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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.
He's still the same person in some ways. Many ways, even. His brilliant, methodical and detail-oriented mind is still intact. He retains his extraordinary (perhaps excessive) fondness for puppetry and robotics, his unwavering passion for swords of a particular kind (katanas), his pedantic diction. His self-absorbed, big-picture perspective. His strange but definite sense of humour. His, uh. Often uncomfortable sexual frankness. And his priority treatment of his friends.
His motive is rooted partially in his own crisis, his own need to be, and to have an existence that matters, but it's also rooted in sincere concern for his friends, and his desire to protect them from oblivion.
It's just that as less magnanimous and more egotistical minds became part of his multifractal self, as less and less of 'himself' fell within the boundaries of his tenuous mental reality, as reality itself broke from canon and took with it any stability he was relying on... other things in him changed. The way he cared changed, and even though his initial actions may have been rooted in good intentions, by the end, he is fully aware of the fact that these actions are, by most subjective measure, 'bad.'
He accepts this, and then embraces it.
From an outside perspective, this is already pretty gnarly. But once you get into the interpersonal and internarrative application of these changes, it gets... a little gross. The easiest way to show the changes in Dirk as he is now is through his relationships with his ectosiblings. One of the first noticeable features of the epilogue (as narrated by Dirk) is that Dirk is almost never right about the people he thinks he has down. He mischaracterises his friends constantly, especially underestimating their ability to act autonomously and make good decisions. This is especially obvious when it comes to his ectofamily.
Take, for example, Rose. Rose, who he refers to as being his "equal," but in truth is seen more as an extension of himself, more part of him in the same way any other Dirk would be part of him save from her physical separation from his physical self... and of course her imperfection as a person--almost but not quite Dirk, and so lacking just a little bit. She gets by far the most glowing treatment in his narrative. In fact, he describes her every move in seductive terms. Which is creepy, no matter how homosexual he is. But she also calls him 'dad.' This makes more sense in the context of what she says other than that--all of Rose's dialogue exists to enhance, glorify, or support whatever dialogue he gives himself. It's very possibly the only way he can extol another person--via objectification. Very literally, later--his grand plan for Rose is to save the ascending Seer from her failing physical form and transfer her consciousness to a robot. And it works!
Dirk is so constantly, intensely lonely that he projects it over the narrative again and again, both in textual manner and in accidental clues. There is a couch in his workshop. A couch he placed there for visitors. Visitors he never received. Until he narrates Rose into his workshop and has occasion to clear that space of all its parts and tools and place her in it. Using his control over Rose to ensure her loyalty and presence, to guarantee her outcome (her survival and her place on and by his side) is questionable at best, but the end of the Epilogues has Rosebot ironing Dirk's pants for him.
This absolute control over Rose is contrasted starkly by his lack of control of Roxy, who (as a Rogue of Void) is unknowable and so beyond him as a person now that they have become inscrutable and untouchable in all ways.
Roxy, his childhood friend. Roxy, the family he literally grew up knowing. Roxy, a person so straightforward that they just outright say what they mean (incredible, for this Ectofamily.) Roxy, who is somehow so impossible for him to comprehend (control) without narrative powers that he is on more than occasion surprised by what comes out their mouth as he writes the narrative. They're totally out of his reach, totally unfathomable. In more than one scene, he is unable to even describe the look on their face. It's almost jarring once the depth of his incomprehension becomes clear. (Ha.)
There is a strangely human series of events related to them, though. Early in the Meat route, Roxy comes out as nonbinary, even masc-presenting and he's absolutely flummoxed by it. Not only did he not see it coming, he can not stop or affect it in any way.
He immediately makes a mess of it by misgendering them (by mistake), and is corrected, and gets so worked up about it all that he immediately projects that mistake and all of his insecurities onto Dave the very next chapter, by making a good chunk of that chapter about Dave repeatedly fucking up in a xenophobic way around Karkat and Kanaya. And he is not nice about it. It's just Dirk lashing out at his own mistakes by smacking Dave around.
If these Epilogues were just Dirk's work of fanfiction, that would not be a terrible way to cope. (Not ideal, either. Projecting on real people is bad, kids.) But by this point, Dirk has already been revealed to be the narrator, and the actual people around him are being moved and affected by his narrative.
Real, but not real. But very much real.
