Dirk Strider


 * For the pre-Scratch version of this character, see Dave's Bro.

Dirk Strider is the post-scratch incarnation of Dave's Bro. Prior to his proper introduction to the reader, he is referred to by Jane as "D. Strider", and later by Roxy as "di stri". His name may also be a reference to Bro's use of shitty swords unbreakable katanas, as a dirk is a kind of blade, although it should be noted that dirks are actually Celtic daggers, not swords.

Dirk's chumhandle is (TT), in line with the rule that post-scratch kids have the same chumhandle abbreviation as their corresponding pre-scratch kid's ectobiological sibling. This completes the set of chumhandles when added to GT, GG, and TG. He uses the same color text that Davesprite uses, analogous to the fact that Jane and Jake use the same colors as Nannasprite and Jadesprite, respectively. He also signed the book that he sent to Jane in orange pen.

Dirk's web browser, and therefore the name of his denizen, is HS 6548 (Yaldabaoth), given to him by the game due to his natural skills as a warrior.

Biography
Dirk's meteor arrived on earth sometime during the 25th century, along with Roxy Lalonde. However, he is able to communicate with Jane and Jake (who are living around 4 centuries in the past) and establish Sburb connections with them by means of Trollian.

He, like Jake and Roxy, gave Jane Crocker a bunny for her thirteenth birthday, though he had to build it from scratch, unlike the others. It was HS 6029 ("...somewhat less innocuous") than the other two bunnies and is HS 6142 ("such a little troublemaker"). His bunny contains the original Con Air bunny which he stole from his Bro's museum.

He also has an auto-responder, an application designed to simulate Dirk's otherwise inimitably rad typing style, tone, cadence, personality, and substance of retort while he is away from the computer. It is implied that it was constructed somehow with a copy of Dirk's brain. The algorithms were originally guaranteed to be 96% indistinguishable from Dirk's native neurological responses, based on HS 6085 (statistical analysis), which means that the percentage can change (and does, dropping to 93% upon Jake's continued probing). Jake expresses frustration with it, but Jane seems to like it.

His dream self on Derse has apparently been awake for years, much like Dave's was, although Dave was not aware of it. After a little practice, he "" He has been using his dream self to gather information on Derse, and to watch over Roxy's sleepwalking dream self. His dream self is seen covered in the Hegemonic Brute's blood, having foiled the Batterwitch's assassination attempt. He then chose to reveal his dream self's awakeness to Derse by HS 6472 (publicly impaling the Brute's head through a Dersite banner.)

Afterwards, Dirk tries to ascend to his roof, but is sidetracked by the sudden appearance of Roxy's Fenestrated wall, and soon after by jeering from Caliborn. He grabs Lil' Cal and goes to the roof, where we see that, like Roxy, he lives in the Post-Scratch Future Earth.

As Dirk's dream self attempts to escape from the Red Miles, he is shocked to see both Jane and Jake appearing on Derse. While telling Jane to abscond from Derse via the portal, he witnesses the Miles impaling her from behind. He then quickly orders Lil' Seb to take Jake and get him out of Derse. Afterwards, he intends to kiss Jane to save her dream self, but is knocked out by falling debris before he gets chance to do it. On Earth, his waking self is also knocked out by the blow, presumably because of his consciousness being divided between his two selves, and drops Lil' Cal into the sea below. Afterward, the projection of Dirk which existed in Jake's dream bubble becomes Dirk's dream self. Dream Dirk states he must leave in order to repair the session, as all the players are dead or unconscious. He takes Roxy's hand and begins to leave, apologizing for his abrupt exit.

As he attempts to leave the dream bubble, Dirk finds he cannot leave it, so he throws Roxy out the bubble instead, while he is awoken by Aranea Serket's powers. His waking self wakes up, and afterwards he begins his plan to rescue his friends. He captchalogues several objects, including Squarewave and his sendificator, before leaving Sawtooth to send his home to the Medium and going through the fenestrated wall sent by the God Cat from Roxy's house with his rocket board. Dirk arrives at Roxy's room, where he leaves Squarewave to take care of Roxy's entry. He revives Roxy before killing himself by sendificating his head to Jake, who revives him. After Dirk's dream self awakens, he revives Jane and takes Roxy and himself to their session's Frog Temple, where they wait in the time capsule until Jake's time. The two are then reunited with Jane and wake up Jake in time for him to revive Dirk.

Almost half a year after entering, Dirk is shown to be on the Land of Tombs and Krypton, wearing a mask to protect himself from the thick gases of the planet and shoes similar to that of his rapping robots. He still uses his Unbreakable Katana, unlike the other kids and their newly-created weapons. At one point, he is seen about to ambush some skeletal Underlings alongside Jake, who now has a Sweet Bro tat to match Dirk's Hella Jeff.

