#btw this is not about like edlritch dirk or any other au this is just how i read his canon character;

[urlocallesbiab]

imagine if a flower had consciousness. not the whole plant, from rustling leaves to a proud-standing stem to roots, deep and ancient and tangled, interconnected; only the flower. can that really happen? can it have its own self?

well, obviously yes: here it is, the flower, a separate, discrete thing, from the sepal to the tips of its petals — you can point at it and say "this is the flower, and the rest is not", draw a line. you can understand a flower as itself, not to be interchanged with leaves, its own distinct color and smell and personality; a flower can understand itself as an entity.

well, obviously no: it doesn't exist independedly from the plant. how do you actually separate a flower from the purpose it serves, from the nutritients it receives, from the stem it grew from? it didn't sprout into existence in a vacuum, it functions strictly as a part of a more complex whole, in an endless exchange of favors and resources on which every part's livelihood is dependent. a flower is a part of a plant, and a flower without a plant is at best a wilting cut limb and at worst an unsubstaniated thought experiment.

and yet a flower blooms and wilts in its own time, while the plant has stood and continues to stand, a lifetime within a lifetime, a separate chronological framework; and yet when an insect approaches, it seeks the flower's own shapes and colors and fragrance, paying no heed to what lies below. we could argue that a flower can be understood as its own case of existence, but only as one that is ultimatey and intimately connected to something bigger than life.

the universe is the plant; dirk gently's consciousness is the flower. am i making sense?