Liburutegia Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
liburuzaina) wrote2020-11-17 10:29 pm
liburuzaina) wrote2020-11-17 10:29 pm
Applications
Apps are currently: CLOSED
Reserves will open on: 2/19, 12:01AM EST
Apps will open on: 2/22 12:01AM
⬢ Application Open and Close will go by timestamp, even if mods have not officially changed the notification. ⬢
Player Info
⬢ Name:
⬢ Over 18?
⬢ Contact
⬢ Characters Currently In Game:
Character Info
⬢ Name:
⬢ Canon: If your canon has multiple names (ex.: MDZS/The Untamed), please take a moment to check and see if your canon is on the taken list already, and use the name there.
⬢ Canon Point:
⬢ History: We would prefer this to come in the form of a link or a series of links, but will accept written histories if there is nothing available.
For series with multiple routes and/or choices that can be made that effect the outcome of the game, please outline what choices were made as well.
⬢ Personality: Describe your character as best as you can. If we feel there is anything pivotal to the character that was left out, we will ask for revisions, so please try and be as thorough as possible. Be sure that the personality described is adequately reflected in your samples!
⬢ Powers: Because there is no power nerfing in the library itself by default, please list all canon powers, and outline what forms those powers take/what they can do. Feel free to link to a wiki section here as well, if that would be easier. Please note that any powers not on the application will not be accessible without a canon update, so we have something to refer to.
We do reserve the right to limit game-breaking powers, but will also work with you to give your character a reduced form of these powers, should they come up, so they won't be lost entirely.
⬢ Inventory: Please outline everything that was on your character's person at the moment they were pulled into the game. This includes weapons, armor, and anything in their pockets and/or any bags they might have been carrying. Please also describe (or link an image of) their second outfit from home, and choose two of the following three library shirts that they will find in their complimentary duffel. [1 2 3]
⬢ Sample 1: [Link] - An AC-length or longer non-network thread that showcases your character's personality. Samples may be from memes, psls, the TDM, or other games, so long as they are both accessible to the mods to read, and from within the past year.
⬢ Sample 2: [Link] - An AC-length or longer thread that showcases your character's personality. Samples may be from memes, psls, the TDM, or other games, so long as they are both accessible to the mods to read, and from within the past year. The second sample may be a network-style thread.
Reserves will open on: 2/19, 12:01AM EST
Apps will open on: 2/22 12:01AM
⬢ Application Open and Close will go by timestamp, even if mods have not officially changed the notification. ⬢
Application
⬢ Name:
⬢ Over 18?
⬢ Contact
⬢ Characters Currently In Game:
⬢ Name:
⬢ Canon: If your canon has multiple names (ex.: MDZS/The Untamed), please take a moment to check and see if your canon is on the taken list already, and use the name there.
⬢ Canon Point:
⬢ History: We would prefer this to come in the form of a link or a series of links, but will accept written histories if there is nothing available.
For series with multiple routes and/or choices that can be made that effect the outcome of the game, please outline what choices were made as well.
⬢ Personality: Describe your character as best as you can. If we feel there is anything pivotal to the character that was left out, we will ask for revisions, so please try and be as thorough as possible. Be sure that the personality described is adequately reflected in your samples!
⬢ Powers: Because there is no power nerfing in the library itself by default, please list all canon powers, and outline what forms those powers take/what they can do. Feel free to link to a wiki section here as well, if that would be easier. Please note that any powers not on the application will not be accessible without a canon update, so we have something to refer to.
We do reserve the right to limit game-breaking powers, but will also work with you to give your character a reduced form of these powers, should they come up, so they won't be lost entirely.
⬢ Inventory: Please outline everything that was on your character's person at the moment they were pulled into the game. This includes weapons, armor, and anything in their pockets and/or any bags they might have been carrying. Please also describe (or link an image of) their second outfit from home, and choose two of the following three library shirts that they will find in their complimentary duffel. [1 2 3]
⬢ Sample 1: [Link] - An AC-length or longer non-network thread that showcases your character's personality. Samples may be from memes, psls, the TDM, or other games, so long as they are both accessible to the mods to read, and from within the past year.
⬢ Sample 2: [Link] - An AC-length or longer thread that showcases your character's personality. Samples may be from memes, psls, the TDM, or other games, so long as they are both accessible to the mods to read, and from within the past year. The second sample may be a network-style thread.
To apply for your character, copy the text below and paste it into a comment, filling out all necessary information. Do not link your application. You may link your application from here or from an entry on your journal on the taken list.
Dirk Strider | Homestuck (Epilogues) | Not Reserved
⬢ Name: Raile
⬢ Over 18? Over 30
⬢ Contact
⬢ Characters Currently In Game: None
⬢ Name: Dirk Strider
⬢ Canon: Homestuck (Expanded Universe)
⬢ Canon Point: Homestuck Epilogues: Meat (End)
⬢ History: Homestuck wiki | Epilogues
The personality contains more pertinent links. Homestuck is a hard canon to work with.
