Player Name: Raile E-mail: railerat [at] gmail [dot] com Preferred Contact:railerat Timezone: EST Current Characters in Victory Road: None
Character Name: Dirk Strider Series: Homestuck Timeline: Post-Epilogue (Route: Meat) Canon Resource Links:Homestuck wiki | Epilogues
The personality contains more pertinent links. Homestuck is a hard canon to work with.
Personality: [CW: Suicide and suicidal ideation, mind control] "I am my Ultimate Self." This is what Dirk claims, but what does that mean? In this essay I will--
Okay. Those are all Dirk. You'll need to know them, because Dirk "I am my Ultimate Self" Strider is all of them.
Yeah.
It's bad.
It's real bad.
There's also this asshole, who's part of Lord English. This is important, because it puts him in a very interesting position relative to the other narrator in the Epilogues. But that's for later.
Let's back up a little.
What does "I am my Ultimate Self" mean?
Dirk, as per the Homestuck epilogue, is in the throes of the merging of all splinters and versions of himself across all of Paradox Space and its timelines into his single consciousness. He is not the only character experiencing this: Rose, for example, is so debilitated by this experience (as a Seer, she is also absorbing every single vision experienced by every single version of herself, and as a Seer of Light, that is effectively all the knowledge of the universes: canon, outside canon, and non-canon) that it is killing her.
Dirk, in one of the two Epilogue routes, commits suicide as a last act of control in a timeline rapidly dissolving into non-canon status, and in the other unlocks what has been referred to as powers of "Ultimate Self" that allowed him to take over the story-telling of Homestuck itself in the Meat path of the Epilogue. Which is the path this Dirk occupies. Sort of. Because Dirk is not okay, in any path, and this Dirk in particular is comprised of a great many terrible people, existing simultaneously and in multiplicity with multiple less terrible people, but under the pressures and influences of significantly worse people (Caliborn) and in direct antagonism with a theoretically less terrible person who hypocritically stands only to gain from his gradual transformation into an increasingly evil anime villain motherfucker, and whose opposition to him only serves to shape him further into such.
But then, he stands to gain from that, too. It is, in fact, his entire stated goal.
A non-canon state is intolerable to him, and his purpose in seizing control of the narrative is to give the story direction and purpose, and in doing so enable as many of his fellow players to unlock their ultimate selves as well. In other words, he wants them to control the narrative so they can't fade out of canonical relevance. Controlling the narrative is a very literal act. Dirk is writing the third person narrative and inserting thoughts and feelings into others' minds and even dictating their dialogue--to a greater or lesser degree, as some are able to resist him, others outright aware of his influence. An alternate version of Calliope, the Muse, arrives from a different space and time and fights with him for control, leading to a lot of petty bickering and underhanded tactics as they fight to tell the story the way they want it.
And not everything Dirk does serves his goal, expressly. Some of it is much more selfish. What he did to Jake, for example. He spends a great deal of time and text dragging Jake through the mud, with extra emphasis on Jake's uselessness and idiocy. It becomes clear that at some point prior to the Epilogues, he and Jake fell out over romantic issues, and he uses the narrative to keep pushing Jake's thoughts to Dirk--how much he loves Dirk, how much he wants Dirk, how much he regrets hurting Dirk and so on--until Dirk finally arrives at Jake's place in person near the end of Meat. He's there to get a spaceship. While he's there, Jake begs Dirk to take him along, and this is the moment Dirk's been waiting for: Dirk rejects him utterly and just breaks Jake's brain completely. He just obliterates him totally as a person. Snapped like a twig. It's objectively awful. And despite the work he put into setting it up, it's not even the satisfying moment Dirk wanted it to be.
What's happening with Dirk in the Epilogues is three-parted. One, the many selves of Dirk Strider, the many splinters and variations on his original existence, are taking up a vast amount of mental real estate, pushing him to and past the point of losing any control of who he actually is. It's worth noting Dirk may not have actually achieved his true Ultimate Self. There is no indication that he has (for example) any knowledge of Brain Ghost Dirk. Unlike pretty much everyone else, though, he has a lot of splinters that were not meant to share one brain experience--he would only need to merge some splinters from a few main timeline to go off the rails.
Two, Dirk's reality and sense of self are and were, at best, tenuous and highly artificial--even before he became capable of understanding 'canon' as a state, let alone dictation of the narrative itself.
Three, Dirk's intense, compulsive need to be in control.