This is relationship Dirk now has with reality. With his friends, and his family. Everything has become about control, in part because he is, more than ever, spiralling out of control. He still WANTS connection, craves contact, but chronically fails to achieve it and so chronically lacks it. He needs that control more--that power over his existence and his outcomes that his entire existence has been marked by lacking. In a desolate oceanic postapocalypse. In a timeline he cannot affect and which offers him a view of further events he has no power over. As a person of action whose actions are perpetually ineffective if not outright meaningless. Dirk is always doing, always driven to occupation, unable to rest, unable to let go. Puppets. Mechanics. People. Himself.
Bro, raising a child that fails to live up to every expectation you have for him, falls short of every target you set for him to achieve. For a certainty of future that you have no power to win and no power to survive.
Doc Scratch, manipulating reality both objective and subjective toward the birth of an outcome that was itself predetermined. A birth that will literally destroy you, of course.
It's not even a little subtle.
Control and self loathing are the twin swords that he is endlessly impaling himself on, and pulling out of his own body to wield again and again against himself.
So then what of Dave? Dave is the most telling, in some ways, because Dave is by far the most complicated relationship he has. Dirk does have a strong affinity to Dave, but he wants a connection that isn't there, in part because he and Dave are both projecting their own brothers over each other. This goes back to formal canon. They DO talk it out eventually, but it results in, for example, Dirk apologising for "his" actions as Dave's Bro rather than either of them connecting in a lasting way as individuals. Instead, Dirk has weighed himself against Dave and found himself lacking, as he weighed himself against his own Dave and failed to measure up.
Dirk, while preserving Dave as the "other" (as opposed to the self), the person against whom his own existence and character is weighed, simultaneously holds Dave to a standard Dave doesn't fit, and keeps finding Dave's character or choices lacking. He is honestly borderline contemptuous of Dave for most of it--the egotistical and judgmental qualities of splinters like Doc Scratch are no doubt part of it, but it resembles strongest the opinions of the original Bro Strider himself, and the ever-present ghost of Caliborn in him. (Him here can be both Bro Strider and Dirk, frankly.)
In the Epilogue, the narration for Dave references a sense of Bro in Dirk so strong that it's practically identical. Dirk, or a version of him, instilled in Dave a way of living and thinking that would, for better or worse, persist far beyond the first thirteen years of his upbringing. And even on Earth C, it’d be kind of tough to say the dude’s general overbearing demeanor wasn’t sufficient to perpetuate the conditioning. So it’s rare he has to guess what Dirk would say he should do.
Of course, Dirk has been in and out of Dave's head the whole time, as narrator. But he is also so resonant with his older, other self that Dave freely interprets this as an organic part of Dirk himself. It's an ominous early clue, bolstered by what we see of Dirk's own opinion in the narrative text.
A lone exception to this frustrated treatment of his brother occurs when Dave finally acts on his more romantic/sexual feelings for Karkat (an event that Dirk attempted to push Dave towards, but nearly ruined in the process.) Then, and only then, does Dirk express sincere pride. Yet very early on, he openly states that he would and could never hurt Dave. Near the end of Meat, he states, let’s also have it on good authority that the next time Dave cuts off my head, it’ll be for good.
So Dave is the Other, the brother both judged by him and by which he will be judged.
And he's clearly looking forward to that outcome.
Fucking Yikes.
Pokémon Information Affiliation: Trainer Starter: Klink Password: Atomic Fireball (YIKES... I remember when it used to be Sunflower Seeds lmfao)
Samples RP Sample:Fourth wall, aka "thank god he didn't figure out he can talk."
Victory Road Sample: Dirk wakes up feeling like someone kicked him through the head. Not in his head, but through his head--the boot busting through his cranium with brute force, breaking into a shower of messy debris like a graham cracker crust, like his skull were made of the same fleshy, breakaway material as a melon. That's just the outside part. His brain, the bastard organ, is just un-fucking-accounted for.
So, his head hurts, but not in a way he's used to.
There's something missing, and it's not long before he can tell: the narrative is gone. No, not gone. Invisible. The slippery motherfucker's just straight-up eluded him--like catching air in your fingers instead of a fly. Except at least the fly is there and you can see it, and the air is there and you can feel it.
His first moment is something like panic.
