and further into depression, until the two of them decided to kill themselves. Kazuaki went through with it, his boyfriend did not. He woke up in the afterlife alone and scared. He ends up creating a star from a candle and a chair, which attracts other souls to it’s light. He lured people in because he was lonely, but didn’t want to get hurt again, so he absorbed all the souls into his will, and became the King of the star. And then all the characters end up in the afterlife too, most of whom are still alive, and it’s a whole thing.

So how are they similar? Well, they both are clearly mentally ill, both gay, both killed themselves, both took over the wills of their close friends. Let’s look at their big three narrative similarities: their ascension, their revenge on boyfriends, and their takeovers of will.

II. The Ultimate Self v Kinghood

The Ultimate Self is a concept that was brought up at the end of Homestuck and was explored properly in the Homestuck Epilogues. It seems to be the endpoint for all of the godtiers, wherein they fully realize their Aspect. For example, Rose is ascending as well, and since her aspect is Light (ie knowledge), she gains knowledge of all timelines all at once. Dirk’s aspect, meanwhile, is Heart, which here means soul, so his Ultimate Self is all his splinters combining into one person. (As I sidenote, I wonder how much their classes play into this - Rose is a Seer and is seeing timelines, and Dirk is a Prince and is destroying everyone’s sense of self). It also appears to come along with an awareness of the narrative structure and the fact that they are in the story, which certainly does wonders for the mind. Dirk takes control of it - the narrative, that is - because he believes that he knows best for all his friends.

One thing we know for certain is the ascending fucking hurts. To quote Rose Lalonde: “I am ascending, and it’s terrible.” This process was enough to fully push Dirk over from “has poor judgement and a god complex” to full blown “evil and knows it.” He gains the power to take away the free will of all the other characters, and wants to make them all ascend and then stick their consciousness into robots that he made, because it’s “better” for them. He already carries this plan out with Rose, who he selected to be first because she’s the most like him. Essentially, he wants to make everyone just like him.

Meanwhile, Kinghood seems to have a lot of similarities. Kazuaki seems to gain some reality warping powers once he dies - he is able to transform a room with a candle and a chair into a star with a lighthouse and a throne. He basically makes his world run on fairy tale logic. This extends even to his form. Throughout the game, the characters are represented by photos of birds. However, when Kazuaki is the King, he is rendered in watercolors like the rest of the Holiday Star. Later, when he gets angry, he distorts into a darker colored being with multiple heads, and in his true form he is a monochrome pencil sketch. He also can appear anywhere on the star at any time, because all the residents of the star are under his hivemind. He can control the layout of his home, which is also visible from the outside (in the real world). He can create zones in the star specific to the people within in order to convince them to become one with him. And perhaps scariest of all, he can know the secrets of the people in the star, and toture them with their deepest darkest fear.

So ascending and Kinghood are very similar, except that Kinghood seems to be more in the line of eldritch horror.

III. “I’ll Never Let You Break My Heart Again”

Dirk and Kazuaki also have meaningful romantic relationships with other boys that go super duper bad and end up being their start of darkness. Their whole evil plan can basically be boiled down to getting revenge on the boy who wronged them.

A. Jake

Jake English is the boy that Dirk was in love with. He is from the same universe as Dirk, but from several centuries in the past (which is the present for us). He is the biological father of Jade Harley and John Egbert. He grew up alone on an island in the Pacific, and styles himself as a manly adventurer. Jake and Dirk end up dating when they enter the game, and break up after a few months because they’re dumb teens who can’t communicate and so are all of their friends. In the Epilogues, Jake is unwillingly wed to Jane Crocker, another of their friends, in the Candy Timeline. In the Meat Timeline, Dirk has taken control of the narration and forces Jake to confess his love for Dirk in front of a huge crowd.

B. Uzune

Hitori Uzune was the guy that Kazuaki was in love with. He was a fellow college student at the university Kazuaki was attending, and was similarly fucked up and depressed. He convinces Kazuaki that they should kill themselves, and the two of them overdose on pills. But just as Kazuaki is drifting away Hitori gets up and steals Kazuaki’s identity in order to get revenge for his dead brother. That whole thing is actually the main plot of the game, kinda. Hitori refuses to call an ambulance for Kazuaki even as he changes his mind, and let’s him die.

C. Angry Gay Selfrightousness

So first of all I think we can agree that Kazuaki is a little more valid for going off the deep end here. But they both did have a similar experience in love. Both of them felt deeply betrayed by the boy they loved. Both of them were super pissed about this, and it shows in their supervillain plans. Neither of the are directly setting out to get revenge, but their desire is written all over their actions.

With Dirk, he spends an inordanent amount of time calling Jake stupid while he is posing as the narrator, as well as inserting thoughts about himself into Jake’s mind when he’s about to have sex with Jane. (He’s also just weirdly horny the whole epilogue, in general.) After driving Jake to do his public confession in the Meat timeline, Dirk responds with “And to love Dirk is to obey him” in the narration. And finally, right before he’s about to fuck of to space Dirk plans this epic confrontation that ends with the quote that heads this section.

As for Kazuaki, the whole way he was able to become the King was because of the trauma that Hitori put him through, namely the killing him part. He absorbed people because of not wanting to be left alone again. And once Hitori enters the dream he turns all his focus onto him, blinding him and forcing him into a small pocket of the dream so he can’t hurt anyone again. And even after he is defeated he still reaches out and tries to grab Hitori.

Even when the two of them try to move on, they can’t.

IV. “All Will Become One With the King” - Narrative Takeovers and the Hivemind

In order for there to be a narrative takeover, there has to be a narrative in the first place. And both Homestuck and Hatoful Boyfriend certainly have one, and I don’t mean in the sense that they are a story that we consume. I mean that there is a narrative thread that the characters themselves are aware of.

