AR – Page 2 – Flying through Storytelling

swamp-wizard:

i feel like all of the discourse over “the ar is responsible for actions x y and z whereas dirk is only responsible for actions a b and c” is like. missing the point in a really big way

like its useful to a certain extent and hussie does take the effort to distinguish between their voices – and if youre going to analyze either of them you should know how they interact with each other – but a lot of yall tend to take it to the conclusion that “no, lil hal is a cruel abuser and dirk is just a soft boy who wouldnt do anything wrong”

the point of lil hal – and bro, to a lesser extent – is to show what dirk is capable of. lil hal is crueler and less forgiving than dirk but those inclinations towards abusive behavior dont come out of nowhere. and you see that pretty clearly laid out in dirk and lil hals last pesterlog (which takes place on the rooftop of a skyscraper and thats not a coincidence)

hussie draws these parallels deliberately, over and over again. like its not an accident or a fault of not reading closely enough that readers get dirk and lil hals actions confused, hussie did that on purpose. its neither the first nor the last time he uses alternate selves to explore multiple facets of a character (dave becoming much more somber, introspective and insecure after spending months in a doomed timeline and becoming davesprite; vriska becoming soft and loving and emotionally open after entering the afterlife and being freed from a hostile environment). lil hal and bro are components of dirks Ultimate Self and you really can not conduct an efficient analysis of his character if you brush them off as totally separate people, instead of the same guy under different circumstances

I feel like there’s p much no way this doesn’t reflect on my writing on some level, so I feel pretty justified chiming in:

I feel this take is also simplistic. I don’t consider AR and Dirk wholly different people–that’s exactly why AR knows how to hurt Dirk, and it’s also why Dirk is so bothered by seeing himself in the AR. They’re the same guy, obviously.

But the thing to take away from that isn’t necessarily “Dirk is equitable to all of his splinters in all situations, and some people’s Ultimate Selves are inherently worse than others’ and so they are always doomed to being Kind Of Shitty People.” They’re also the same guy who makes starkly different choices, and make those choices for different reasons.

I think it’s important that Dirk has the potential to be like the AR, absolutely. I also think it’s important to note that he chooses not to be. Just like it’s important neither of them are as evil as Bro, for that matter. Context, circumstance, power and agency and the reasons why these kids make the decisions they make–all of that matters, too. If it was just about who you are on the Ultimate Self level then agency doesn’t even exist in Homestuck’s story, does it?

Dirk’s narrative matters because he sees the potential in his ultimate self and chooses to respond to it in a completely unique way: By destroying it. By choosing to become something different. He manages to do it by relying on his connections, his bonds with his friends, backing up the entire narrative of all of Homestuck and it’s focus on the themes of reaching higher levels of understanding of the world and yourself…through connections to other people.

That’s what makes Caliborn and Gamzee the true antagonists. That’s what they don’t do–bond and connect emotionally to others. Dirk does this. Dirk does this extremely hard forever, and I think that’s worth celebrating about him.

It’s obviously true that the AR tells us something about Core Dirk, but I don’t think anyone would argue that. I also don’t think anyone would argue that Jadesprite is Literally Exactly The Same as Jade, or that Davesprite would’ve jumped into a relationship with Karkat with open arms, either.

You can read Dirk as someone with the innate potential for abuse and know that it’s a core facet of his character…and still see that the decisions he makes in his Alpha self iteration are very different. This Dirk makes different choices, and those choices are worth considering as much as the AR’s.

You’re right that it’s not a mistake that the fandom gets confused about who says what with regards to the AR, by the way. But there’s a different reason to that than They’re Exactly The Same. The fandom gets them confused because–as Dirk himself points out–the AR deliberately misrepresents himself as Dirk and blurs the line between their identities.

There’s a heroic narrative here that is being buried under having a simplistic, borderline villainizing reading of the only gay dude in Homestuck, and I think one can point that out without trying to hide the fact that that gay dude’s struggles center largely around being confronted with and terrified by his own potential for abuse and manipulation. The two readings are congruent.

