[The subject of this essay concerns Homestuck, and in particular the fraught relationship between the Alpha kids, and in particular particular the tense codependent threesome of Dirk, Jake, and the Auto-Responder. As such this series features TRIGGER WARNINGS for depictions of fighting in relationships, sexual and emotional coercion, gaslighting, head trauma, philosophical and existential quandaries — and of course, decapitation. Tread carefully.

Bold denotes a link to another essay. If you see a message in Bold, please take my premise for granted, or follow the link and read through the argument presented in that essay before continuing. Homestuck is complex and labyrinthine, and I had to focus discussion of any one part of it somehow. Otherwise we would meander in circles for fucking eternity, and no one wants to end up like Caliborn.

This was my solution, so please try not to counter my points with critiques I may have already answered in another section! Thank you.]

Dirk and Jake’s relationship was, a couple years ago, one of the most controversial and contentious in all of Homestuck. People have very strong feelings about it for a variety of reasons, and in general, the prevailing sentiment that much of the fandom has landed on is that Dirk Strider was abusive, and in some way coerced Jake English into a relationship.

Not too long ago, I agreed with that narrative. But Act 7 sort of revitalized my interest in Homestuck, and over the past couple months I’ve found myself revisiting Act 6 out of a profound sense that I didn’t quite understand all the events that took place in it. Ultimately, I came away from this with a very different reading than the one I’d gotten from engaging with fandom while Act 6 was ongoing.

That realization, paired with [S] Credits, led me to make a tumblr post on my thoughts on Dirkjake that seemed to catch a bit of traction. But as it turns out I had WAY MORE thoughts about DirkJake and about Dirk, specifically.

Which brings us here. This is a four essay series, meant to question the assumption that Dirk Strider is an abuser. I think he is actually a deeply noble character who had little control over what happened during his session, and who is deeply averse to hurting his friends — specifically because he fears he’s capable of it.

Most of the events surrouding Dirk’s ‘abuse’ were either:

A) Mutual misunderstandings between him and Jake, or

B) The actions of Hal/AR, who Dirk had no actual control over.

I know how that sounds to most people in the fandom. I won’t ask you to withhold your judgment, but I will ask that you read on and hear me out. I welcome criticism and questioning because I want to be sure my perspective holds water, and because I plain old like talking about Homestuck.

Each section of this essay series is focused on a different aspect of how Dirk is criticized. This first essay focuses on the Brobot, and how Dirk is commonly parsed as a Physical Aggressor. Successive sections will be as follows:

• Dirk as Romantic Predator
• Dirk as Manipulative Puppetmaster
• Dirk as Unfeeling Robot

If you have questions by the end of this series, or you disagree with my perspective, feel free to tell me about it in the Hiveswap discord where I spend most of my time, so long as you’re willing to be polite and back up your points.

I want to start a conversation here, in a spirit of good faith. Since this series is focused on Dirk, why don’t I lean into his aesthetic trappings a little and get more specific? If I’m lucky enough to have this series begin a true conversation about Dirk Strider and Homestuck in a genuinely new light, I would like it to take place in the spirit of the Socratic method.

I’m going to question several prevalent theories about Dirk, but I am open to the possibility that I’m simply missing something, or reading wrong. Counter my perspective with critique of your own, and I will answer in kind, and if I find that I am moved to your point of view, I will freely admit to it.

I’m not interested in abuse apologism — I’m interested in reaching a cohesive understanding regarding what I believe to be true about Homestuck as a work, and Dirk Strider as a character. If I’m confronted with evidence that my reading is conclusively wrong, I’ll happily reconsider.

Without further ado, let’s begin.

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Here’s my thesis:

The Brobot DOES fit into how Dirk (and Jane’s) friendships with Jake were ultimately toxic to his emotional well-being. Just not through its physical aggression. Jake, in fact, genuinely enjoys the Brobot in many ways. It is not a source of anxiety for him except when he talks about it on the novice setting, where it’s caught up in Dirk’s emotional distance and the AR’s harassment.

