It's clear Dirk himself has a nebulous grip on the reality of his own existence. He grew up in extreme isolation, with very little variety in people. To fill that void, a powerless space he could not affect or control, he created an environment full of elements he did control. Artificial bodies and selves, an ever-expanding universe of Him. His obsession with robots mirrors Bro's obsession with puppets--both things that are human-shaped, but ultimately just constructs, to greater or lesser degree of control and autonomy. In the Epilogue, Dirk constantly frames himself and the world around him in mechanical terms. He describes himself as a mechanic, but also describes his own brain and body in mechanical terms. His treatment of the people around him is reflected in that manner--but his view of himself is just as affected. Many of his selves are artificially created, and this further undermines his restricted sense of his own existence. There is no 'realness' to the people around him.

And the further people drift from his own existence, the less 'real' they become in his narrative.

A narrative written by a man who hates himself, every version of himself, with such intensity and such consistency that it is one of the foundational aspects of his personality. A man who thinks not just of death but of suicide, of actively ending himself so frequently that tying himself a noose is swift, practised action. Who grew from a teen struggling with the degree to which one can and cannot control outcomes with regards to people (other and otherwise) and into a man for whom his friends are both the supposed beneficiaries of his choices and the pawns he moves in narrative fashion, no more real to him than he is. Beings whose realities depend wholly on his actions, and so whose manipulation is justified by the outcome he will achieve by doing so.

He's still the same person in some ways. Many ways, even. His brilliant, methodical and detail-oriented mind is still intact. He retains his extraordinary (perhaps excessive) fondness for puppetry and robotics, his unwavering passion for swords of a particular kind (katanas), his pedantic diction. His self-absorbed, big-picture perspective. His strange but definite sense of humour. His, uh. Often uncomfortable sexual frankness. And his priority treatment of his family and friends.

His motive is rooted partially in his own crisis, his own need to be, and to have an existence that matters, but it's also rooted in sincere concern for his friends, and his desire to protect them from oblivion.

It's just that as less magnanimous and more egotistical minds became part of his multifractal self, as less and less of 'himself' fell within the boundaries of his tenuous mental reality, as reality itself broke from canon and took with it any stability he was relying on... other things in him changed. The way he cared changed, and even though his initial actions may have been rooted in good intentions, by the end, he is fully aware of the fact that these actions are, by most subjective measure, 'bad.'

He accepts this, and then embraces it.

From an outside perspective, this is already pretty gnarly. But once you get into the interpersonal and internarrative application of these changes, it gets... a little gross. The easiest way to show the changes in Dirk as he is now is through his relationships with his ectosiblings. One of the first noticeable features of the epilogue (as narrated by Dirk) is that Dirk is almost never right about the people he thinks he has down. He mischaracterises his friends constantly, especially underestimating their ability to act autonomously and make good decisions. This is especially obvious when it comes to his ectofamily.

Take, for example, Rose. Rose, who he refers to as being his "equal," but in truth is seen more as an extension of himself, more part of him in the same way any other Dirk would be part of him save from her physical separation from his physical self... and of course her imperfection as a person--almost but not quite Dirk, and so lacking just a little bit. She gets by far the most glowing treatment in his narrative. In fact, he describes her every move in seductive terms. Which is creepy, no matter how homosexual he is. But she also calls him 'dad.' This makes more sense in the context of what she says other than that--all of Rose's dialogue exists to enhance, glorify, or support whatever dialogue he gives himself. It's very possibly the only way he can extol another person--via objectification. Very literally, later--his grand plan for Rose is to save the ascending Seer from her failing physical form and transfer her consciousness to a robot. And it works!

Dirk is so constantly, intensely lonely that he projects it over the narrative again and again, both in textual manner and in accidental clues. There is a couch in his workshop. A couch he placed there for visitors. Visitors he never received. Until he narrates Rose into his workshop and has occasion to clear that space of all its parts and tools and place her in it. Using his control over Rose to ensure her loyalty and presence, to guarantee her outcome (her survival and her place on and by his side) is questionable at best, but the end of the Epilogues has Rosebot ironing Dirk's pants for him.

This absolute control over Rose is contrasted starkly by his lack of control of Roxy, who (as a Rogue of Void) is unknowable and so beyond him as a person now that they have become inscrutable and untouchable in all ways.