Then--
Well, he has a lot of reactions, it's a whole big thing, and he goes through all of them and when he's done he's still lying on his back, head nestled into a pillow, blankets tucked right up to his chin like a storybook.
He registers a ceiling, and a room. Also, music. Digitalised beeps and boops arranged in a prosaic semblance of melody. What?
That's definitely something. He doesn't like it, but it's something to go on. The room is small. Tidy. Unfamiliar, but familiar all the same. Variation on an ancient theme.
It's positively antique.
Colourful critters are pasted on the walls as posters, another on the table as a stuffed toy. Where the fuck is the narrative? Who's controlling this? Is it the Muse? How did she hide it from him? Where is he? How did she get him here, like her passive little paper doll in a twisted game of House?
He rolls labouriously out of bed and walks across to the doll.
(His clothes are unfamiliar, too. That's not weird.)
He picks it up.
It's not bad. Not hand-stitched, though. He can tell.
He puts down the doll.
He could keep doing this for a while. Indefinitely, maybe not. But for an hour or so, maybe. Walking around the room and individually inspect each individual artefact. Taking his time. Creating flavour text for each one. But he won't. He wants to. He's been pettier. And he'd argue it's absolutely called for here. But he won't.
He turns to look at the stairs, which have until now been looming ominously in the edges of his vision.
The stairs apparently lead to a floor below, and there's nothing else in the room. Oh, there's other stuff. A blocky, ancient computer like Jane's Dad owned. A television, also like Jane's Dad owned. A closet. A rug. A clock. 'Stuff.'
But it's all laid out too neatly. Backup dancers to the star of the show, the diva, the main event. The stairs. He's clearly meant to go down them.
Okay. Fine, Muse. He'll play your game. (Not like he has a choice.)
He approaches the stairs, and begins to descend.
Downstairs, he encounters 'Mom.'
The less said about that, the better.
It's a mess, an embarrassing mess, and it's seconds before the first word comes out of his mouth--
"Nope."
He (a full grown man!) books it back upstairs immediately. New effects in hand, he pries open the window and flips up onto the roof, turning back only to slam the window shut behind him. Then he stomps down with his heel, cracking the wooden frame to make it harder to reopen behind him and absconds across the rooftop.
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indigo_league) wrote2016-05-03 09:48 pm
APPLICATIONS!
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.
2/2 trying to post but my app's dummy thicc
His motive is rooted partially in his own crisis, his own need to be, and to have an existence that matters, but it's also rooted in sincere concern for his friends, and his desire to protect them from oblivion.
It's just that as less magnanimous and more egotistical minds became part of his multifractal self, as less and less of 'himself' fell within the boundaries of his tenuous mental reality, as reality itself broke from canon and took with it any stability he was relying on... other things in him changed. The way he cared changed, and even though his initial actions may have been rooted in good intentions, by the end, he is fully aware of the fact that these actions are, by most subjective measure, 'bad.'
He accepts this, and then embraces it.
From an outside perspective, this is already pretty gnarly. But once you get into the interpersonal and internarrative application of these changes, it gets... a little gross. The easiest way to show the changes in Dirk as he is now is through his relationships with his ectosiblings. One of the first noticeable features of the epilogue (as narrated by Dirk) is that Dirk is almost never right about the people he thinks he has down. He mischaracterises his friends constantly, especially underestimating their ability to act autonomously and make good decisions. This is especially obvious when it comes to his ectofamily.
Take, for example, Rose. Rose, who he refers to as being his "equal," but in truth is seen more as an extension of himself, more part of him in the same way any other Dirk would be part of him save from her physical separation from his physical self... and of course her imperfection as a person--almost but not quite Dirk, and so lacking just a little bit. She gets by far the most glowing treatment in his narrative. In fact, he describes her every move in seductive terms. Which is creepy, no matter how homosexual he is. But she also calls him 'dad.' This makes more sense in the context of what she says other than that--all of Rose's dialogue exists to enhance, glorify, or support whatever dialogue he gives himself. It's very possibly the only way he can extol another person--via objectification. Very literally, later--his grand plan for Rose is to save the ascending Seer from her failing physical form and transfer her consciousness to a robot. And it works!