Letting Jake fight Brobot for the uranium is the only decision that Dirk and the AR ever genuinely agree on, and while everything the AR does romantically and as part of the machinations that lead to Dirk and Jake’s corpse smooch is absolutely toxic, I believe it can be argued the physical trial of tracking down and fighting the Brobot was not.

This is important, because it’s the only element of their relationship that we can say Dirk is wholly responsible for. So before we talk about how Jake feels about this, let’s start this analysis series by dealing with the most morally dodgy act we ever see Dirk himself do — not the AR, or Brain Ghost Dirk, but Dirk Strider.

Let’s start with the moment Dirk sends Jake the Brobot.

And let’s start by admitting that, yes, Dirk comes off pretty dodgy in this pesterlog exchange. I can totally understand why it sets off alarm bells for many. To many people, he reads as deliberately manipulating Jake here — deliberately playing him into accepting Dirk’s training by default.

The thing is, we don’t actually get Dirk’s tone of voice from this exchange. We don’t know how he says what he says. This is a moment when Homestuck’s nature as a story about internet friendship shines through — all we have is text, not meaning or intent, and text can be read in different ways depending on context.

And while I was one of the people to whom Dirk sounded manipulative and coercive years ago, upon my most recent reread, I realized something jarring. Dirk sounded completely different here.

Rather than coldly persuasive and good at distraction, the way Dirk reads to me here is surprised, and caught off guard. When he asks if Jake wants to hear his stories, he sounds resigned and disappointed, rather than calculated and manipulative.

I don’t say that because said reactions would mean he isn’t abusive — abuse is abuse, regardless of the sentiment motivating it, or the intent. I say it because it’s a reading of those lines that I think will surprise most people.

But I do have canon basis for it. To begin with, I don’t believe Dirk meant the Brobot specifically as a training robot. While Dirk is interested in training Jake, or at least takes credit for it, I don’t think the situation is analogous to Bro’s taking the initiative to train Dave against his will. For starters, Jake isn’t the only character Dirk has sent a bodyguard robot.

If the source of the Brobot’s design is Dirk’s interest in martial training, then why does Dirk train Jake, but not Jane? After all, Dirk knows Jane faces as much danger to prepare for as Jake does, and she’s even LESS prepared for it. Are we putting it down to some internalized misogyny in Dirk that goes unacknowledged by the narrative?

Well, we could. But there is a more elegant reason, one that the story sets up for us repeatedly. Dirk actually has every reason to think he has consent from Jake, while he has no such assurance from Jane. Dirk didn’t just decide Jake needed training one day and set out to personally provide it, Jake’s own will be damned. He was trying to let Jake live out one of his biggest fantasies.

To borrow from wikipedia for a moment:

An adventure is an exciting or unusual experience. It may also be a bold, usually risky undertaking, with an uncertain outcome.

Adventures may be activities with some potential for physical danger such as traveling, exploring, … or participating in extreme sports.

The term also broadly refers to any enterprise that is potentially fraught with physical, financial or psychological risk.

By setting the Brobot up to be an elaborate cat and mouse game set across the island, Dirk was trying to set up an adventure scenario for Jake. It entailed risk that Jake could get roughed up, yes — but Jake continually talked about his enjoyment of physical combat and danger. And as the Brobot is always watching, Jake was able to wander his island freely, fairly certain that if things truly get too hot to handle, the Brobot would bail him out.

It’s a sort of echo of Vriska’s attempts to train Tavros with extreme Flarping…with two big differences.

The first is that adventures are one of Jake’s biggest interests, and something that he CONSTANTLY talked up as something he enjoys — not just to Dirk, but to all his friends. The second is that unlike Vriska, Dirk is unwilling to compromise Jake’s actual safety. The Brobot is a defender, and any strifing waits until the area is safe for Jake.

Still, this failure of communication is what Jake refers to when he talks about how he talked himself up as someone he wasn’t. Jake misrepresented himself to his friends as a daring adventurer who enjoys danger, but at 13, he’s actually a sensitive boy who enjoys roughhousing but hates feeling trapped and is intimidated by challenge.

