Given how much Dirk and Vriska's "sins" get compared on a regular basis...

no because he is a man

That feels a bit reductive, don't you think? I can't tell if that's supposed to be a joke response or not.

Personally, I'm one of the opinion that "Dirk" will get redeemed in some manner. But not Ult.Dirk. Ult.Dirk has so graciously asked to become the villain, and I think that it would be so gracious of the narrative for Dirk to be able to fix his shit while Ult.Dirk is forced to take on a hollow victory--being the superbadguy he asked for, but losing the status as the "Ultimate" Dirk somehow (I feel like Candy!Jake's increased Hope powers could easily make BG!Dirk real now and thus a viable replacement but I don't think that's gonna happen... now Meat!Jake on the other hand...).

That's because I don't think that Ult.Dirk can really be considered Dirk. This is probably a point that the comic will make but basically that the ironic allure of the Ultimate Self is a trap because it sounds like a good, self-bettering thing. But "ultimate" is not "the best version". It's the last. Because the BC team refuse to fucking elaborate on what the hell(tier) going helltier is (or if thats even what its called), I've elected (impulsively) to believe that HELLTIER is sort of the opposite of ULT-SELF in a way.

Becoming ULT-SELF involves absorbing (quite literally and violently) all possible you-s into one soul/consciousness/body. It's looking at every possible you and saying "yep, that's me". HELLTIER has a similar sort of acceptance (Vriska DID those things... wrong) but it notably comes with the rejection of you HAVING to be your other you-s. Saying "they can be/were me, but I'm not them and I don't HAVE to be them to be ME." Vriska LISTENS to Tavros. She LEAVES Momfang behind. It's not clear if she merged with GO.Vriska in [S] 8r8k but I think instead she simply disappeared, having received closure. Vriska accepted that they'd both been hurt by the same sort of loss (why they hugged), but that doesn't mean she IS GO.Vriska. She's still herself, but she escaped hell having been reminded that while the core of Vriska might be immovable, and there's so much potential for who she could be spooling out across every possible iteration of reality through Paradox Space... somehow, despite seeming impossible, she still has a choice. Even Doc Fucking Scratch tells her this: She can't change WHO she is foundationally, but she CAN change WHO she is now. How she represents herself, how she acts towards others, and what parts of herSELF she holds onto. And because of that realization, she's "normal now" in her own words. And all the while, Ult.Dirk is characterized and talked about as being a fucking psychopath. He's on the wrong track and doesn't care.

But dammit, I'd like to think that the core, immutable, immovable concept of "Dirk Strider" deep down, does give a shit. And THATS how they (might) redeem Dirk and still defeat Ult.Dirk. (And also how June will happen)

BUT HEY, THATS JUST A THEORY. A-

if dirk gets to be the villain then that's just flatly a victory for him. he's becoming the villain, manipulating people, etc. because if he does nothing to keep the plot going then everyone he cares about dies (or is consigned to living in variations on Candy).

imo the only thematically satisfying conclusion is somehow proving that there was a viable third option to keep the plot moving better than "dirk does nothing and everyone dies" or "dirk manipulates everyone and positions himself as a new antagonist". this is not a trivial task! I don't think it's obviously-true that there is a better outcome that was up for grabs (indeed, if it was obvious, dirk would have realized that and not become the villain). however Terezi is well-positioned to do this eventually, since her Seer of Mind powers let her explore alternate choices people could have made (and this fits well symbolically since Mind is the opposite of Heart)

What goes around will come around, eventually. I believe that Dirk's philosophy is based on Plato's Allegory of the Cave:

https://www.fruityrumpus.com/forums/t/ultdirk-and-the-allegory-of-the-cave

And I think that, unlike the story, he will not succeed in being able to just take people out of the cave unscathed. Dirk has already kind of taken 2 people out of the cave and irreversibly changed them (turned them into robots) what I don't think he's expecting are the ones he left behind in the cave to come after him (Meat Crew) or for them to journey out of the cave on their own volition without his input (Candy Kids)

In the original story, the people see what has become of those who leave the cave and thus they return to their old world in fear of that happening to them, but I don't see the Meat crew cowering in fear of Dirk even with Ultimate Self bullshit powers. I think they are super ready and willing to face off against him despite all the odds being massively stacked against them. The Strilondes always seem to think they know everything about their friends, but I think that's just not true. Their friends are much more capable of free will and thought then they could ever imagine, and the hold they have over them will loosen little by little as the power of narrative control becomes weak in Dirk's hands.