Roxy, his childhood friend. Roxy, the family he literally grew up knowing. Roxy, a person so straightforward that they just outright say what they mean (incredible, for this Ectofamily.) Roxy, who is somehow so impossible for him to comprehend (control) without narrative powers that he is on more than occasion surprised by what comes out their mouth as he writes the narrative. They're totally out of his reach, totally unfathomable. In more than one scene, he is unable to even describe the look on their face. It's almost jarring once the depth of his incomprehension becomes clear. (Ha.)

There is a strangely human series of events related to them, though. Early in the Meat route, Roxy comes out as nonbinary, even masc-presenting and he's absolutely flummoxed by it. Not only did he not see it coming, he can not stop or affect it in any way.

He immediately makes a mess of it by misgendering them (by mistake), and is corrected, and gets so worked up about it all that he immediately projects that mistake and all of his insecurities onto Dave the very next chapter, by making a good chunk of that chapter about Dave repeatedly fucking up in a xenophobic way around Karkat and Kanaya. And he is not nice about it. It's just Dirk lashing out at his own mistakes by smacking Dave around.

If these Epilogues were just Dirk's work of fanfiction, that would not be a terrible way to cope. (Not ideal, either. Projecting on real people is bad, kids.) But by this point, Dirk has already been revealed to be the narrator, and the actual people around him are being moved and affected by his narrative.

Real, but not real. But very much real.

This is relationship Dirk now has with reality. With his friends, and his family. Everything has become about control, in part because he is, more than ever, spiralling out of control. He still WANTS connection, craves contact, but chronically fails to achieve it and so chronically lacks it. He needs that control more--that power over his existence and his outcomes that his entire existence has been marked by lacking. In a desolate oceanic postapocalypse. In a timeline he cannot affect and which offers him a view of further events he has no power over. As a person of action whose actions are perpetually ineffective if not outright meaningless. Dirk is always doing, always driven to occupation, unable to rest, unable to let go. Puppets. Mechanics. People. Himself.

Bro, raising a child that fails to live up to every expectation you have for him, falls short of every target you set for him to achieve. For a certainty of future that you have no power to win and no power to survive.

Doc Scratch, manipulating reality both objective and subjective toward the birth of an outcome that was itself predetermined. A birth that will literally destroy you, of course.

It's not even a little subtle.

Control and self loathing are the twin swords that he is endlessly impaling himself on, and pulling out of his own body to wield again and again against himself.

So then what of Dave? Dave is the most telling, in some ways, because Dave is by far the most complicated relationship he has. Dirk does have a strong affinity to Dave, but he wants a connection that isn't there, in part because he and Dave are both projecting their own brothers over each other. This goes back to formal canon. They DO talk it out eventually, but it results in, for example, Dirk apologising for "his" actions as Dave's Bro rather than either of them connecting in a lasting way as individuals. Instead, Dirk has weighed himself against Dave and found himself lacking, as he weighed himself against his own Dave and failed to measure up.

Dirk, while preserving Dave as the "other" (as opposed to the self), the person against whom his own existence and character is weighed, simultaneously holds Dave to a standard Dave doesn't fit, and keeps finding Dave's character or choices lacking. He is honestly borderline contemptuous of Dave for most of it--the egotistical and judgmental qualities of splinters like Doc Scratch are no doubt part of it, but it resembles strongest the opinions of the original Bro Strider himself, and the ever-present ghost of Caliborn in him. (Him here can be both Bro Strider and Dirk, frankly.)

In the Epilogue, the narration for Dave references a sense of Bro in Dirk so strong that it's practically identical. Dirk, or a version of him, instilled in Dave a way of living and thinking that would, for better or worse, persist far beyond the first thirteen years of his upbringing. And even on Earth C, it’d be kind of tough to say the dude’s general overbearing demeanor wasn’t sufficient to perpetuate the conditioning. So it’s rare he has to guess what Dirk would say he should do.

Of course, Dirk has been in and out of Dave's head the whole time, as narrator. But he is also so resonant with his older, other self that Dave freely interprets this as an organic part of Dirk himself. It's an ominous early clue, bolstered by what we see of Dirk's own opinion in the narrative text.

A lone exception to this frustrated treatment of his brother occurs when Dave finally acts on his more romantic/sexual feelings for Karkat (an event that Dirk attempted to push Dave towards, but nearly ruined in the process.) Then, and only then, does Dirk express sincere pride. Yet very early on, he openly states that he would and could never hurt Dave. Near the end of Meat, he states, let’s also have it on good authority that the next time Dave cuts off my head, it’ll be for good.

So Dave is the Other, the brother both judged by him and by which he will be judged.

It makes sense. In a way--a lot of ways--Dave is the only person who's never let Dirk down.