And it’s as much a surprise to Dirk that Jake isn’t down for this as it is to Jake himself. Dirk is, after all, also a 13 year old by the time he sends the Brobot. As a boy who does enjoy challenging himself, he has no reason to doubt Jake when he talks about how much he’d enjoy a scenario this intense.

Still insensitive on Dirk’s part not to immediately respond to Jake’s concerns? Sure. It’s just that Dirk’s not acting like a smooth manipulator here, but rather like a 13 year old boy who was excited to impress his friend, utterly let down by said friend’s response. Even supposing Dirk did choose to prioritize Jake’s response, by that point the Brobot had already been sent, and it’s not clear Dirk could have done anything about it.

Not only that, but this is 13 year old boy who just committed to an action that is a pretty big deal to him. It clearly matters to Dirk that Jake believe him and understand the context he’s living his life in, and it was kind of a leap of faith for Dirk to launch into this confession about living in the future.

Consent is more than just the words yes and no, and in the context of their larger friendship, Dirk had legitimate reason to expect this would be something Jake would consent to, based on Jake’s own word.

Still, absolutely none of this would matter if Jake ultimately really disliked the Brobot, and wanted Dirk to turn it off. If Dirk chose to ignore Jake’s agency and subject him to this impromptu training for three years, I would absolutely agree that that’s abuse, regardless of Dirk’s initial intentions.

After all, someone can have the best of intentions and still create a toxic environment for another. If Jake experienced the Brobot as harm and was now trapped in a situation he couldn’t get out of, then the fact that Dirk meant well only goes so far.

So now that we’ve established why Dirk’s intentions weren’t really as untoward or ruthlessly single-minded as they appeared, we can begin dissecting the more important part of this situation:

How does Jake feel about all this?

A person can have the best intentions in the world, and still ultimately be abusive. If Jake experienced the Brobot as harm and was now trapped in a situation he couldn’t get out of, then the fact that Dirk meant well only goes so far.

But he didn’t. Arguing that the Brobot’s physical violence made Jake feel diminished, scared, or coerced by Dirk only makes any sense if you discard all of Jake’s thoughts and feelings about the situation.

Like Dirk’s apparent insensitivity, Jake’s initial uncomfortable reception to the Brobot is complicated. Because while it’s true he surprises both himself and Dirk with his own lack of enthusiasm for danger and intimidating surprises, he genuinely grows to enjoy fighting the thing, and to rely on it as a physical protector.

What’s more, Dave’s training was counterproductive and left him pretty much terrified of his Bro and his own surroundings. The Brobot, in contrast, only made Jake feel safer on his island.

We’re only privy to Jake’s interactions with the Brobot in two moments: While he’s hurrying to get the bunny to Jade, and when it’s initially set up. All told, that’s a span of only a few hours. And there’s a lot of context for the three years between that aren’t clearly laid out for us. So let’s dig in, and see if the narrative I’ve built up holds any water.

The Jake English we’re introduced to at 16 and the Jake English we see when Dirk sends him the Brobot at 13 are pretty different people. While Jake still talks about how much he loves fisticuffs and adventure, even early on, he doesn’t actually leave his room much when he’s younger — because he’s too scared of the monsters surrounding his island.

And for good reason. One wrong move from Jake could end with him eaten or seriously injured on a monster-infested island with no way to get help.

The Jake we meet at the beginning of the story, however, is altogether different. Jake doesn’t really seem scared of the prospect of going outside at 16. Apparently, he now feels secure enough to consider risks like going outside and getting chased by giant monsters all day an annoying hassle, rather than a serious danger.

Jake is still somewhat scared of the monsters, but he’s used to it. He’s grown up considerably, and his skills have improved to the point he can actually fend them off at times. This is something Jake attributes at least partly to the Brobot’s training, when he’s talking to Jane, but we’ll come back to that a little later.

For now, what I want to get across is that Jake isn’t afraid of the Brobot, like Dave is of Bro, or Tavros of Vriska. He is, at most, inconvenienced and annoyed by it.