The result a heady mix of Dirk's worst qualities, enhanced and exacerbated by Caliborn's influence, but served as a concoction of his increasingly worse persons (Doc Scratch, Bro Strider, Lil Cal.) People are inherently self contradictory to begin with, but there's this immense ego, this elevated sense of self in Dirk that tends to clip through self loathing like Bethesda game model. Even when there's self hatred (and there is so MUCH self hatred in Dirk), there's an underlying assumption that he knows what's best/better and that was very highlighted in the scenes up to his suicide especially.
Others can be satisfied with their existence, perhaps. But not Dirk. Not as the light of canon was petering out. Unfortunately for everyone. Or fortunately, perhaps. After all, he is giving them the blessing of canon relevance.
They may not longer inhabit canon, but better outside canon than non-canon. Better tenuously relevant than not relevant at all.
Or, put another way.... better tenuously real than not real at all.
It's clear Dirk himself has a nebulous grip on the reality of his own existence. He grew up in extreme isolation, with very little variety in people. To fill that void, a powerless space he could not affect or control, he created an environment full of elements he did control. Artificial bodies and selves, an ever-expanding universe of Him. His obsession with robots mirrors Bro's obsession with puppets--both things that are human-shaped, but ultimately just constructs, to greater or lesser degree of control and autonomy. In the Epilogue, Dirk constantly frames himself and the world around him in mechanical terms. He describes himself as a mechanic, but also describes his own brain and body in mechanical terms. His treatment of the people around him is reflected in that manner--but his view of himself is just as affected. Many of his selves are artificially created, and this further undermines his restricted sense of his own existence. There is no 'realness' to the people around him.
And the further people drift from his own existence, the less 'real' they become in his narrative.
A narrative written by a man who hates himself, every version of himself, with such intensity and such consistency that it is one of the foundational aspects of his personality. A man who thinks not just of death but of suicide, of actively ending himself so frequently that tying himself a noose is swift, practised action. Who grew from a teen struggling with the degree to which one can and cannot control outcomes with regards to people (other and otherwise) and into a man for whom his friends are both the supposed beneficiaries of his choices and the pawns he moves in narrative fashion, no more real to him than he is. Beings whose realities depend wholly on his actions, and so whose manipulation is justified by the outcome he will achieve by doing so.
Dirk Strider | Homestuck (+Epilogues) | Reserved
Name: Raile
E-mail: railerat [at] gmail [dot] com
Preferred Contact:
Timezone: EST
Current Characters in Victory Road: None
Character
Name: Dirk Strider
Series: Homestuck
Timeline: Post-Epilogue (Route: Meat)
Canon Resource Links: Homestuck wiki | Epilogues
The personality contains more pertinent links. Homestuck is a hard canon to work with.
Personality: [CW: Suicide and suicidal ideation, mind control] "I am my Ultimate Self." This is what Dirk claims, but what does that mean? In this essay I will--
Wait.
Dirk Strider | Bro Strider | Lil Hal | Arquius Sprite | Lil Cal | Doc Scratch | Brobot | Lord English
Okay. Those are all Dirk. You'll need to know them, because Dirk "I am my Ultimate Self" Strider is all of them.
Yeah.
It's bad.
It's real bad.
There's also this asshole, who's part of Lord English. This is important, because it puts him in a very interesting position relative to the other narrator in the Epilogues. But that's for later.
Let's back up a little.
What does "I am my Ultimate Self" mean?
Dirk, as per the Homestuck epilogue, is in the throes of the merging of all splinters and versions of himself across all of Paradox Space and its timelines into his single consciousness. He is not the only character experiencing this: Rose, for example, is so debilitated by this experience (as a Seer, she is also absorbing every single vision experienced by every single version of herself, and as a Seer of Light, that is effectively all the knowledge of the universes: canon, outside canon, and non-canon) that it is killing her.
Dirk, in one of the two Epilogue routes, commits suicide as a last act of control in a timeline rapidly dissolving into non-canon status, and in the other unlocks what has been referred to as powers of "Ultimate Self" that allowed him to take over the story-telling of Homestuck itself in the Meat path of the Epilogue. Which is the path this Dirk occupies. Sort of. Because Dirk is not okay, in any path, and this Dirk in particular is comprised of a great many terrible people, existing simultaneously and in multiplicity with multiple less terrible people, but under the pressures and influences of significantly worse people (Caliborn) and in direct antagonism with a theoretically less terrible person who hypocritically stands only to gain from his gradual transformation into an increasingly evil anime villain motherfucker, and whose opposition to him only serves to shape him further into such.
But then, he stands to gain from that, too. It is, in fact, his entire stated goal.