Dirk is so constantly, intensely lonely that he projects it over the narrative again and again, both in textual manner and in accidental clues. There is a couch in his workshop. A couch he placed there for visitors. Visitors he never received. Until he narrates Rose into his workshop and has occasion to clear that space of all its parts and tools and place her in it. Using his control over Rose to ensure her loyalty and presence, to guarantee her outcome (her survival and her place on and by his side) is questionable at best, but the end of the Epilogues has Rosebot ironing Dirk's pants for him.
This absolute control over Rose is contrasted starkly by his lack of control of Roxy, who (as a Rogue of Void) is unknowable and so beyond him as a person now that they have become inscrutable and untouchable in all ways.
Roxy, his childhood friend. Roxy, the family he literally grew up knowing. Roxy, a person so straightforward that they just outright say what they mean (incredible, for this Ectofamily.) Roxy, who is somehow so impossible for him to comprehend (control) without narrative powers that he is on more than occasion surprised by what comes out their mouth as he writes the narrative. They're totally out of his reach, totally unfathomable. In more than one scene, he is unable to even describe the look on their face. It's almost jarring once the depth of his incomprehension becomes clear. (Ha.)
There is a strangely human series of events related to them, though. Early in the Meat route, Roxy comes out as nonbinary, even masc-presenting and he's absolutely flummoxed by it. Not only did he not see it coming, he can not stop or affect it in any way.
He immediately makes a mess of it by misgendering them (by mistake), and is corrected, and gets so worked up about it all that he immediately projects that mistake and all of his insecurities onto Dave the very next chapter, by making a good chunk of that chapter about Dave repeatedly fucking up in a xenophobic way around Karkat and Kanaya. And he is not nice about it. It's just Dirk lashing out at his own mistakes by smacking Dave around.
If these Epilogues were just Dirk's work of fanfiction, that would not be a terrible way to cope. (Not ideal, either. Projecting on real people is bad, kids.) But by this point, Dirk has already been revealed to be the narrator, and the actual people around him are being moved and affected by his narrative.
Real, but not real. But very much real.
This is relationship Dirk now has with reality. With his friends, and his family. Everything has become about control, in part because he is, more than ever, spiralling out of control. He still WANTS connection, craves contact, but chronically fails to achieve it and so chronically lacks it. He needs that control more--that power over his existence and his outcomes that his entire existence has been marked by lacking. In a desolate oceanic postapocalypse. In a timeline he cannot affect and which offers him a view of further events he has no power over. As a person of action whose actions are perpetually ineffective if not outright meaningless. Dirk is always doing, always driven to occupation, unable to rest, unable to let go. Puppets. Mechanics. People. Himself.
Bro, raising a child that fails to live up to every expectation you have for him, falls short of every target you set for him to achieve. For a certainty of future that you have no power to win and no power to survive.
Doc Scratch, manipulating reality both objective and subjective toward the birth of an outcome that was itself predetermined. A birth that will literally destroy you, of course.
It's not even a little subtle.
Control and self loathing are the twin swords that he is endlessly impaling himself on, and pulling out of his own body to wield again and again against himself.
So then what of Dave? Dave is the most telling, in some ways, because Dave is by far the most complicated relationship he has. Dirk does have a strong affinity to Dave, but he wants a connection that isn't there, in part because he and Dave are both projecting their own brothers over each other. This goes back to formal canon. They DO talk it out eventually, but it results in, for example, Dirk apologising for "his" actions as Dave's Bro rather than either of them connecting in a lasting way as individuals. Instead, Dirk has weighed himself against Dave and found himself lacking, as he weighed himself against his own Dave and failed to measure up.
Dirk, while preserving Dave as the "other" (as opposed to the self), the person against whom his own existence and character is weighed, simultaneously holds Dave to a standard Dave doesn't fit, and keeps finding Dave's character or choices lacking. He is honestly borderline contemptuous of Dave for most of it--the egotistical and judgmental qualities of splinters like Doc Scratch are no doubt part of it, but it resembles strongest the opinions of the original Bro Strider himself, and the ever-present ghost of Caliborn in him. (Him here can be both Bro Strider and Dirk, frankly.)
In the Epilogue, the narration for Dave references a sense of Bro in Dirk so strong that it's practically identical.