Sometimes, Stories will take a life of their own and I think that Dirk will not be able to control things like he has so far once newer characters pop up and he has to deal with people he's never met before.

I also think it's worth pointing out that on the other side of this whole topic on who really controls the narrative of Homestuck, Calliope is also there who has an equal amount of control over the narrative but who wants the rest of them to be able to stop Dirk so that they may go about their lives without someone else interfering. I don't exactly think its fair to say that Calliope is just as controlling as Dirk or whatever, because she's only doing this in response to him retroactively changing things about the way the story was playing out.

Calliope only took control because someone else decided they should hold the reigns over the story. I think she is of the opinion that people should just exist as they are (No one should "leave the cave" if they don't want, and forcing others to leave the cave is cruel. This was another point in plato's hypothetical as well.)N

Ultimately I think what will happen is that Dirk will lose relevancy as the plot leaves his control and he isn't able to be the focus of it anymore, even though he's got his fingers in just about ever facet of the characters lives, there are 4 wild cards that are unaccounted for that are also coming straight for him that might just ruin the plans he has set up. I know the idea of Dirk becoming a Villain is something he'd want, but I think the real karma coming for him is being irrelevant and made to be forgotten, a character that gets left by the wayside even though he has so much 'control' over the story and can literally make people think about him, sometimes Stories really do just run off on their own. And sometimes they'll leave YOU behind.

(Calling it now he will reenact the scenes where Hussie isn't even in his writers rooms and is just going crazy popping up in random spots T_T Death of the author but like part 2 I guess...)

@pearls sorry my phrasing was a joke yes. but i did mean it sincerely. lord english symbolically represents patriarchy as an oppressive structure, and his constituent characters (dirk, equius, gamzee, caliborn) in the story are enactors of patriarchal violence.

a large part of the reason vriska is so hated is misogyny, when people say she did nothing wrong they are specifically defending her from that. vriska was an abused teenage girl, dirk was a constituent part of doc scratch. i dont think dirk as a character exists to be forgiven or redeemed, i think thats a deliberate narrative choice. and it is because he is a man 🤷‍♀️

I don't argue against the idea Vriska is hated because of misogyny as well, but I do think it's a bit of a tired critique to wash her hands of any kind of sin because IRL people are bigoted.
Vriska literally paralyzed Tavros; and he doesn't really ever get a moment of catharsis, he exists only to serve her arc which is DEFINITELY a critique that can be had about her story.

Dirk was also an abused character, I don't think it's fair to just wash that away either and say that because his glasses became part of the soul juju that he is emblematic of patriarchal violence through and through. Otherwise, what's the point of his discussion with Dave at the end of Homestuck? Lol.

i guess i could see some vriska/dirk parallels in terms of "harmful actions" or whatever but i ultimately think that comparison is largely superficial. a much better character to compare dirk to would actually be aranea.

they have very similar motivations - wanting to be relevant again, so they come into the narrative to begin fucking with it. they both come at it from the angle of "yes, i'm manipulating and hurting these people but it's for the greater good", even if dirk is more self-aware of his villainous role. and, aranea's punishment for doing all this is ultimate obscurity. narratively she practically doesn't exist after dying again in game over. i'm pretty sure she doesn't even get mentioned by name after this, she's pretty much always referred to as "the other serket".

now, i don't think this will exactly be dirk's fate. he's too central of a character to just abandon. however, i think this is a much better angle to come at with a discussion of the potential consequences for dirk's actions. his relationship to the narrative is much too different to vriska's relationship with the narrative.

vriska's constant ploys for relevancy and being the focus of the narrative differ from dirk in the key detail that vriska doesn't get to control the narrative. she is favored by it, but it's often not a good thing! after all a lot of her "sins" come about because she is groomed by doc scratch - one of the narrators of homestuck! vriska gets to be a central player in a lot of the events, yes, but she also gets a lot of suffering as a result of her consistent relevancy. dirk, on the other hand, doesn't want to be just relevant, to be a key player, he wants to be in control of the narrative. in terms of an analogy, he wants to be the doc scratch in the situation.