A non-canon state is intolerable to him, and his purpose in seizing control of the narrative is to give the story direction and purpose, and in doing so enable as many of his fellow players to unlock their ultimate selves as well. In other words, he wants them to control the narrative so they can't fade out of canonical relevance. Controlling the narrative is a very literal act. Dirk is writing the third person narrative and inserting thoughts and feelings into others' minds and even dictating their dialogue--to a greater or lesser degree, as some are able to resist him, others outright aware of his influence. An alternate version of Calliope, the Muse, arrives from a different space and time and fights with him for control, leading to a lot of petty bickering and underhanded tactics as they fight to tell the story the way they want it.
And not everything Dirk does serves his goal, expressly. Some of it is much more selfish. What he did to Jake, for example. He spends a great deal of time and text dragging Jake through the mud, with extra emphasis on Jake's uselessness and idiocy. It becomes clear that at some point prior to the Epilogues, he and Jake fell out over romantic issues, and he uses the narrative to keep pushing Jake's thoughts to Dirk--how much he loves Dirk, how much he wants Dirk, how much he regrets hurting Dirk and so on--until Dirk finally arrives at Jake's place in person near the end of Meat. He's there to get a spaceship. While he's there, Jake begs Dirk to take him along, and this is the moment Dirk's been waiting for: Dirk rejects him utterly and just breaks Jake's brain completely. He just obliterates him totally as a person. Snapped like a twig. It's objectively awful. And despite the work he put into setting it up, it's not even the satisfying moment Dirk wanted it to be.
What's happening with Dirk in the Epilogues is three-parted. One, the many selves of Dirk Strider, the many splinters and variations on his original existence, are taking up a vast amount of mental real estate, pushing him to and past the point of losing any control of who he actually is.
It's worth noting Dirk may not have actually achieved his true Ultimate Self. There is no indication that he has (for example) any knowledge of Brain Ghost Dirk. Unlike pretty much everyone else, though, he has a lot of splinters that were not meant to share one brain experience--he would only need to merge some splinters from a few main timeline to go off the rails.
Two, Dirk's reality and sense of self are and were, at best, tenuous and highly artificial--even before he became capable of understanding 'canon' as a state, let alone dictation of the narrative itself.
Three, Dirk's intense, compulsive need to be in control.
The result a heady mix of Dirk's worst qualities, enhanced and exacerbated by Caliborn's influence, but served as a concoction of his increasingly worse persons (Doc Scratch, Bro Strider, Lil Cal.) People are inherently self contradictory to begin with, but there's this immense ego, this elevated sense of self in Dirk that tends to clip through self loathing like Bethesda game model. Even when there's self hatred (and there is so MUCH self hatred in Dirk), there's an underlying assumption that he knows what's best/better and that was very highlighted in the scenes up to his suicide especially.
Others can be satisfied with their existence, perhaps. But not Dirk. Not as the light of canon was petering out. Unfortunately for everyone. Or fortunately, perhaps. After all, he is giving them the blessing of canon relevance.
They may not longer inhabit canon, but better outside canon than non-canon. Better tenuously relevant than not relevant at all.
Or, put another way.... better tenuously real than not real at all.
It's clear Dirk himself has a nebulous grip on the reality of his own existence. He grew up in extreme isolation, with very little variety in people. To fill that void, a powerless space he could not affect or control, he created an environment full of elements he did control. Artificial bodies and selves, an ever-expanding universe of Him. His obsession with robots mirrors Bro's obsession with puppets--both things that are human-shaped, but ultimately just constructs, to greater or lesser degree of control and autonomy. In the Epilogue, Dirk constantly frames himself and the world around him in mechanical terms. He describes himself as a mechanic, but also describes his own brain and body in mechanical terms. His treatment of the people around him is reflected in that manner--but his view of himself is just as affected. Many of his selves are artificially created, and this further undermines his restricted sense of his own existence. There is no 'realness' to the people around him.
And the further people drift from his own existence, the less 'real' they become in his narrative.
A narrative written by a man who hates himself, every version of himself, with such intensity and such consistency that it is one of the foundational aspects of his personality. A man who thinks not just of death but of suicide, of actively ending himself so frequently that tying himself a noose is swift, practised action. Who grew from a teen struggling with the degree to which one can and cannot control outcomes with regards to people (other and otherwise) and into a man for whom his friends are both the supposed beneficiaries of his choices and the pawns he moves in narrative fashion, no more real to him than he is. Beings whose realities depend wholly on his actions, and so whose manipulation is justified by the outcome he will achieve by doing so.