So, apparently Dirk Gentlys follows the Hero's Journey to a T???
Heres a very to-the-point analysis-ish
The Call to Adventure
Todd goes into the hotel room and sees the massacre, gets the lottery ticket. He goes home and sees Dirk.
Refusal of the Call
Kicks Dirk out of his apartment, refuses to accept that he’s a major part of the plan of the universe.
Supernatural Aid
The Rowdy 3 break in, landlord finds out and is about to kill Todd, bullet ricochets and kills landlord.
The Crossing of the First Threshold
They go and steal Gordon Rimmer’s Dog/Lydia.
Belly of the Whale
Todd gets interrogated and is now the suspect for several murders and an arson case.
The Road of Trials
After finding a secret lab and a crank in the Spring house, they go into the secret-death-maze.
The Meeting with the Goddess
The Rowdy 3 save them from the death maze and they see the screens
Woman as the Temptress
They’re tempted to not go forward due to the lightbulb trap, due to the sudden danger of the case.
Atonement with the Father
Todd tells Amanda he never had pararibulitis
Apotheosis
When they get found by Rimmer and get kidnapped
The Ultimate Boon
Realising how the machine works and using it to go back in time to fix everything
Refusal of the Return
Todd finds out how much Dirk has been lying about.
The Magic Flight
They go back to the present without being kidnapped, get bald guys’d and Estevez’d
Rescue from Without
They do the machine part 2
The Crossing of the Return Threshold
Ken comes and fixes the machine, they send it back. Everything is all good.
Master of the Two Worlds
Todd is no longer a failure, and is rather an assistant to a detective
Call to Adventure (?)
Rowdy 3, Dirk and Ken get kidnapped, Todd gets pararibulitis, and now they’re all wanted by the FBI.
I find it really sad how Dirk's return to Blackwing is in the 'back to status quo' step. Darn you show-writers including Dirk Angst everywhere whether it's figurative or literal.
- Farah looks around the “room” she was stuck in previously and looks around intently, then says: “Take me to the house” in a very serious tone. Dirk then looks at Todd and does a thumbs up very enthusiastically while smiling really widely, meanwhile Todd and Farah look very defeated - he has a hard time “reading the room” and reacting “appropriately” due to the misread of tone/situations
- “I spoke to the police!” (in a tone indicating enthusiasm and importance), “What did they say?”, “...go away.” - trouble with intonation/expressing himself in a way that implies something else.
- “I gave the bad guys my number” “You gave them your number?” “In self defense!” - same as before, his tone indicates purpose to Farah and Todd, and then he explains what he meant and they’re confused. In the same scene, Rimmer’s number is saved as “bad gun man”, which is both funny but also very relatable, because of the hard time we have remembering things, it’s very common for us to save numbers as name + where we know the person from to facilitate identification
*- Farah says in a very stressed out tone, “Everything I own is there [Spring’s mansion], my clothes, my gun-”, giving examples of why it’s important to her to go back there. Dirk immediately replies: “You look good” smiling and in a reassuring tone, misreading Farah’s concern to be about her appearance (more obvious) VS what she means subtextually (her life is in the mansion)
- When Todd freaks out unexpectedly, Dirk gets very startled and looks from Todd to the way Farah went back and forth about four times very quickly - unexpected changes can be very confusing / hard to process
*- Right after that, Dirk and Todd have the following dialogue: “Wait a moment!” / “What?” / “Are you… mad at me?” - it’s incredibly hard to read other’s emotions, especially when in relation to us. Dirk takes a moment to check in to clear things up because he isn’t sure where Todd stands about him.
Then, when Todd answers “Yes– No– I don’t know. I don’t know what I am at you”, Dirk reacts very positively, saying “Good” and patting Todd’s shoulder, immediately running away to Farah after “resolving” the situation and taking Todd’s confusion to be best than a very certain “I’m mad at you” - It can be reassuring to be told someone isn’t angry at us when reading other’s tone and intentions/reactions is so hard, especially from someone who means a lot to us.
Not a Dirk scene, but something I find important to mention. In between Dirk scenes, we get to see a conversation between Col. Riggins and Friedkin where Riggins says: “Blackwing had one mission: to seek out, codify and collect individuals with sensory perceptive abilities beyond the normal human range”. Meanwhile, Dirk repeatedly states throughout the show and especially to B.W. agents that “This isn’t how it works, this isn’t how I work!” and they never ever take him seriously, believing themselves to know better than the subjects do about themselves and their abilities.
With that in mind, I draw an important parallel between how Black Wing works and how the ableist medical community works, specially in the timeframe where Dirk would have been in when he was in being held by them - With blackwing being created in 1988, the general belief that Dirk is in his 30s, and Dirk being one of the original subjects, that places his captivity in the 80s-00s, being there from about age 5 until 12 years old and getting out in 2000, because with the show happening in 2016, and when Riggins confronts him at the Ridgley Dirk says: It’s been 16 years, that’s a general timeline.
TRIGGER WARNING FOR FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH: ABLEISM, THERAPY TO “CURE” US
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All of this to say that the way Black Wing is shown to operate both in S1 and S2, with tests, general subhuman conditions, “exposure” therapy, electric shocks, cruel testing and impossible standards, I see a very big connection with how some facilities and programs conduct behavioral “therapy” towards autistics, now too but even more so in the timeframe Dirk was a subject originally. The similarities, albeit in a very sci-fi esque aesthetic so to speak, are clear between black wing’s “program” and ABA “therapies”/Experiments/”Research”.