⬢ Personality: [CW: Suicide and suicidal ideation, mind control] "I am my Ultimate Self." This is what Dirk claims, but what does that mean? In this essay I will--
Wait.
Dirk Strider | Bro Strider | Lil Hal | Arquius Sprite | Lil Cal | Doc Scratch | Brobot | Lord English
Okay. Those are all Dirk. You'll need to know them, because Dirk "I am my Ultimate Self" Strider is all of them.
There's also this asshole, who's part of Lord English. This is important, because it puts him in a very interesting position relative to the other narrator in the Epilogues. But that's for later.
Dirk, as per the Homestuck Epilogue, is in the throes of the merging of all splinters and versions of himself across all of Paradox Space and its timelines into his single consciousness. He is not the only character experiencing this: Rose, for example, is so debilitated by this experience (as a Seer, she is also absorbing every single vision experienced by every single version of herself, and as a Seer of Light, that is effectively all the knowledge of the universes: canon, outside canon, and non-canon) that it is killing her. (This, as it turns out, is actually Dirk controlling the narrative to make her ascension affect her in this way... but that's a later issue.)
Dirk, in one of the two Epilogue routes, commits suicide as a last act of control in a timeline rapidly dissolving into non-canon status, and in the other unlocks what has been referred to as powers of "Ultimate Self" that allowed him to take over the story-telling of Homestuck itself in the Meat path of the Epilogue. Which is the path this Dirk occupies. Sort of. Because Dirk is not okay, in any path, and this Dirk in particular is comprised of a great many terrible people, existing simultaneously and in multiplicity with multiple less terrible people, but under the pressures and influences of significantly worse people (Caliborn) and in direct antagonism with a theoretically less terrible person who hypocritically stands only to gain from his gradual transformation into an increasingly evil anime villain motherfucker, and whose opposition to him only serves to shape him further into such.
But then, he stands to gain from that, too. It is, in fact, his entire stated goal.
A non-canon state is intolerable to him, and his purpose in seizing control of the narrative is to give the story direction and purpose, and in doing so enable as many of his fellow players to unlock their ultimate selves as well. In other words, he wants them to control the narrative so they can't fade out of canonical relevance. Controlling the narrative is a very literal act. Dirk is writing the third person narrative and inserting thoughts and feelings into others' minds and even dictating their dialogue--to a greater or lesser degree, as some are able to resist him, others outright aware of his influence. An alternate version of Calliope, the Muse, arrives from a different space and time and fights with him for control, leading to a lot of petty bickering and underhanded tactics as they fight to tell the story the way they want it.
And not everything Dirk does serves his goal, expressly. Some of it is much more selfish. In a lot of ways, Meat is the Epilogue that Dirk spends self-destructing gratuitously in order to inflict collateral damage on everyone else. What he did to Jake, for example. He spends a great deal of time and text dragging Jake through the mud, with extra emphasis on Jake's uselessness and idiocy. It becomes clear that at some point prior to the Epilogues, he and Jake fell out over romantic issues, and he uses the narrative to keep pushing Jake's thoughts to Dirk--how much he loves Dirk, how much he wants Dirk, how much he regrets hurting Dirk and so on--until Dirk finally arrives at Jake's place in person near the end of Meat. He's there to get a spaceship. While he's there, Jake begs Dirk to take him along, and this is the moment Dirk's been waiting for: Dirk rejects him utterly and just breaks Jake's brain completely. He just obliterates him totally as a person. Snapped like a twig. It's objectively awful. And despite the work he put into setting it up, it's not even the satisfying moment Dirk wanted it to be.
What's happening with Dirk in the Epilogues is three-parted. One, the many selves of Dirk Strider, the many splinters and variations on his original existence, are taking up a vast amount of mental real estate, pushing him to and past the point of losing any control of who he actually is. He's less "Dirk Strider" than he is the vast persona, an abstract concept manipulating the specific 'self' and body of the Dirk Strider in Meat.
It's worth noting Dirk may not have actually achieved his true Ultimate Self. There is no indication that he has (for example) any knowledge of Brain Ghost Dirk. Unlike pretty much everyone else, though, he has a lot of splinters that were not meant to share one brain experience--he would only need to merge some splinters from a few main timeline to go off the rails.
Two, Dirk's reality and sense of self are and were, at best, tenuous and highly artificial--even before he became capable of understanding 'canon' as a state, let alone dictation of the narrative itself.
Three, Dirk's intense, compulsive need to be in control.
The result is a heady mix of Dirk's worst qualities, enhanced and exacerbated by Caliborn's influence, but served as a concoction of his increasingly worse persons (Doc Scratch, Bro Strider, Lil Cal.) People are inherently self contradictory to begin with, but there's this immense ego, this elevated sense of self in Dirk that tends to clip through self loathing like Bethesda game model. Even when there's self hatred (and there is so MUCH self hatred in Dirk), there's an underlying assumption that he knows what's best/better and that was very highlighted in the scenes up to his suicide especially.
