oceanboydirk:

i was always a little torn on what to think of him and whether he represented dirk or hal, since bgd tells us that he’s a representation of dirk through jake’s understanding of him, but overall comes across much more like hal 

so here’s the thought: he takes on whatever form jake expects/wants at the moment

first appearance: jake’s memory of his 13th birthday’s conversation with dirk. bgd acts out the part as past dirk perfectly until it’s disrupted by his accidental acknowledgement that they’ve already had this conversation. as soon as jake becomes aware that he’s dreaming, and when he becomes aware that he’s not talking to “real dirk”, bgd behaves much more like hal. jake explicitly states this.

bgd appears again when jane is threatening jake with sexual slavery, and behaves like hal, as a reflection of both the situation (sexual objectification and harassment) and as a reflection of jake feeling very overwhelmed and insecure after having been yelled at by jane for ignoring her feelings for him/making her listen to all of his problems, forcibly drugged by her, broken up with by dirk (complicated situations notwithstanding. remember how everyone just awkwardly shut up after dirk broke up with him despite the fact that they were still hyped up?), seen jane be brainwashed, been sent to prison and promptly objectified and told he’s only good for his body… he’d been through the emotional gauntlet at this point. i’m probably missing some details, too. 

anyway the point is that hal/the AR liked to needle jake at all of his sore points, so it’s no wonder that bgd takes this on when jake’s so run down. particularly the sexual slavery part — no doubt some of the memories of hal’s words were in jake’s mind at the time. 

then, bgd in the infamous princess bride scene. bgd is dirk again, here, i think. as a manifestation of what jake understands about dirk — that dirk is a deeply caring person who would do anything to protect his friends because of how much he loves them, and that because of both the physical distance between them and the dangerous nature of their lives, dirk’s worry for them came through with his attempts to protect them from physical danger (lil seb, the brobot). dirk comes to jake’s rescue the way jake wanted earlier while in prison,

but couldn’t manage because the memory of hal was too strong.  

so there’s my thoughts about brain ghost dirk, sorted out at last, hopefully. a representation of dirk as projected through jake’s understanding of him indeed.