Pulling the Strings — Dirk as Manipulative Puppetmaster
[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.
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!