If anything, during the events of the game Jake refers to the Brobot as a pest or an unpleasant chore. He’s in a hurry to get the bunny to Jade, so he’d rather avoid wasting his time on fighting it. That, along with the frustration of dealing with the AR’s harassment, are pretty much the source of his consternation discussing the subject.

And it’s worth noting that what Jake says about the Brobot changes depending on who he’s talking to.

It’s true that when he’s arguing with the AR — frustrated with it’s needling, and feeling pressured to get the bunny out on time — Jake is pretty annoyed at the thought of dealing with the Brobot.

But this has as much to do with his frustration at wanting to talk to Dirk and getting fed up with the Auto-Responder’s passive aggression and lasciviousness as it has to do with him not wanting to deal with the Brobot itself. Jake’s primary emotional outburst isn’t about wanting to avoid fighting the Brobot. It’s about wanting to talk to the real Dirk.

And when Jake feels listened to by an understanding friend rather than a manipulator with a pushy romantic agenda, he takes a very different tune towards the Brobot.

Context is important here. When Jake is defensive and annoyed with the Brobot, he complains bitterly about the Brobot. But This is a moment of confidence with Jane. Here, he’s being explicitly more honest than he’s ever been about his feelings surrounding Dirk.

Not to mention this is the moment that sets the stage for Jake to continue being almost APPALLINGLY honest about his relationship with Dirk to Jane, to her detriment, for months.

In this same conversation, he actively complained about the AR as an uncomfortable matchmaker, meaning he is aware there are parts of his relationship with Dirk that are unpleasant. It’s safe to say if Jake had a problem with the Brobot, Jane would have heard about it:

And yet when speaking about the Brobot completely honestly, Jake not only confessed to believing Dirk’s training has made him a better fighter — but says that he finds the whole cat and mouse aspect of the scenario exciting, and likens it to an adventure. Early stumbling block aside, Dirk’s initial intent ultimately proved a success! Though Dirk doesn’t know it, as he likely still counts the Brobot among the things he blames himself for.

Jake’s letter to John also backs up this view of things. It was written after he had the Brobot for years, and in it he excitedly asks John if he likes scrums. Like with Jane, this is a communication he carries out in confidence, that Dirk has no access to or control over.

Doesn’t really sound like a guy who’s experience with physical conflict has been soured by an overly aggressive robot to me. So it seems that as far as it’s functionality as a sparring partner, Jake ultimately enjoys the Brobot as a sparring partner.

But there’s a more intense way Jake appreciates the Brobot. It’s likely it’s biggest impact on Jake’s state of mind is as a protector, or a comrade, if an unpredictable one. The Brobot is an agent with power over Jake’s situation with an interest in looking out for him— something Jake lost completely when he lost his Grandma.

How does the Brobot finally make it’s appearance in the narrative proper, again?

Right. Saving Jake’s life.

Jake doesn’t look particularly intimidated to see the Brobot here. He looks happy and relieved and pleasantly helpless. He looks like a damsel in distress in an action movie, maybe. This is a recurring trend for Jake — ending up in situations that somewhat resemble his movie-inspired fantasies, where he’s commonly cast as the sexually objectified, helpless damsel.

The AR might have been right that Dirk putting himself in danger and letting Jake come to his rescue would have been effective, but as it turns out, Jake has plenty of fantasies about Dirk as a strong protector, too. This is a view of Dirk that I honestly cannot reconcile with the idea that Jake might perceive Dirk, or the Brobot, as a source of discomfort or threat.

And that Jake sees Dirk this way is explicit, because as luck would have it, his fantasies about Dirk coming to save him are literally Jake’s superpower. Not because they’re all he’s capable of — he proves otherwise during the Masterpiece — but simply because there’s nothing else Jake believes in more.

Jake’s absurd reality-warping powers manifest in the absolute most romantic way possible, and it’s a wonder to behold, so let’s investigate Brain Ghost Dirk and see how he serves as a mirror through which we can see Jake’s feelings about the Brobot.

