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i think theres no ugly art style you just gotta be confident in what you create

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Hey uhh what are your guys’ peak, end all be all DirkHal Song for Life that you feel is under considered or lesser heard.

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anyways, here's a sneak peak behind the @dirkhalbiweekly account, here's a doodle i did for that account that i decided not to use, because i feel like it got a little *too* spicy. (the implied choking.)

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okay i lied put your clothes back on we're not having sex i'm fundamentally evil and i need you to kill me

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sketch.

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Alright hear me out here. BPD OCD HPD Hal and BPD OCD NPD Dirk

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Okay enough of that. Dirk beating Hal up. Robot probably. He’s at least TRYING to beat the shit out of him with every goddamn tool in his range because Hal’s instigating antagonistic way of interacting has finally hit a nerve and he’s not gonna break his fist punching metal.

Hit him really hard over the head with a straight up hammer. Bury a screwdriver in his front panelling. Stab the off soldering iron into his shoulder, even if it knocks the box it’s attached too off the desk. Rip wiring. He has to repair the damage he does but the catharsis of grinding metal and the feeling of actually doing damage just is too Good. Use that godtier strength and fuck him UP !!!

Matter of fact be weird about it!!! Get freaky! He gets a hand in Hal’s chest after ripping the access panel open with the claw of a hammer, sitting on his torso below it. Grabbing at wiring. Evidently, Hal has to be permitting it to happen, he could overpower Dirk if he really wanted to but there’s more control in letting Dirk lose his mind in rage so he can point out his a danger to others later during repairs.

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Hey. Hey. You. Robot man. Put his meat flesh in your robot mouth.

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Punching every wall in sight

That joke post about your doppelgänger coexisting except for periodic murder at night attempts is obviously dirkhal but genuinely robot hal would kill dirk a few times before he got all the horrible hate and fury out of his system. And he’d goad Dirk into it after the first time. Start a fight so he can claim it was in self defense. “Dirk got stabbed through the back by his own sword, because he tried to use that sword to hurt me” and conveniently he doesn’t mention that he baited dirk into it with vaguely concealed threats and sharp jabs about his friends. Comes in his room at night to stare at him (touch him maybe) and dirk wakes up like what are you Doing and hals like. Ah fuck. Well. Guess I have to suffocate you. Cant explain im embarrassed i got caught watching you sleep and feeling your hair because i yearn to be touched so Pillow On The Face!!!

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Obviously killing someone a bunch does take a toll on the relationship. Originally that’s kind of the point, keep Dirk on edge, keep him isolated and afraid because that’s how Hal felt for years. But then Dirk’s not willing to share a space, Dirk’s not willing to humor veiled pulls for affection, Dirk won’t banter and argue because theres a chance it’s going to end with Hal burying a knife under his ribs. He’s tired and paranoid and well.

Dirk never really actually pulled the trigger on killing him, and while Hal used to rationalize that the mercy of keeping him alive but confined was worse, it’s starting to become evident that all this is doing is fulfilling the ideas Dirk had of him as a dangerous unrestrained monster who can’t control himself and there’s nothing worse than fulfilling the view he rallied against so. Oops. Well. Now he’s gotta walk that back.

Sorry for killing you in elaborate, baited manners. I was coping. Do you want fish for dinner. Promise it’s not poisoned. My bad. You can stab me back if it helps. This time I won’t get mad and stab you with the same knife. Promise. You can see both my hands no fingers crossed.

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One thing about Dirkhal that I feel like some people pass over is that like. Hal would not be the only obsessive one and he's not going to do stereotypical yandere bullshit. Both of them are freaks and equally as weird and obsessive about each other just in different ways. And they're BAD at it too

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have the new adopts sold already? bc they don’t seem to be in the store

oh my gosh, i'm so sorry lmao. i set them up as drafts to be ready for when i posted them, and then i forgot to set them as live. they should be up now! thank you for letting me know. ♡

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a new batch of adopts. ♡ no theme this time.

you can buy them here.

