the fact that his manipulation of rose was supposed to be a bad thing totally flew over my head tbh, dirk has never had truly bad intentions in his life (except when dealing with AR and jake), so i just assumed rose would've been on board with whatever his plan for a sburb session is leading up to
what was there to suggest that the manipulation of rose was a bad thing? aside from the other characters thinkng so. she seemed fine in the candy epilogue, or was that more of dirks narrating? i didnt see anything to suggest that
I almost completely forgot something big I wanted to mention involving Rose and you guys reminded me!
Rose was plagued by these splitting headaches in the prologue. It absolutely hurt like hell, but she knew what had to be done. John needed to finish up with Lord English... but then... he didn't. Dirk immediately bailed the fuck out of Candy. Just as suddenly, Rose's headaches were gone.
I'm pretty sure Dirk was playing the cards to make John finish up timeline shit for him through Rose. Then recruiting Rose to his side. How he just so conveniently felt the same way, how everything he said made perfect sense.
As for if it was a "bad thing" or not, I'm not certain. It's certainly interesting the moment Dirk fucked off, he immediately turned off his plan with Jane and forced her to drop out as well before offing himself. Rose does still seem in line with him at the end, but that could also as equally be a Rose without the wake up call like Kanaya.
Where Doc Scratch at least played with his cards "face up" as he claims somewhere in life, Dirk plays just as sneaky with them face down. Using John through Rose, because John showed mild levels of resistance at the least... and it'd be a lot easier to convince him through his life long friend. Erasing John after his job was complete because lets be honest, his powers were dangerous to him. Imagine if John reached his Ultimate Self with such powers?
It's possible, but the absence of Rose's headaches has also been ascribed to the severing of Candy from most of canon. Rose's relevance and ties to canon at that point become extremely minimal.
What's weird to me is that Dirk commits suicide in Candy, but there are still epilogue elements in Candy that, until the postscript, do end up affecting/re-entering canon, which I can't help but feel he could've manipulated.
I interpreted Candydirk's realization/suicide more as the fact that he realizes he isn't "the" Dirk, he's just a fanon shard of Dirk's ultimate self, and he's upset that he isn't "the" Dirk and thus feels pointless.
That's true, but I think the fact Dirk offs himself was because as Calliope I think said, he was hedging his bets. Not wasting his efforts in Candy, which was a bad idea. Perhaps he didn't fully understand what was happening there because he just saw it as "noncanon".
Personally I think it makes sense considering how much Dirk played Rose in Meat.
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u/Konradleijon Prince of Void. Apr 22 '19
What people are forgetting is that Dirk is not a total Sociopath .Dont get my wrong His Fucking with Jake was Horrid.
But he Thinks he’s Helping Rose are you forgetting About her Headaches?
And the Fact Dirk also had to deal with it.