In the retconned timeline, Jake loses basically all of his agency. Aranea dominates his powers for her benefit, and all eyes are on Jake, but he can’t do anything about it. He becomes a literal star — gawked at by all, and reduced to a pawn, a joke, and a hot body in a skimpy outfit, all in one blow.

In the wake of Jane and Brain Ghost Dirk’s sexual aggression and Aranea’s sudden romantic overture and exploitation, it’s literally his worst nightmare, realized.

Obviously, he wants it to stop. But he doesn’t really do much of anything but keep emitting his field of hope — which does nothing but keep Jake safe and make him harder to see clearly — and summon Brain Ghost Dirk.

Think about what it means that this is what Jake chooses. Theoretically, with his powers forcibly unlocked, Jake could do anything: Blast Aranea with laser beams, teleport her into a volcano — whatever, right? The sky’s the limit.

Jake doesn’t do any of that. When the chips come down and Jake needs protection, needs to feel safe, there’s one thing he believes in above all else: Brain Ghost Dirk. That’s the weapon Jake chooses, the ace up his sleeve.

I mean, for fuck’s sake, Brain Ghost Dirk literally calls himself Jake’s boyfriend here, despite the fact that they just broke up, and makes a Princess Bride reference.

Jake’s fantasies are definitely at play here–fantasies he’s admitted to having. When he’s forced to kiss Dirk’s head, he’s sad–not because he has to kiss him, just because he had FANTASIES about how it would play out that reality wasn’t living up to.

Aranea usurps his free will at a time when he already thinks all his friends hate him, and immediately after Dirk broke up with him. But when Jake is at rock bottom, one rock-solid certainty remains in his heart. He has something he believes in more than anything.

And that’s that when he’s in trouble, his best buddy Dirk will come help him out. Save him, and put a stop to anything that makes Jake feel threatened. And Jake trusts Dirk, specifically, even over individuals that matter to Jake who would be much more natural fits for this kind of heroic idealization.

Jake doesn’t choose to summon Alpha Dave, who Dirk talked up to high heaven, if the pesterlog from when they were 13 is any indication. He doesn’t choose to summon his Grandma, either — despite the fact that she used to be the one to take care of him and keep him safe, and he clearly admires her.

He doesn’t choose any movie hero — despite loving movies, and despite the fact that Tavros’ imaginary friend was from a movie as well. Jake doesn’t even choose himself, despite the fact that Jake has high, high hopes for his own ability to be cool and powerful and successful early on in the story.

No, he chooses Dirk. Dirk is who he believes in. Dirk is who Jake goes to for protection, comfort, and safety. Even much later, when Jake sours on the relationship due to their other issues, and complains about it extensively to Jane, Jake never once expresses discomfort or resentment over fighting the Brobot, or implies he regards Dirk as any sort of coercive threat.

I don’t think a reading that he viewed the Brobot as a threat or oppressive force in any way lines up with his unwavering trust in Brain Ghost Dirk as a figure of physical safety and protection. The two are simply irreconcilable.

Especially so because there are other ways in which Brain Ghost Dirk is explicitly marred for Jake. Brain Ghost Dirk is a figure of physical protection and safety to Jake, but he’s also a figure emotional unavailability, passive aggression, sexual objectification, and intellectual condescension.

If you find you agree with me so far, that means we can now move on to the next part of this series. Next time, we’ll be exploring the part of Dirk and Jake’s relationship that was unarguably toxic, and untangling the complicated events that led to Brain Ghost Dirk taking on those aforementioned negative qualities — the codependent triad that developed between Jake, Dirk, and the AR.

[The subject of this essay concerns Homestuck, and in particular the fraught relationship between the Alpha kids, and in particular particular the tense codependent threesome of Dirk, Jake, and the Auto-Responder. As such this series features TRIGGER WARNINGS for depictions of fighting in relationships, sexual and emotional coercion, gaslighting, head trauma, philosophical and existential quandaries, and of course, decapitation. Tread carefully.