Dirk, or a version of him, instilled in Dave a way of living and thinking that would, for better or worse, persist far beyond the first thirteen years of his upbringing. And even on Earth C, it’d be kind of tough to say the dude’s general overbearing demeanor wasn’t sufficient to perpetuate the conditioning. So it’s rare he has to guess what Dirk would say he should do.Of course, Dirk has been in and out of Dave's head the whole time, as narrator. But he is also so resonant with his older, other self that Dave freely interprets this as an organic part of Dirk himself. It's an ominous early clue, bolstered by what we see of Dirk's own opinion in the narrative text.
A lone exception to this frustrated treatment of his brother occurs when Dave finally acts on his more romantic/sexual feelings for Karkat (an event that Dirk attempted to push Dave towards, but nearly ruined in the process.) Then, and only then, does Dirk express sincere pride. Yet very early on, he openly states that he would and could never hurt Dave. Near the end of Meat, he states,
let’s also have it on good authority that the next time Dave cuts off my head, it’ll be for good.So Dave is the Other, the brother both judged by him and by which he will be judged.
And he's clearly looking forward to that outcome.
Fucking Yikes.
Pokémon Information
Affiliation: Trainer
Starter: Klink
Password: Atomic Fireball (YIKES... I remember when it used to be Sunflower Seeds lmfao)
Samples
RP Sample: Fourth wall, aka "thank god he didn't figure out he can talk."
Victory Road Sample: Dirk wakes up feeling like someone kicked him through the head. Not in his head, but through his head--the boot busting through his cranium with brute force, breaking into a shower of messy debris like a graham cracker crust, like his skull were made of the same fleshy, breakaway material as a melon. That's just the outside part. His brain, the bastard organ, is just un-fucking-accounted for.
So, his head hurts, but not in a way he's used to.
There's something missing, and it's not long before he can tell: the narrative is gone. No, not gone. Invisible. The slippery motherfucker's just straight-up eluded him--like catching air in your fingers instead of a fly. Except at least the fly is there and you can see it, and the air is there and you can feel it.
His first moment is something like panic.
Then--
Well, he has a lot of reactions, it's a whole big thing, and he goes through all of them and when he's done he's still lying on his back, head nestled into a pillow, blankets tucked right up to his chin like a storybook.
He registers a ceiling, and a room. Also, music. Digitalised beeps and boops arranged in a prosaic semblance of melody. What?
That's definitely something. He doesn't like it, but it's something to go on. The room is small. Tidy. Unfamiliar, but familiar all the same. Variation on an ancient theme.
It's positively antique.
Colourful critters are pasted on the walls as posters, another on the table as a stuffed toy. Where the fuck is the narrative? Who's controlling this? Is it the Muse? How did she hide it from him? Where is he? How did she get him here, like her passive little paper doll in a twisted game of House?
He rolls labouriously out of bed and walks across to the doll.
(His clothes are unfamiliar, too. That's not weird.)
He picks it up.
It's not bad. Not hand-stitched, though. He can tell.
He puts down the doll.
He could keep doing this for a while. Indefinitely, maybe not. But for an hour or so, maybe. Walking around the room and individually inspect each individual artefact. Taking his time. Creating flavour text for each one. But he won't. He wants to. He's been pettier. And he'd argue it's absolutely called for here. But he won't.
He turns to look at the stairs, which have until now been looming ominously in the edges of his vision.
The stairs apparently lead to a floor below, and there's nothing else in the room. Oh, there's other stuff. A blocky, ancient computer like Jane's Dad owned. A television, also like Jane's Dad owned. A closet. A rug. A clock. 'Stuff.'
But it's all laid out too neatly. Backup dancers to the star of the show, the diva, the main event. The stairs. He's clearly meant to go down them.
Okay. Fine, Muse. He'll play your game. (Not like he has a choice.)
He approaches the stairs, and begins to descend.
Downstairs, he encounters 'Mom.'
The less said about that, the better.
It's a mess, an embarrassing mess, and it's seconds before the first word comes out of his mouth--
"Nope."
He (a full grown man!) books it back upstairs immediately. New effects in hand, he pries open the window and flips up onto the roof, turning back only to slam the window shut behind him. Then he stomps down with his heel, cracking the wooden frame to make it harder to reopen behind him and absconds across the rooftop.
Nope.
THAT WAS A LOT OF READING, RAILE
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Anyway this is in fact Dirk's journal, despite it being an iconless void