Have you finished Candy and if so what do you think of the Dirk Reveal in that in relation to the events of Meat?
Now that I’ve finished Candy, I think it’s time to lay down my thoughts for sure.
Candy and Meat together make Dirk’s suicide weird. From what I can tell, he’s been in control of the narrative a long time before the events of the Prologue. This isn’t something that he’s done just as we’re reading them happen; he’s been planning the events of Meat probably since the first time he pulled a blackout on everyone (which Jane mentions in Candy while she and Jake are getting drunk). He’s been aware of the narrative, its importance, and what he has to do, for a while. He’s been laying out plans and pulling the strings for three years.
And then, suddenly, none of that matters. One decision made by John - by the sounds of it - cuts him out of the narrative entirely. He loses control, and he realises, quickly, that this isn’t a universe that will go well for him - worse, I think, is that he realises it’s a universe Calliope has complete control over, and he’s quick to get the fuck out before she shows up.“This world has been set on a path you cannot tread.” It’s like he’s regrouping, in a way; kill off the loose end, become part of the whole that is Dirk in Meat.
It’s this series of paragraphs that presents itself as the most interesting, so I’ll post it all here and then comment beneath it:
“A slip of the cosmic coin has rendered your entire life completely inessential. What could you accomplish in a dead-end existence like this? There are no stakes. No meaningful challenges. No structures or themes - only residual chemical reactions in a dying brain…”
“Your friends might derive some sense of fulfillment from satisfying the elementary obligations of self-preservation and self-propogation, but there’s nothing here for you. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Your choice is not between that of life and death. It is between an ignominious dissolution at the hands of entropy, and one final act of relevance that can bequeath your meager energies to the cosmic well from whence they came.”
“It is the very last moment of narratively consequential action that will happen in this whole, barren world.”
To Dirk, without any ability to hold Relevance or Truth or Essentiality, everything becomes meaningless. There’s nothing to stimulate him, and he holds no desire to stay in a world that isn’t Canonical. He doesn’t see the Candy route as being worthwhile because it holds no actual worth, no baring of the Plot. Despite the fact that everyone can - and does - live out the rest of their lives, that life isn’t Real enough to Dirk to even bother trying to go on with it. If there’s no Challenge, nothing to try and work towards, then it just doesn’t matter.
This leads to the idea that his choice is between entropy and one last act of relevance. In his suicide, Dirk destroys the last piece of narrative importance in the Candy Epilogue. He is the narrative importance in Meat after all; with him gone, there is no narrative entity to keep it going (which isn’t entirely true, but I’ll be going on about that in another anon). This, there, explains it best: “The corrosion has already begun. You can feel the gears slowing, all the intricate, unseen mechanisms coming unhinged from their mooring and drifting apart.” Everything that Dirk has been doing to keep them relevant falls apart the moment John fails to become part of that relevance, and instead allows them to become a state separate from canon that Alternate!Calliope can use. The power struggle shifts, and everything falls apart. There’s no point in Dirk staying in a timeline where he’s lost all his power, relevance, and ability to influence the narrative. If it’s not canon, he can’t control it.
You can tell, too, that this is the importance of the action. As Dirk jumps, he considers death to work in two parts, the first being “the destruction of the meat”. While he’s referring to his body, he’s also referring to the fact that the Meat Epilogue is him. He’s the author of it, he’s the one who resides over every action and every plot point, he’s the one who ensures, without fail, that everyone within the Meat timeline remains as canon as possible. Not only is he destroying the last piece of Canonicity within Candy, but he’s destroying the very aspect that makes the Meat Epilogue what it is; himself. This, to a degree, is why we have two Epilogues. Meat is Dirk’s; Candy is Alternate Calliope’s. (Again, more on that in another anon).
It’s this paragraph that makes it even more interesting:
“Yours is a singularity of narcissism - an endlessly recursive existence so dense that it has no choice but to sprawl out much further than the boundaries of its person in any given universe or timeline. Once cut off from that, you become unbearably dispensable.”
Dirk’s powers as a Prince of Heart were always going to end up with him becoming aware of the narrative. Being so deeply connected to all the other versions of himself, with the very concept of Self as a whole, and being someone who actively destroys it, Dirk had almost no choice but to reach a point of complete awareness. It’s why he’s the only one who doesn’t die when they’re admitted access to the Ultimate Self, I think; because he is the Ultimate Self, and he’s always been aware of his other Selves, and connected to them.
Now that Candy!Dirk is cut off from the Ultimate Self - from being the Ultimate Self, the way that he was always lining himself up to be - he’s just another inefficient and unnecessary splinter. Someone who’s very aware of the stakes at hand, but no longer has control over them. I think that’s objectively the worst sort of position this Dirk could be in - the one thing he’s terrified of most.
So while I still have my issues with it, it’s also incredibly interesting to compare what we’re told in Candy to what we see in Meat. There’s a clear union between the two Epilogues; an ideology in one that explains actions in another. It makes Meat more palatable, more acceptable; here’s some vague sense of what’s going on in Dirk’s head, the logic behind the bullshit. I’m glad I read both, now - because you really don’t get enough from just one or the other to feel satisfied, even if it’s still a bitter sort of satisfaction.
snowghoul
jbbartram-illu
theartofmadeline
dailybridgerton
areudirty
turnnoffyourmind
stormborns