Others can be satisfied with their existence, perhaps. But not Dirk. Not as the light of canon was petering out. Unfortunately for everyone. Or fortunately, perhaps. After all, he is giving them the blessing of canon relevance.
They may not longer inhabit canon, but better outside canon than non-canon. Better tenuously relevant than not relevant at all.
Or, put another way.... better tenuously real than not real at all.
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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.
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He also has extremely conditional immortality, in that a death must be ruled either Heroic or Just or he'll resurrect.
Now. The Ultimate Self. That's all been sort of described in Personality, but the Narrative specifically is the awareness of the text, panels, medium, and media in general. Not only can he 'read' the material of canon, it's actually beamed more or less directly into his brain, nonstop. He can also write or otherwise manipulate the narrative, though. He interferes directly in PesterQuest, physically arriving to interrupt one route and later arguing with one of the rl authors (Aysha U Farah) and then using the mechanics of the game to force a choice that the player character (MSPAR, aka MSPA Reader) only barely escapes, and they can only do so by breaking the meta using the Juju-like powers they gained at the beginning of the game... and also, becoming a Green Sun powered demigod protecting a closed pocket universe (which is to say, PesterQuest itself.)
He's sensitive enough to the meta that he can literally feel when MSPA Reader enters the retcon space that PesterQuest encapsulates to begin with.
Functionally, in an RP sense, Dirk can 'hear' what's written in the text of all tags, and in my tags, he can TRY to stipulate events or dictate thoughts that other characters will then experience. In extremes, he may even put words in another character's mouth, literally. So it's like mind reading/mind control, but think of it also as him mind-reading the setting.
This is pretty heavily nerfed, thankfully, by two conditions.
One, his control is stronger over characters who would want to listen to Dirk Strider OR who would take outside impulses as their own.
Two, his control is stronger when he tells characters to do things they actually want to do already.
And his control over other people falls apart pretty quickly if he can't convincingly emulate either or both of these conditions.
Dirk, a bottomless, limitless, endless ocean of infinitely himself, is absolutely fucking garbage at reading people, even when they straight up tell him who they are and what they're feeling.
Particularly perceptive characters (especially those who have experience with mind control) may notice something weird is happening! (John Egbert does this in canon.)
Particularly individualistic or stubborn characters may resist or argue with him! (Dave Strider does this in canon.)
Characters whose insecurities, vulnerabilities, or motives are easily replicated by Dirk projecting blatantly all over them are more at risk (this happens to Kanaya) but even that's not ironclad.
He does NOT know about DWRP, he will NEVER know about that. ONLY the presence of a narrative, the fourth wall, canon, and an audience (to whom he addresses his narration.)
He is also not that great at multitasking, if you catch my drift. In fact, he's... really bad at it. If he's really deep in the narrative, he's liable to walk into stationary objects, space out and forget to talk or act (or respond directly to something narrative instead of limiting himself to what he should be aware of), or even just lie down on the floor and pretend that's where he wants to be. (If you want sources for this, I can provide them.)
⬢ Inventory: MSPA Modus (Sylladex Fetch Modus) containing the following: Unbreakable Katana, god tier costume, his own teenage skull (bleached clean), an unspecified number of orange sodas (flat), 1 copy of Rose Lalonde's book The Complacency of the Learned, 1 sleeve of unsalted saltine crackers, a handful of blank panels, a red rifle (this is just a visually identical rifle, built in his workshop and used to fire a dart instead of a fenestrated wall), 1 rocketboard, 1 box of Gushers, 1 fancy santa, 2 MLP: FiM colouring books, a few hundred thousand boondollars and coins, this and this shirt.
⬢ Sample 1: [Link]
⬢ Sample 2: [Link]
ACCEPTED - With a note
⬢ Please review the Rules & FAQ, and any other information on the Navigation you need to.
⬢ Set up your inbox, permissions, and HMD pages. All characters must have all three of these pages.
⬢ Request to join
⬢ Comment to the Taken List.
⬢ Reply to this comment with the journal you'll be using.
⬢ Fill out this survey.
⬢ Follow the mod plurk over at
All new acceptances must wait until the first of the month to start playing in the game. Until then, feel free to keep playing on the TDM, or make plans on the player intro!
Note: All weapons will be yoinked right out of his sylladex to be placed in the display cases, and Dirk will be unable to remove his food and drinks from the sylladex outside of the cafe.
Also, we're pretty sure you're aware, but please communicate with other players regarding his powers! Thanks!
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I'll be putting up a new (separate from VR) Permissions post on this journal specifically for this game, with opt-in/opt-out options and also comment screening.
If there's any other measures the mod team would like me to take, I am 100% happy to do so!
(I can also use a different journal from the one I'm using here, if that's too confusing.)
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I'll spend tonight setting it up, but this will be Dirk's journal here!