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Continuing on, Farah and Dirk going to the Spring mansion:
- Dirk doesn’t swing his arms when he’s walking, very common in autistic people and neurodivergent people in general because of our commonly comorbid lack of motor skills + different center of balance from neurotypicals which means we don’t usually need to move our arms when walking to “balance out” our leg movements because we also tend to walk differently.
*- “You’ve never met him” / “Yes, he seems like someone I’ve never met” - Very funny line but also very relatable when you realize Dirk constantly makes “small talk” by stating the obvious.
- “Isn’t that… Interesting”, Says Spring’s lawyer, to which Dirk promptly replies: “I get that a lot” - I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told the exact same thing or similar stuff, whether neurotypicals consciously realize this or not they seem to pick up very quickly we’re not like them on a very fundamental basis and WILL give backhanded compliments such as saying we’re interesting or quirky or anything like that. It took me a WHILE to realize this is what was happening and that they usually never mean it in a positive way.
*- When Spring’s lawyer gives Farah the letter saying that Spring instructed him to only give it to Farah when in the presence of someone named Dirk Gently, he says “Well it’s lucky I’m here then!” in a very chipper tone.
Then, when Farah is having a breakdown and tell him she didn’t think he was still in the room, he says “Why would I leave the room? All of the good stuff is happening in here!”, and only THEN does he pay closer attention to how Farah is and asks “Were you and Patrick… close?” - He has a really hard time “reading the room” as I’ve said, and specially in relation to things that he considers more “obvious” like the case he’s working on.
AND THEN, when Farah says she is a bunch of negative things, Dirk goes, tentatively, “No, no, listen, you’re only SOME of those things” and she reacts by letting out a scream and sitting down forcefully, and he becomes even more unsure of how to act, starts trembling and pats Farah’s shoulder and then pokes it, gives up and sits down next to her. - It’s very hard to comfort people when you have a hard time reading other’s emotions, and I think that although Dirk didn’t do a very good job on comforting Farah he did try his best in a confusing situation to him, and ended up helping her nonetheless, taking us to:
*- “I don’t know anything, ever. It’s really quite relaxing. It’s how I work, I..follow fate around. It’s how I found you.” - there is a LOT of freedom in accepting you’ll most likely never have the in’s and out’s of reading others and that you can really only try your best in navigating life without having all the pieces other’s seem to have access to.
- When Farah opens the envelope Spring left her Dirk YOINKS it from her, then when he reads the “You” says “This doesn’t look like you, he’s got the hair all wrong!” - very funny moment and also shows two traits: impulsivity and literal thinking.
*- When they’re trying to follow the map, he nervously follows Farah around in the most autistic way of walking ever, it’s so relatable it’s comical honestly, the slight tip toeing, swinging side to side, just !!! he’s just like us fr
*- Farah starts analyzing the wall and he goes on a rant trying to figure out what she’s doing, interpreting the way she’s acting very literally, “It’s a wall.. Did he enjoy walls? Did ever mention a LOVE for walls-” and immediately SCREAMS and jumps backwards when Farah makes a loud noise by breaking the fake wall down with the iron, trembling the whole time - sound seems to be one of his most intense sensory triggers.
*- “How… did you do that?” / “With my hand!” - He’s SO literal I love him
*- “Dirk? I’m starting to think you’re actually a pretty good detective” - his face goes, rapidly: happy, proud, he shakes his head, aloof, uncaring.
Dirk frequently schools his expressions out, trying to make the “correct” face in regards to the situation at hand, which shows two different things: he has a hard time figuring out right away which one is the “correct” expression AND he has been conditioned to think his initial reactions are always wrong/unnaceptable.
*- When Todd reaches Amanda after running to her house, he says “Dirk doesn’t know anything. In fact, the amount of things he doesn’t know are stupefying” - slightly ableist although it makes sense within context where Dirk knows a lot of things about “random” or seemingly (to others) unimportant stuff but has a hard time with “simple” (to others) concepts/things
- Autistic funny AND sarcastisc moment when Dirk goes “Oh.. is that why you’re here?” when Todd states that this is MY apartment.
- Amanda says, “I don’t go out much”, and Dirk says: “Me neither!” - it’s common for us to not really go out that much because going out can be very overwhelming in many many ways
- When he and Todd have the discussion on the hallway, he’s very direct and vulnerable with Todd, even if he doesn’t know him THAT well, saying “I want your help”, for example, instead of just hinting at it or dancing around the subject just because it’s a hard one - we’re often direct with our intentions/feelings
- As he goes downstairs after convincing Todd to help him and to get the everbulb from his car, he does a little celebration by jumping a bit and pumping his fists, which isn’t NECESSARILY a stim but could be read as one! - stim: from “stimulation”, when we do repetitive things based on the major five senses to express happiness and also regulate our emotions, like jumping or singing for example.
- When confronted by Riggins and Friedkin he has a ‘slight’ meltdown and after getting tackled holds onto the stairwell’s bars, shaking. - I do know it’s a common reaction given the situation but also fits pretty well with mine and other autistic people’s experience in regards to what our specific reactions to overwhelming situations can look like.
As always thank you for reading and let me know if you want to be tagged in future posts/When I make the masterpost after finishing all of the episodes! I took a long time from E2 to this one because I changed jobs and had a really hard time adapting but am now more stable and have a bit more of free time!
very random and not really an ask, but i just wanted to say that your analysis posts about audhd dirk are one of my favourite things on this entire site. they are so good and lovely, and as an autistic person being able to see my traits overlapping with dirks is very comforting. thank you!!!! 🦒🦒
GASP thank you so so much!!! Doing those analysis really helped me as well because he's my favorite and just like me in so many ways!!
I need to get back to doing them but can never find the time, I'll try my best though. Thank you anon this really means a lot to me :]] /genuine