A. Homestuck “Canon”

Let’s start with Homestuck, which in the Epilogues actually brought the term “canon” into the vocabulary of the characters via one Rose Lalonde. As a Seer and fanfiction writer, it makes sense she would be familiar with it. In the epilogues she discovered that there was something wrong with the timeline they were in - it was “non-canon”. This is different from the timeline being doomed, although it is similar. In both cases it means the timeline in question is fading away.

As defined by Rose, in order for a timeline to be canon, it has to be three things: 1. It has to be true, 2. It has to be essential, and 3. It has to be relevant. True as in true, essential as in essential to the characters or the story, and relevant as in relevant to the audience. Knowledge of the idea of canon seems to come along with ascending to the Ultimate Self, since the only people who know about it are Rose, Dirk, and Alt!Calliope.

Once Dirk ascends and realizes that the timeline they’re in is “non-canon”, he seizes control of the narrative in order to steer it back to canon and stop it from fading away. And once he takes control, he gains the same knowledge that the author would have of all the characters (except for Roxy because of his voidy-ness). He also wants to make everyone else ascend to their Ultimate Selves as well, and then take away their agency. How this worked is that he believes that their bodies wouldn’t be able to handle ascending (even though his did) and he makes them robot bodies because he’s just so nice. And the first people he assimilates are Rose and Dave, his children. And also as I said above, he inserted thoughts into people's heads and made them do things they wouldn’t normally do.

And Dirk taking control of the narrative isn’t an isolated incident, either. The narration has been passed around like a basketball, or more accurately stolen like loose change by a clumsy pickpocket. For the most part it is regulated to the cherubs - Caliborn and Calliope, as well as Doc Scratch - and Andrew Hussie. And that’s not even to mention all the people that give commands to the characters. The fabric of the text is very present in Homestuck.

B. The All Knowing Eyes of the King

The King also tries to take control of the narrative as well, although not in the same way as Dirk. He isn’t aware of the fact that he is in a story in the same way. However, by trying to bring the whole cast into his hive mind he is essentially taking control of the narrative, since whoever controls the characters controls the story. He can’t full on insert thoughts into people’s heads like Dirk, but he can know the secrets of the people in the Holiday Star, similar to Dirk gaining the knowledge of the author. Then he uses a person’s deepest fear to convince them that the world outside is too scary, too dangerous, and it is safer to stay with him. Plus he uses creepy picture books to do it, which is certainly an aesthetic choice.

Two of the best examples of this is how he deals with Shuu and Yuuya. In Shuu’s case, it’s his most effective argument for staying on the Holiday Star - possibly because it is so similar to his own. Shuu was in love with a (married) colleague of his, but never told him, even as he passed away. Being as this was the only person Shuu cared about, he fell into a depression and also started murdering people. The King convinced him that there was nothing more in the real world that he could find a use for - that it would be better if he stayed here, where he could experiment and research forever. It worked so well that it took the ghost of his love to shake him out of it.

On the opposite side of this we have Yuuya. Yuuya was not actually supposed to be on the Holiday Star, but he dove in (basically) in order to save his little brother. And The King probably had the best chance of blackmailing him, because Yuuya has done some shit - including the murder of his infant half-brother. He did this in order to help his little brother, but still, jeez. The King uses this to convince him that he’s a bad person, that he would be better off in the Star, where his guilt couldn’t hurt him anymore. This doesn’t work, mainly because Yuuya is a more emotionally mature person that the King. He refused to be converted, because all the bad things he’s done has made him the person he is today, and to get rid of that would be irresponsible. His whole speech ends with this truly phenomenal quote: “It’s my grief. And you can’t have it.”

V. Conclusion

So, what have I learned from this? Um, don’t trust gay men I guess. And also that mental illness and suicide is a very serious thing. I feel that with this essay I have run into the problem that my professors have told me numerous times - I can identify an interesting point, but I have trouble drawing meaning from this. So if any of you can figure out what this connection means, please let me know! Mostly to me it seems like there are definite links between my favorite stories, and it’s that giving in to despair is not the answer.

VI. Miscellaneous: The Meta of HB - Hiyoko as the Narrator

Hatoful Boyfriend is not quite as meta as Homestuck - nothing really is. But it isn’t the benchmark of weirdness for dating games for nothing. And most of this weirdness revolves around Hiyoko, which makes sense. She is the narrator after all - and I don’t just mean that in the normal story sense. I mean that in the Homestuck sense as well.

Hiyoko is aware of the fact that she is in a game. She makes references to her stats, and is aware of the interface of the screen. She also doesn’t know the name of the town she’s lived in all her life until someone else says it in Holiday Star, because it was never established in the first game. She is also aware of alternate universes of each romance route. Because Hiyoko dies. A lot. She dies in Shuu’s route, in the neutral route, and in the true route. And in Holiday Star (which in it of itself is an alternate universe to the main game) she meets Death and is able to recognize him from all the other times she’s died.

The important thing to get from all this is that unlike Some People, Hiyoko never goes crazy from this fact. She’s in a game, and she knows it, and she’s cool with it. It should probably be pointed out that Hiyoko is dumb as a box of rocks, and with ignorance comes bliss, they say. But still, it is interesting to see an example of a character with meta knowledge who manages to deal with it, instead of going full supervillain.

#homestuck #hatoful boyfriend #homestuck epilogue #hs epilogue #hb #hatoful boyfriend holiday star #dirk strider #kazuaki nanaki #the king (hatoful boyfriend)#hs meta #My writing #she speaks!#six whole pages #be grateful #also let me know what you think!

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