Yo, yall, I saw someone in the cherubplay tag asking about a guide for this and I like to think I’m pretty good at Dirk roleplaying, so let’s go.
I was going to try and keep this away from most “fanon vs. canon” stuff, but as a heads up, with both Striders it’s fairly impossible to avoid talking about that because they put up such fronts that get read as their actual character. (More on that in a sec.)
While on the one hand you have the misreadings of Dirk that result in desperate, clingy, whiny “looking for doms” bed starfish, on the other hand, you have the suave, domineering, puppeteer Dirks who control literally everything their friends do, are always in control, and definitely never panic in a bad situation. While both of those misreadings are bad, I’d actually argue the second is more OOC than the first, and this is a post about why.
Anyway, this is gonna be a really long post because I like talking about Dirk and his complexes way too much, so hit the readmore.
Dirk might not be a Knight, but he has all the same hallmarks as Dave of desperately armoring himself in “being cool” to avoid letting people see the raw underbelly underneath. If you come out of Homestuck reading that Dirk believes he’s the best thing since sliced bread, then … well, then he fooled you. You saw his front, accepted that for all he is, and moved on, and somewhere, the metafictional concept of Dirk probably let out a sigh of relief and wiped sweat off his forehead.
I’m reblogging this specifically because I think it’s relevant that Dirk acting as a Knight is objectively correct? Like, not just in terms of his characterization echoing Dave’s–in the sense that Dirk actively tries to roleplay a Knight throughout his narrative, in his emulating Alpha Dave.
So I think it’s pretty cool that someone picked up on this element of his characterization now that I think it’s like…a literal, explicit game mechanic, consistent not just in Dirk but throughout all of Homestuck (and Hiveswap, considering what we’ve seen up until now).
Classes are cool, y’all. Also Dirk Strider owns and I love and will protect him.
Flying through Storytelling 