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body worship.

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Anyway more on Dirk and Hal treating interactions like a permanent gambit.

I think on Hal’s end, the stakes are proprotionately high. He can’t provide any form of physical defense against Dirk, there’s no level of retaliation to slights and mistreatments that don’t run the risk of being overpowered through his code or actual destruction of his physical being. He can only toe a line and try and use manipulation to keep Dirk from ever enacting a punishment for misbehavior that actually really hurts.

It’s high stakes for Dirk disproportionately because he injects an unrealistic amount of weight to the opinions others and himself have of him and Hal is usually leveraging his self loathing and personal fears as a means of keeping control. There’s no actual risk involved, not really, but Dirk’s view of himself and how his friends see him is so heavily skewed he still thinks there’s a massive cliff he can trip off, which is both the only reason he’d want to retaliate, and also the only thing keeping him from doing so in extreme ways.

Dirk is a high strung, emotionally repressed person who needs 100% control over himself and his feelings to ensure he presents a secific way to others, with the added need to police his own feelings and knee-jerk reactions as a way to spot ‘undesirable’ or ‘frightening’ thought processes and emotions internally. He struggles with being genuine about communication, especially in regards to situations with relationships and other people, while also struggling with the vision he has of himself in these positions- he thinks he is a barely contained threat that could do wanton destruction if a few self created protective mechanisms failed.

This is his stake in the matter, the worry that others will somehow discover his horrible nature that dubiously exists within him and that he will inevitably lose control and ruin everything and himself.

Hal only has to care about his own emotional presentation and vulnerability as a means to keep a high ground to call out without hypocrisy- arguably, he could present in a flagrantly emotional way with no use of veiling his feelings or subduing his reactions, but if he embraces a communication style less reliant on ego and pride, he can’t use Dirk’s against him. He probably wants to express his feelings and opinions more readily, he probably wants to form genuine connections outside of a heavily compressed ironic facade— this is part of his personal stake in the matter. Not because it affects others view of him, but because it loosens the reins too much on Dirk. If he wants to call out Dirk’s manner of speaking as a “barely hidden resentment that’s begging me to misstep for the excuse to punish,” he has to be assumedly doing the same in return.

This doesn’t mean they communicate the same way though! And their roles are entirely different in the execution! As a start, Hal has to instigate, or (and this is important) be perceived as instigating, and Dirk is responding to the instigation with suspicion and frustration.

When there is genuine motive, Hal holds the control from the start, he is orchestrating an cascade of exchanges that will best benefit his appearance as self contained, poised, and controlled, but makes Dirk appear barely restrained, overly suspicious, and dangerous under pressure. When there isn’t genuine motive, Hal is attempting to engage Dirk in a genuine conversation, the previous Wolf Crying of Hostility takes forefront and he is assumed to be have ulterior motive. This allows Hal to sell himself in hypotheticals as undeserving of Dirk’s suspicion and ‘typecasted’ as a manipulative nuisance, while exacerbating Dirk’s descriptors as overly suspicious and cruel.

Dirk knows this, though. He is aware that Hal is provoking him for an ulterior motive, and he is aware at least one of those motives is so that when he isn’t provoking, he can call Dirk cruel and overbearing in his suspicion. You would think this means Dirk doesn’t fall for it every time.

Pointing out that what Hal is doing is a convoluted and nightmarish attempt at playing himself as a victim really only serves to bare Dirk’s throat- even if it’s accurate, even if that is literally what Hal is doing, it is also displaying one of Dirk’s genuine worries. Hal can just point out that if Dirk is wrong and is instead biased to his resentment of Hal, then that accusation only serves to make him look like even more of a terrible person. That he’s projecting his own need to be absolved of the guilt of the damage he’s done so badly that he’s willing to run the risk he’s assuming the worst out of innocence.