I don’t really think the reading that allows people to make a joke and a butt monkey out of the one gay dude in Homestuck is the more nuanced and meaningful one, frankly.

I think it’s lazy–not just for what it does for Dirk when the actual canon is clearly going for something different-but also for what it does to Jake, who gets painted as a victim without agency or thought when he’s really one of the most interesting characters in the comic.

Dirk Strider gets a lot of flak. I don’t feel it’s entirely undeserved–like all the Alphas, Dirk loves his friends intensely but doesn’t know how to express affection, receive it, be honest, or basically connect to other people in any way at all.

But a lot of the flak that Dirk gets is rooted in things Dirk didn’t actually do. It’s rooted in things the AR did. And by conflating the two, the fans fall into a trap Dirk explicitly calls out himself, in the comic.

One might say Dirk tacitly approved of the AR’s actions by allowing them to continue, making this kind of a self-serving defensive statement.
One could also say Dave actually really loved committing to being a cool guy, and in both cases they would be wrong as shit, because they’d be missing half the narrative.

In reality, Dirk couldn’t do anything about the AR’s actions towards Jake, and indeed, his outburst here reveals that the way it treated Jake was the cause for his coldness towards the AR during the first half of Act 6: He finds the AR’s actions insipid.

And it’s not like that’s a secret:

Jake knows Dirk doesn’t like the AR. It’s an established fact in their relationship. Which means they’ve talked about the AR’s behavior to some extent, however stiltedly and dancing around the actual issue of Dirk and Jake’s romantic feelings for each other.

So knowing Jake is likely privy to the answer to this question, it’s time to ask: Why couldn’t Dirk do anything about the AR?

And the answer is: Because it’d be immoral to do so. At least as immoral as doing nothing, if not more–at least, that’s how Dirk thinks of it:

The AR has no outlets for expression other than talking to Dirk and his friends and operating computers and things relating to computers. The AR is essentially a Dirk who’s only means of being Dirk is by expressing its thoughts, and so Dirk shutting it down for an extended amount of time or trying to coerce it into expressing itself the way he would prefer is an act of outsize violence.

Essentially, Dirk can’t really stop the AR from doing monstrous shit to Jake without being willing to do monstrous shit to it. And Dirk struggles with that reality because he’s the only reason it has to exist in these inhumane circumstances.

Dirk considers himself responsible for the AR’s creation (which he is) and has determined that to limit its ability to talk or engage with reality would be morally wrong. Dirk commits to this right up until his breakdown log with the AR, and even then, he chooses not to kill it because he thinks it would be wrong.

This is despite the fact that Dirk didn’t set out to make a sentient entity in creating the AR, and didn’t think he’d be successful even at the more modest aims he set out to achieve:

I’ll try not to harp on the fact that this exchange both leads to the first time Dirk and Jake dance around their mutual feelings for each other AND also results in the birth of a new life (I am harping on it though Jake’s Hope shit has as much to do with the AR’s creation as Dirk’s Heart shit) but the takeaway is pretty clear here:

Dirk didn’t set out to make a sentient AI. The AR was an accident, and once created, Dirk took responsibility for it and tried to do right by AR according to his values. The story of Dirk and Jake early on is a story about Dirk being tied up in a philosophical dilemma as much as it is about Jake’s action movie tropes–which is fitting, because philosophy and movies are respectively Dirk and Jake’s biggest interests.

The uptake of this? Dirk didn’t refuse to help Jake or do anything about the AR because he didn’t give a shit or he thought Jake needed to man up and take it or anything of the sort. Dirk’s demeanor towards the AR throughout his narrative shows that the situation with Jake bothers him quite a lot, even after they enter the game.

Dirk didn’t do anything because he felt that was the most moral choice. Because he was trying to do the right thing. And Jake was aware of it.
In resume, Dirk is the best boy and Dirkjake is canon, thanks. I’ll probably be back some other time with further small breakdowns.

Tag: AR

Let’s talk about control, agency, philosophy, and Dirk Strider.