I think the parallel is also borne from the fact that people compare Vriska and how her behavior is influenced by her antagonism/desire for Terezi's attention and how Dirk does much of the same when it comes to Jake. They're both stuck in orbit around the other.

I don't think we have a similar read of Dirk's motivations though. I don't think he's doing everything he's doing because he wants to hold the spotlight, rather his motivations seem to be a product of the same ideals Vriska had. "You don't have to be a good person to be a hero." His desire is for his whole friend group to not fade into nonsensical obscurity, not just himself. And given how horrifying the events in Candy are, can someone with knowledge of its future be blamed for wishing to avert it happening? He ends his waxing poetic in the Epilogues by declaring that one day he knows his friends will kill him and he's fine with that, because to him the ends of preserving their existence is justified even if it means his own departure.

Calliope tells us that Dirk ends himself in Candy to consolidate his power in canon, I don't think that's untrue either.

Similarly, I don't think Vriska's cloying for relevancy is simply because she wants the attention, I do think it's rooted in always having to be the "Capable" one and thus feeling that the burden is on her shoulder. I'd go as far as to say that when Terezi retconned reality to bring her back to life, it doubled that idea in her head. Vriska basically found out there was a timeline where everything went to shit without her, then Terezi rewrote the whole space just to bring her back, when you're as traumatized as Vriska how can you not read that as "my friend thinks I'm the secret weapon" and act accordingly? She went on a mission which would likely lead to her own death, for Terezi. The tragedy of course is that Terezi just missed her, more than anything. These girls just never talk like they should.

And as much as we discuss the idea of Vriska suffering, the narrative bends over backwards at times to bring her into it once more. She got a whole flash dedicated to her character growth, that isn't really something small or insignificant.

I hope that other characters get an equal measure of that clemency. (Jane, please. Pleaseeeeeuhhhhh.)

And as an aside, the whole thing with Aranea was that she was just doing a bad copy of Vriska, because she was annoyed that Meenah was focusing more on Vriska and Vriska was demeaning her. I don't really think she'd have sprung into action the way she did had that combo not occurred. Vriska put the idea of being more active into her head.

That feels a bit reductive, don't you think?

So is the way fandom talks about teenage girls as compared to adult men at all times so *shrugs*

I do think the idea of some version of Dirk getting to change and atone would be an effective way to undermine both Dirk's "I have to be the villain" thing and the idea of the Ultimate Self in general, as someone who firmly believes the ultimate self is cope (or the way Dirk presents it is), but part of that is if being a Dirk who is distinct from Ult!Dirk

The thing for me is, the way Dirk describes the ultimate self versus the way Davepeta described it feels like two different versions of the same concept.

Whereas Dirk discusses the idea that he's drowning in these iterations of himself and has become subsumed by some conglomeration of them, Davepeta talks about the concept as if they have the ability to perceive their sprawling existence but still maintain a strong sense of who they were; they specify there's a Dave and Nepeta who are LOUDER than the rest of the voices.

The way Davepeta describes it doesn't sound bad. The difference might wind up being philosophical; whereas Davepeta can perceive their whole self and be fine with all their potential lives, Dirk has witnessed some of his alternative lives do things he finds reprehensible and thus gave in to acting like that because he views himself so harshly?

WRT to Vriska though, the fandom has been talking about her since day one when she was on equal footing with every other child in her group. I think there's a chicken and egg scenario where one side is exhausted over how much Vriska is raked through the coals in the mouth of fandom and another side is frustrated that she gets to carry on and "atone" whilst her victims don't get to even be relevant anymore.

Then again, the fanontinuum might bring Tavros back around, it gave Nepeta second chance so who knows!