Bold denotes a link to another essay. If you see a message in Bold, please take my premise for granted, or follow the link and read through the argument presented in that essay before continuing. Homestuck is complex and labyrinthine, and I had to focus discussion of any one part of it somehow or else we would meander in circles for fucking eternity, and no one wants to end up like Caliborn. This was my solution, so please try not to counter my points with critiques I may have already answered in another section! Thank you.]

Dirk is assigned a lot more competency than he really deserves. He’s initially presented as something of a hypercompetent badass early on in the story, and in some ways it feels as though that impression of him never quite left the fandom consciousness.

But in reality, most of Dirk’s narrative is focused on all the ways Dirk finds himself losing control (or at least the illusion of control, since he never really had it in the first place) over the AR, his friends, the circumstances of their session, and even himself.

As far as manipulative masterminds go, Dirk is a failure. He fails at executing his plans continually, spectacularly, and with catastrophic consequences. He’s not good at multitasking, he’s not particularly great at orchestrating the kid’s entry to the session (the AR does most of that), and there are plenty of situations where he’s plain old not sure what to do.

And yet, for many Homestuck fans, he takes the lion’s share of the credit (and the blame) for the ridiculous time-loop he participates in during [S] Unite and [S] Synchronize. The one that culminates and centers around Jake’s kiss with his severed head.

Which isn’t unreasonable, at first glance! After all, we see him fly around and be really on the ball and high five an alien ghost chick. Dirk establishes himself as being pretty fucking cool and capable during that sequence, and it makes sense that people would extrapolate from that.

This is especially true for another reason. If it’s true we ascribe more narrative power and competency to Dirk than he entirely deserves, he definitely helps us do it. One of the dude’s fatal flaws is his commitment to his image as strong, capable, and stoic. Dirk talks himself up and brags about his capabilities almost as much as Jake does — if not moreso.

Dirk deliberately casts himself as the mastermind who’s unseen hand can be felt throughout his session, and it seems there are plenty of people in the fandom that take his word for it.

He even takes credit for things that are morally questionable at best for him to claim responsibility for. The Brobot’s training, for example.

It’s easy to see why some take offense with his cavalier attitude over what is essentially forcing his friend into physical melee. He seems pretty comfortable with it, and throws himself into his self-crafted image of a ruthless trainer. It’s not exactly a look that engenders sympathy, or implies doubt or struggle!

But like most things where Dirk is concerned, what we see here is complicated. We already went over those complications with the Brobot. Dirk genuinely expected enthusiasm from Jake, initially. Jake grew to enjoy the Brobot’s training over time. But most importantly, for our purposes:

We don’t know that Dirk COULD do anything about the Brobot, even if he did think of it as a problem. Dirk sent Jake the Brobot without a full understanding of Jake’s character, and Jake’s reticence came to light only after the Brobot was complete. At that point, every option Dirk is faced with was terrible.

He can leave the Brobot on the Novice setting, but then it would play into the Auto-Responder’s passive-aggressive, flirtatious gaslighting. He can leave it on the hard mode setting, but then Jake has to deal with it at it’s most aggressive. He can turn it off, but that’s the worst option, because then Jake is vulnerable to monsters eager to kill him again.

And toggling between these states is all Dirk is shown to have control over. We have no reason to believe he could reprogram or modify the Brobot across oceans and 400 years in the past, and it’s basic functionality was established before he could have guessed it’s design could be a problem.

Still, it would seem like a stretch to imply 16 year old Dirk’s attitude about the Brobot is ultimately an ironic defense mechanism, or simply Dirk putting up a front of confidence surrounding a decision he’s conflicted and guilty over. Except that this is a pattern for him.

If Dirk’s attitude towards the Brobot makes him look bad, then this exchange regarding the AR makes him look insipid. By this point we’ve seen the AR make Jake uncomfortable several times, which will only continue. And the justification grows increasingly horrendous as the situation between Jake and the AR intensifies and Dirk continues to fail to step in.

But as with the Brobot, when it comes to the AR, there’s not much Dirk could do. He can’t shut it off, and talking to Jake about it seriously would mean engaging with his self-loathing and fear of rejection.