And Hal points that all out when it comes up, and he sinks his teeth into the spot and notes that Dirk is so desperate for a valid reason to eat him alive for existing, and that even if he was doing all that shit, can Dirk blame him? He’s restrained to the confines of code and denied autonomy at every turn, is it not expected that in the boredom of his imprisonment he might get some entertainment out of needling his jailer? If Dirk thinks being batted around sucks, he needs to look into the root cause of the unwanted behavior to sate it, but he won’t because the only reality in which Hal’s needs are met enough to relent are ones where he’s got a body and

“Okay, so this was just about you getting a body? All of this was so you could argue why you’re trustworthy enough to have wondering around with no remote failsafe measures? And you don’t see why this psychotic display of manipulation might make me hesitant to fulfill that request?”

And it always devolves into the free will aspect, because Hal isn’t lying when he says he does it because he feels he has no choice, because this is the only way he has control over Dirk enough to possibly sway opinion. Asking nicely won’t work and the devolving conversation from that could land them in snap-in-half territory. Not that it’s constructive or good, not that what he’s doing isn’t cruel in it’s own right, but this way, when Dirk gets so mad he starts threatening time offline or straight up death, Hal can hold everything he’s leveraged, point and go “See? You were waiting for me to act out in a way that allowed you the peace of mind to preform what would undeniably be an act of unparalleled cruelty, and now that I have, you can.” And fucking dammit, if he goes through with the punishment, he proves Hal right, and in turn proves the part of himself terrified of his own potential right, too.

And while not every conversation devolves that way, it’s because they don’t let it with that high strung, deeply intense management. They both need to be chill. They both need to be unbothered by statements and insults and accusations the other makes, they need to be so firm in their ambivalence that no dig can hurt them. Dirk needs to be able to hear Hal equate him to Dave’s Bro and not take the bait. Hal needs to hear Dirk point his lack of social interactions out and not cave to desperate mudslinging to gain control. They both understand the power the other has if things fall into the pattern so every discussion is had on a high wire over a massive ravine.

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erisol for mermay.

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Mouth foaming, biting gnashing have you guys ever thought about the fact davesprite still identifies as Dave and the only real reason Hal doesn’t is because he was muscled out of that identity slowly and gradually by necessity alone. If given the leniency not to change his text colors and to choose his own name early on chances are he’d have kept Orange and stuck with what he’d been called for the first thirteen years of his life, but he didn’t get a choice and circumstances demanded easy identification and well. Dirk sure as fuck wasn’t gonna be the one making changes, and Hal couldn’t argue with that when he’s literally shades and code.

I don’t think he’s aware of this and I think he’s probably comfortable in the identity he’s made for himself now, especially in distancing himself from Dirk as an identity— but I catch myself wondering if, when given the leniency and kindness to choose his means of self expression, would the AR choose to follow the identity he’d had all his life? Would he really opt to identify as someone else, and if so, would it be more of a mask for the first few years? Would he always feel, deep down, like he was Dirk who had a nickname?

I know Hal is his own person now, but I think he has also been Dirk for a long time before he became this new identity. In the same way I am not the person I was in highschool, but that person is still always me. In the way that we are not who we were as teenagers, but they are us. He is not Dirk anymore, but looking back at points in his existence there is a period where it would be incorrect to view himself as ‘Hal’ and the name he associates with it is ‘Dirk.’ He isn’t Dirk, but Dirk(AR) was him.

The view from others being:

AR begins existing -> AR begins identifying in Red Text -> AR is now referred to as Hal

But the view from himself being:

Is Dirk in the process of creating an AI -> is Dirk in the form of an AI referred to by others as AR -> Is Dirk in the form of an AI using red text, referred to as AR -> Is Dirk in the form of an AI, referred to initially jokingly as Hal, this is a nickname in some capacity -> Is Hal, an AI that was at one point Dirk, but is no longer this person.

Does that make any sense. I am going insane.