The three trickster kids then arrive on LOTAK and attempt to get Dirk in on the trickster action. Roxy announces her feelings for Dirk, which he already knew of to begin with. She then tries to kiss him in order to solve her personal problems, but he tries to fight her off, threatening to use a sword and losing his cool in the process. After Roxy's persistent behavior and ARquisprite's words of wisdom, he allows Roxy to kiss him, physically turning him into a trickster. However, his personality does not change in the slightest, and AR suggests he's too far gone in his own problems for even trickster mode to help him. In short, because of his dense mind, and possibly his abilities as a Prince of Heart, he seems to be immune to the "sugar holocaust" properties of the Trickster mode. Dirk tries to message Jake constantly after he leaves in desire for more space from their relationship, though once all of his messages went ignored and he is confronted by trickster Jake, Dirk decides to take the intiative and break up with him instead. However, he has shown remorse for the way he did it and what he said to him.

After ascending to the God tiers, Dirk and Roxy are encountered by the Condesce herself. Dirk attempts to aggress her, but is suddenly obstructed by Jade Harley, who gives him a hook to the lips and teleports him away to the Furthest Ring, the same way she did with Jack Noir.

Personality and Traits
Dirk tends to brag when it comes to his achievements, especially involving robots, which have been scattered far and wide. He appears to enjoy criticizing Jake's infatuation with the fictional character Neytiri, apparently referring to the character as HS 6071 ("a gigantic shitty space furry.") This may be a reference to the fact that Jade is now (quite literally) a gigantic space furry, as seen in the Cascade Flash. He seems to be a fan of horses, judging by his room being filled with horse and pony themed posters. It is inferred that he also watches My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic; although he claims his interest is purely of academic nature, he admits he likes Rainbow Dash since HS 6427 ("she is so spunky. <3") He also owns a tiny Maplehoof, who in her new size resembles an MLP figurine. He seems to be more laid back and less hot-headed than Dave at 15, using intellectual analysis intermixed with his ironic quips. At 13 however, his personality is almost identical to Dave's, using more curse words and fewer intellectual quips than his older self.

Dirk seems to have a high interest in teaching his friends lessons to aid them in their personal development, such as when he insists Jake fights Brobot for Uranium as a consequence of having wasted his own Uranium thoughtlessly. He tries to make Jake more skeptical, because he is very naive; while the opposite holds true for Jane, who he criticised for her extreme skepticism. This results in him coming off as obnoxious at times, trying to make his friends think more, which makes him similar to his biological daughter Rose. Like his pre-scratch self, he has a big interest in smuppets and puppets in general (although it seems this interest has expanded into the field of robotics). He is also known to enjoy "legendary infinite showers" (which he may take when he is focusing on his dream self).

Dirk's previous interest and relationship with Jake as well as HS 7698 (this conversation) where Dirk refers to the "respective orientations" of Jane and himself practically confirms him to only have an interest in the same sex. He goes on to call Jake "the only viable romantic target" for him out of their group, and suggests that may be the reason for his infatuation with him. Roxy frequently refers to him to things like "" and has mentioned him being "", though he said that he prefers not to label his sexuality.

Relationships
As Dave before him, he seems to have had a strained relationship with his Bro, who died in the 21st century as a resistance fighter against the Baroness. Unlike Dave, he was unable to physically brawl with his brother due to their separation in time, forcing him to HS 6368 (build robots, set them to kill mode, and spar with them to death) instead. Dirk is aware that they are not actual brothers, instead being related through HS 006157 ("an esoteric process of genetic reamalgamation.") Jane also believes that he is a bit bitter about his bro's success with Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff the Moive [sic], although he would never admit it.

It was HS 6390 (revealed by Dirk's auto-responder) and then HS 6455 (later on by Dirk himself) that he harbors a romantic interest in Jake. Dirk's auto-responder alluded to this. The A.R., having started out as an exact replica of his thirteen-year-old self, indicates that Dirk's romantic interest in Jake had started to manifest about three years ago. The Auto-Responder also informs Roxy that Dirk is planning to make some sort of romantic overture to Jake once they both begin playing the game.

He and Jake were revealed to be dating for some months after entering the medium, although shortly after Jake had been somewhat hesitant on the relationship due to perceiving Dirk as being too overbearing as a boyfriend. Upon being confronted by trickster Jake's proposal to group marry him and once engaging in a failed version of trickster mode himself, Dirk takes the initiative to break up with Jake for ignoring all of his messages rather than working it out together. Dirk guesses that his intense advances towards him were partially initially because Jake was the only romantic target due to his orientation. However, later on he shows remorse for the way he broke up with him, and partially takes the blame for their problems by saying "" He and Jane have both said they are unable to tell whether or not they are completely over him.