The rationale he initially gives Jane, then, is one he developed with his hands already tied. And as things with Jake and the AR intensify during Jake’s chase of the Brobot, something else increases on Dirk’s end, very, very quickly. Chaos.

For all the doubt that’s cast on what Dirk is and isn’t responsible for, and especially whether he did or didn’t intend for the kiss between Jake and his head to occur, there’s a pretty big fact that people tend to miss. Dirk’s plans for the session are actually pretty well documented.

Notice what all of these logs have in common? They all suggest Dirk wouldn’t make a move until after the game began. They were also heavily predicated on the player chain, meaning this was something important to Dirk as part of his plans for entering the session. This suggests if Dirk had been in control, entry would have been smooth, fast, and as originally decided: Jane<-Roxy<-Dirk<-Jake. So Dirk could move on to his actual plan.

That is…not what happened, obviously. Things go badly, badly awry for Dirk over the course of Act 6. But because of the time dilation many people experienced throughout reading Homestuck, I think it’s worth going over just how quickly they go awry, and noting all the ways Dirk plain old isn’t sure what to do about it when they do.

To that end, here’s a brief overview of Dirk’s perspective from the first time he speaks in a pesterlog, up to the point where everyone enters the session.

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Dirk’s personal chronology goes something like this:

He makes his first official appearance in this pesterlog with Jane and talks himself up as being completely in control of the session. Note the timestamp at 12:01.

Dirk messes around in his room for a little bit for our benefit, then immediately gets ambushed twice — by Squarewave in the waking world and the Hegemonic Brute on Derse — in the span of minutes. This ends with the Brute dead, and Dirk’s cover blown. Dirk is notably freaked out about this.

Dirk checks on Roxy, trying to get her to set up with Jane, per their original plan for the player chain. Instead, he finds her drunk and discovers she’s trying to dissuade Jane from playing. During this conversation, he admits he fucked up on Derse and isn’t sure how to handle it. He then tries to convince her to stop flirtlarping with the AR and demands she not blow up Jane’s computer.

Immediately after he finishes the conversation, he gets distracted by Derse again. He consults with the Horrorterrors for insight on what to do, now that his discovery is imminent. The AR jars him out on this, and they have an exchange about how Dirk is having trouble focusing.

Dirk checks on Jane, who has just blown up her own computer despite Roxy asking her not to run the program. Again, note the time stamp: by this point, it’s 1:43, meaning Dirk has handled an assasination attempt, the AR’s questioning, and Roxy and Jane’s mess-up in the span of an hour or so.

After this, as far as I can tell, Hussie stopped using timestamps for some reason — but the ones we do get give us some insight on just how much is going on in a very short span of time.

Regardless, this throws Dirk’s plans into chaos, and he opts to improvise and become Jane’s server player. He sets up her game while talking to the AR. At this point, Dirk is in damage control mode, so it’s no surprise the AR gets away with screening Jake’s messages — none of which Dirk receives at any point during the game’s setup.

The AR mocks him for spacing out, and Dirk sounds almost acidic with distrust for it. It says it has plans of it’s own for the session. And by yet by the end of the conversation, it’s convinced Dirk to let it take care of Jane’s connection to the game. This is partly because he’s distracted by Calliope messaging him.

He complains about the problems he’s run into thus far, and is still unsure what to do about the Brute. He even vents a little about his struggles keeping up with both of his selves! Doesn’t exactly sound like a guy who has it all under control, but maybe he’s being ironic? Anyway, Calliope tells him to start a rebellion, no big deal. Guess that’s just the next thing on the Strider agenda today.

[S] Prince of Heart: Rise Up plays out, and Dirk’s dreamself goes into hiding. This triggers the Red Miles on Derse as Diamonds Droog retaliates against im, and circumstancial simultaneity works out so that Bec Noirs’ red miles begin manifesting on earth, too.

Dirk’s waking self manages to pace a few steps into his apartment before he’s surprised by one of Roxy’s fenestrated planes. Dirk evaluates it for a second, tries and fails to ask Roxy about it, and then is interrupted by Caliborn jeering him. Caliborn directs him to grab Lil Cal, and then the imperial drones arrive. Dirk climbs to the roof and fights them to the death.

