being and homestuck

dirk's core motivations come from being inadequate. on one hand it's because he's not enough his friends-- he's too neurotic, he's too emotional, but he loves them to death (as he literally says about roxy) and would give anything for them to enjoy talking to him. on the other hand—and this is what this meta will mostly focus on—he's inadequate compared to his older bro (alpha dave). to dirk, alpha dave cannot be a real person-- he's more akin to a fictional character, a completed NARRATIVE. alpha dave made a space for himself in the world-- he was massively successful, had fans, and orchestrated massive plots to fight the condesce all while carving his own creative niche in the world. most importantly, he was the only source of guidance as to "what to be" dirk had.

by definition dirk cannot access any flaws a!dave might have had, because he didn't-- in a well-written story, any flaw is only part of the "character," and it's not like dirk ever really knew a!dave anyway. i think he adopted this mindset for himself and too began viewing his entire life as a story, in which he's a character and not a person. partially because it literally is— alpha dave prepared this apartment for dirk because dirk was destined for something greater, e.g. sburb, and dirk spent sixteen years waiting for his own story to begin. but there's one critical problem here. dirk cannot be enough compared to alpha dave. alpha dave is an IDEAL dirk constantly measures himself up to and at every turn fails-- suddenly, when he's trying to place himself in the hero role he thinks a!dave had, nothing he does is adequate. even normal human flaws become akin to sin. his interactions with his friends just remind him of that-- he can't live up to roxy's desire, he can't seem to get jake to love him, and this complicates things with jane too. he doesn't think he'll be enough—not for his friends, and not for the story that lays ahead of him.

his solution is to turn to the machine. he creates the autoresponder, thinking that is the most "ideal" version of himself—the character that he's been waiting for—and has it talk to his friends instead. but this doesn't work either. if hal is the perfect version of himself, then what use does dirk have in the world? plus, he's completely fucking insufferable-- does that mean dirk is, even at his best, awful? if hal ISN'T the perfect version of himself, that means that dirk's best solution-- the one he's been trying at since he realized this flaw--the machine fails.

dirk spends the rest of sburb, at least i like to think, unlearning some of these ideas. he meets dave in person. he has long conversations with his friends (also in person!) who he . he spends time deconstructing himself as a character and as a person instead.

which brings the real point of this essay: ultimate dirk.

postcanon dirk, who did ALL THAT, learns that actually he was CORRECT— there's been an audience watching him and all his failures this entire time—he IS a character, and so far he's been almost utterly meaningless. he doesn't fight the condesce. he gets decapitated thrice. he fails to save the game over timeline. the one thing he tangibly does, unite synchronization, is barely done by him (arguably hal). this realization undoes every piece of character growth that may or may not have happened. and now his timeline is thrust into irrelevance, precisely because this audience no longer cares about postcanon. so he takes up the role he thinks he was always meant to—he becomes a character. and because he's failed his entire life in becoming the hero, he opts to become a villain—the way he knows that beta dirk, his "previous" version, was to dave—and puts dave in the hero position alpha dave was in before.