Dirk has also been shown to care very deeply for his friends, stating in HS 7696 (this conversation) that "" He and Roxy seem to have a very strong friendship (possibly an equivalent to moirallegiance) and he has said that although he doesn't feel any sense of romantic attraction towards her and will not try to make himself reciprocate so he can to stay true to himself. However, he does love her as a close friend.

Trivia

 * DSsymbols.gif shirt features a picture of a cap, reminiscent of Bro's headwear and similar in shape to Dave's record symbol. Also, both symbols are broken circles, with Dave's being a cracked circle and Dirk's being a semi-circle.
 * Like Dave's hair, Dirk's hair is a stylized bird.
 * The cap on Dirk's shirt is also a stylized bird.  Specifically, the lighter-orange segment.
 * The hat on the trickster version of Dirk has a pinwheel on top. Pinwheels are usually associated with flying, just like birds.
 * He is the first male character to be introduced having the same two letters for Pesterchum initials, the only other being Caliborn.
 * His chumhandle is most likely a reference to Plato's dialogue, Timaeus, which discusses the demiurge, a god-like being who created the universe as a sort of living creature. The Timaeus dialogue, alongside Critias, also introduces the mythology behind Atlantis.
 * Dirk has a map of Atlantis in his room. And when his first name is finally revealed, it's noted that HS 6367 (the last two letters) of "Dirk" are diluvian (relating to floods). This is because r and k are the last two letters of "Ark" and Atlantis is often referred to as the "Antediluvian World".
 * Dirk's browser and denizen is Yaldabaoth, who is the chief of the Gnostic Denizens and creator of man.
 * Timaeus is also a biblical character in the Gospel of Mark who is the father of a man whose blindness was cured by Jesus.
 * His affinity for HS 6354 (robots and horses) and his interest in HS 6425 (looking STRONG) resemble those of Equius. He has also been shown to have a large number of HS 6868 (towels.)
 * He appears to, like Dave, be surrounded by feathery assholes; only they are white seagulls instead of black crows.
 * Not only are the Pesterchum handles switched between Dirk and Roxy, but their literacy is as well; Dirk's commentary is as grammatically correct (if more prone to ironic puppet references) as Rose's, while Roxy's is devoid of the same punctuation as Dave's (with the added typos from frequent intoxication).
 * Dirk takes this a step further with his colors being an inversion of Rose's: while she has purple text and orange god tier robes, Dirk has orange text and purple god tier robes.
 * Dirk owns a Sendificator, and occasionally sendificates some of his robots to his friends.
 * Similar to Roxy, it is the only Crockercorp tech he uses.
 * Dirk's eyes are HS 6386 (orange), matching his Pesterchum text. He is the first of the Post-Scratch kids to have his eye colour shown.
 * That page also showed that he apparently possesses the same thick eyebrows as Dave.
 * Dirk uses a strife specibus called fncysntakind, which is a direct reference to the Fancy Santas in Problem Sleuth. In an annotation in the Homestuck book, Hussie states that fncysntakind is the most powerful of all specibi, while this may be a joke the occurence of HS 7675 (ZILLY SANTAS) suggests that they may be an effective weapon.
 * Dirk has HS 6426 (a Hella Jeff tattoo) on his shoulder, complete with jpeg artifacts.
 * Dirk's computer background features the "Mustang" art sculpture placed outside the Denver International Airport in Denver, Colorado. This statue is completely terrifying. The horse is blue with orange eyes, suggesting Dirk's ongoing horse obsession.
 * It is also related that, the Denver football team is the Denver Broncos, Broncos being a term for an untrained horse in the southern parts of North America.
 * Dirk functions as both normal self and his dream self simultaneously. This is most likely a reference to Abstracted Thought, which is a Combat Operandi move in Problem Sleuth.
 * Dirk considers Cal his best friend and sleeps with him, apparently.
 * Dirk, being the Prince of Heart, "signs" his note to the Draconian Dignitary by sticking the Hegemonic Brute's <3 symbol on it.
 * Dirk's bedsheets contain pool balls on it, both in mirror to and in contrast of Dave's card suit bedsheets.
 * Dirk's Bro, Dirk, Dave's Bro, and Dave's affiliated body parts are the eyes, it is interesting to note that the eyes are said to be the gateways to the soul. The wearing of dark glasses is symbolically closing this connection.
 * He is the only one (thus far) who could negate the mental effects of Trickster Mode, although he changed physically.
 * He is also the only one of the Post-Scratch kids whose Trickster outfit does not reveal any striped stockings so far.
 * In addition, unlike the other three Tricksters, he has no visible mouth.
 * His trickster mode outfit has the same colors as Lil' Cal's outfit.