Notice who slipped out of that summary? That’s right: Jane, Jake, and Roxy. Dirk demonstrably has no time to spare to monitor them throughout any of this, and by now, the AR has been monitoring and guiding all three of them for a while.

Dirk’s dreamself, wandering through Derse and trying to escape the miles, comes across both Jane and Jake. He’s completely confounded by their presence.

Dirk tries to get Jane out, but fails. She’s hit by the Red Miles. Concurrently, on Earth, Roxy succumbs to the miles, too — but Dirk doesn’t have any way to know about that, since we’re watching the AR’s pesterlogs with him, and the AR doesn’t mention it. Dirk manages to have Lil Seb get Jake out of immediate danger, but then gets hit by rubble, knocking out both his dream self and his waking self — presumably because of the connected awareness between them.

Finally, Dirk’s dream self takes over the Brain Ghost Dirk splinter Jake left behind in the dreambubble with Roxy, Aranea, and the others. Dirk immediately sends Roxy home and manages to wake up with Aranea’s help, but at this point there’s minutes remaining before the Red Miles reach him, and Dirk is missing critical intel on basically everyone.

[S] Synchronize and [S] Unite play out, but given that we just spent the entire arc being confronted again and again with Dirk’s limits, does it actually make sense to assume he suddenly figured out how to keep track of all his friends and design and execute an enormous time loop that includes his own suicide? Does it make any sense at all to assume this plan was his doing, or even something he had the time to question or object to?

It doesn’t. Dirk is extremely impressive during [S] Unite Synchronize, but even the rules of flash animation don’t quite allow for such a drastic departure in competency between the Dirk we see over the course of Act 6 up until now and the Dirk we see in this flash. The only way the flash is particularly coherent, in a logical sense, is if you assume Dirk is simply very, very good at operating in crisis…and that he’s receiving instructions to follow.

Which matters because when you realize that Dirk really didn’t have nearly the attention span or mental capacity to keep up with the quickly escalating threats of his session, it becomes obvious the AR was the sole architect of the final entry scenario. And what did the AR do when granted command over the entire session? Orchestrate a dramatic, climactic, fucked up romantic overture towards Jake.

But it also matters for a more important reason. It matters because many fans truly seem believe this is something Dirk was capable of even considering, when that goes against pretty much everything he ever claimed to feel.

Dirk can’t even bring himself to kill Roxy on their quest beds, when they actually need to die to progress. Dirk actively worries about Jake and Jane when they’re in danger — so much so he builds robots for their protection. Dirk’s a control freak, absolutely, but there are real threats in his life that he needs control to protect them.

And Dirk is bitter as all hell about how everything we’ve described up until now played out. He tells the Auto-Responder as much during their climactic conversation, including even a call out of the way the AR’s actions and motivations are confused and lumped in with his own — both by his friends, and by the fandom.

As I see it, believing that Dirk colluded or even agreed with most of what the AR did requires some pretty bizarre stretching of his character. It requires believing he’s insincere or putting up an act, even to the audience, for basically half of his screentime — and I’ve yet to find anything in the narrative that backs up that premise.

And what’s worse, it means reading Dirk as someone who is comfortable hurting, belittling, or in any way gambling with the lives of his friends. It means believing that he’s at such a remove from and has so much control overhis emotions that even when he’s calling the Auto-Responder out, he’s still capable of deflecting blame, affecting some kind of stylized commitment to image, or keeping himself at a remove from the consequences of “his” actions — actions we’ve just run in circles proving were the AR’s, and not his, all along.

It requires reading Dirk as someone who doesn’t have feelings. Or at least, as someone who is in control of their feelings enough that they don’t affect and guide their actions. In the final essay on this series, we’re going to tackle that misconception — the fandom narrative that questions whether Dirk cares about this at all.

And then…Oh, yes.

At last we will answer the question.

Why DIDN’T Dirk just fucking talk to Jake about the AR?

See you then!