[Author’s Note: This is a repost of Love, Faith and Fantasy–my piece on Jake and Dirk’s character arcs and the relevance of Knights and Pages in understanding them. I thought breaking it up into chunks would make the content more accessible, and give me room to flesh out each argument. Thus there will be some updates to the content. Hopefully this will mean more people can easily approach it!]

[Pt. 1 – Knights/Pages – Service and Ownage]
[Pt. 2 – Faith and Fear] [Pt. 3 – Fearful Heart]
[Pt. 5 – As You Wish]

So now that we know that Knights are defined by service to others, and now that we have a clear reading of how badly Dirk wanted to be of service to Jake, it’s time to veer off a bit. 

In this section, we’ll take a look at how hard Dirk tries to live up to Dave’s mythological role (while still very much carrying out his own), and see how that affects our reading of his character. We’ll also take a look at how Dirk is treated by–and feels about–the rest of his friends. 

I’ve already laid my case for why Dirk definitely did not set up the events of [S] Unite Synchronize, but with this context it’s worth noting the role Dirk was trying to play while setting up the session–he was trying to live up to Dave’s legacy and mythological role, acting to help all his friends’ to complete session entry. 

Dave is the only character who ends up acting as a server player for more than one person, and Dirk on some level tries to emulate Dave’s effect on the game the first chance he gets. 

He fails at this, Miserably. But Hal, who is also a Dirk trying to emulate Dave, succeeds. By the end, Hal take’s over as EVERYONE’S server player, even Dirk’s. He even takes Dave’s text color during the process AND takes charge of–his words–metatemporal mechanics.

Dirk’s failure–and Hal’s success–in this regard established, let’s refocus a bit and note the nature of Dirk’s relationship with all of his friends by the time they start playing.

We just took stock of how badly Dirk’s last attempt at approaching Jake romantically went, and soon after this the AR is created and begins attempting to intercept, manipulate and solicit Jake on Dirk’s behalf–I already went over how Dirk had no control over this, didn’t want it, and grew to hate Hal for it.  Several times over.

To make matters worse, we learn Jake essentially toyed with Dirk’s heart with jokes he–fitting into Jake’s general pattern of behavior–never confronted Dirk to correct, although he correctly deduces it left lasting damage on Dirk’s feelings.

Partly as a result, he views Jane as a competitor with an unfair advantage. Her complete ignorance about his sexuality doesn’t help matters, so he can’t talk to her.

All the while, Roxy is actively and willingly pressuring him into romantic interest in her and directly comparing him unfavorably to Hal for his lack of romantic reciprocation. And Hal not only harasses Jake and positions himself as a better friend to Jane (this particular act I do not view as malicious), but uses Dirk’s very insecurity about failing Roxy against him.

And while Hal claims to be on Dirk’s side in the Jakestakes, Dirk is pretty much right to be suspicious of his intentions:

So essentially, Dirk has no one to talk to about his sexuality and gets ignorance or cruelty on all sides with regards to it. 

Is it really reasonable to demand of a teenager to come forward to his best friend–who he last heard voice rejection of the very CONCEPT of gayness–not only to admit his sexuality and explain how it factors into his alternate self’s abusive behavior, but also to confess or try to talk around his soul-searing, cosmic romantic love for the guy?

And that is what it is, make no mistake about Hal is either getting carried away with feelings he says are distant and diluted for him, or confessing the full form of those feelings on Dirk’s behalf. But the feelings are there, and they are cosmic in scale. 

Heart is the aspect not just of love, but of any intense attraction between two or more people, and thus shipping. At first, these elements may seem disparate, but they’re more connected than they seem.

After all, what do you do if you ship two characters? If you think they’re in love? Typically. they’re shown as close together as possible, trading attention and feelings. Placing their souls in proximity to one another’s and implying a give and take between them. 

Which is why it’s no surprise that Dirk expresses love by trying to close physical distance, or that when he and Jake hook up in the session, Dirk tries to compensate for his fears that Jake is straight and acting out of obligation by trying to stay as close as possible–thus being clingy and needy but with no real exchange of emotions taking place.

And in [S] Unite, we get shown the degree of Dirk’s feelings. When Jake revives him with the only romantically coded corpsesmooch in the comic, Dirk’s Heart Lights up and takes over the screen before he pulls off amazing feats while racing to Jake’s side. And in the panel just before, the lamp representing Dirk’s literal life Lights up and overflows so brightly that it literally breaks, unable to contain the force of his passion.

Dirk’s Prince of Heart role does reflect how he destroys his relationships, but not the way most people think. It’s not that Dirk is willing to erode the selves of his friends to fit into his molds, but rather that Hal positioning his Self between Dirk and his friends undercuts Dirk’s ability to reach out and trust their perceptions of him, and even stops him from being able to tell where he begins and Hal ends.

At the same time, Dirk’s intense fear of rejection keeps him away from broaching his problems with Jake the same way Jake’s fear of disappointing others stops him from broaching his–Dirk’s Love getting in the way of honesty as much as his constructed Persona.

And yet, despite the unhelpfulness or outright cruelty Dirk’s friends put him through, largely because of his sexuality…

Save for the trickster log–which he recants–Dirk never once even thinks to consider his friends as aggressors towards him. His instinct is to assume he’s somehow failing them instead. Just like with Jake, Dirk sees into the core of all of his friends, and what he really sees at the end of the day is this:

Dirk thinks Roxy is noble. He sees her as she really is–as one of the Nobles of the session, as they ALL are, seeing right past their flaws and mistakes and straight to the shining hearts of their intentions. 

Again, Roxy’s not even the one he wants to be with romantically, and we saw the intensity of how he feels about Jake. He wrote Jane entire books and sent her personal bodyguards crafted out of heirlooms taken from the Bro Dirk essentially shapes himself in the image of. What would he have to say about the two of them, if asked? 

Dirk’s problem is his perception of his friends’ nobility leads him to erasing all their hurtful behavior, and the hurtful behavior he sees Hal commit on his behalf–which Dirk views as being his own actions, despite the fact that he never does anything about it for the exact same reason he stops himself from killing Hal–stops him from seeing any nobility within himself. 

Dirk’s response to all of the complicated ways he’s been hurt in trying to manage the Hal and Jake situation as ethically as possible by all of his friends is to internalize responsibility for absolutely all of it. It never even crosses his mind to hold Jane or Jake or even Roxy accountable. Only his own self, and Hal as an extension of it.

When things finally explode on him, he turns all his pain inwards and projects it both onto Hal and onto himself.  I keep saying this, but…Dirk’s standing at the edge of a rooftop here for a reason. It’s not subtle–Hal isn’t the only one he’s turning his anger towards. Dirk’s Prince of Heart role nearly culminates in his most literal destruction of himself–Dirk being nearly Destroyed by Heart.

It’s some pretty sad shit! Dirk conflates himself with Hal and views all of Hal’s actions as literally his own, despite the fact that they were carried out without Dirk’s agency of desire. And much of the fandom has taken the worst that Dirk has to say about himself at face value, in a way that simply hasn’t happened for…say…what Jake says about himself after the retcon.

So it’s a good thing, then, that Jake ultimately reciprocates Dirk’s feelings…and has a completely different view of Dirk than the one Dirk thinks he has.

How does Jake’s view of Dirk intersect with Dirk’s desire to live up to Dave’s image? And might it help resolve Dirk’s existential crisis of self-loathing?

Next time, we’ll answer those questions.

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Keep rising.