okay i’m really REALLY tired of people calling dirk a self-centered asshole for his line in the latest update. yes, it was dramatic. yes, it may have been unnecessary, but let’s lay out the facts.

1. he brushes off john because people he really cared about are dead. i don’t think i’d want to talk about anything like that either okay fuck off.
2. dirk strider lived basically alone in the middle of the ocean for 16 whole fucking years. jake and jane AND dave are dead. that totals up to two (jake and jane) of only THREE people (referring to the alpha kids) whom he felt connected to in his life, and one person (dave) that he wish he’d been connected to. the destroyed planets reflected in dirk’s shades are the land of mounds and xenon (LOMAX - jake’s land) and the land of heat and clockwork (LOHAC - dave’s land). i suspect that these are two people he wishes he had talked to (with jake, i imagine that he was sort of disingenuous with him and put on airs that made him seem as cool as he thought jake wanted him to be and maybe didn’t treat him the way he would have had he been honest.) regardless, he had people in his life for goddamn once and almost all of them are dead now.
3. dirk strider is an engineer. he’s a builder and a designer - he CREATES things that he also expects to WORK the way he wants them to. it’s sort of related to the manipulative aspect of his personality. but hey, to him, i doubt he finds himself less than capable of doing things like that. he built himself goddamn battle robots with rocket launchers and rapping skills and he’s only 16. that’s fucking impressive. dirk believes that he knows best and that if things follow through the way he wants them to, everything will be alright. (his shortcomings with people are also a result of this because people are not predictable or programmable.) i mean, that’s how he got them all more or less safely into sburb, whether or not they had a failed session. in this scene he most likely feels as though if he hadn’t lost control of things, jake and jane wouldn’t have died.
4. dirk strider is a jerk but he’s a jerk overloaded with self-loathing which is only barely related to being self-centered. remember the island thing? the only person he’s ever really lived with is himself. the only other company which he had in his house were two robots, alien invaders trying to kill him, and a programmed pre-teen version of him (hal) that he most certainly looks upon constantly to remind himself of just how much of a douchebag he is and how he needs to improve, especially with hal pointing out all his fears and flaws. coupled with the controlling aspect of his personality and the intense failure of the situation, most likely everything inside him is crashing and burning here.
5. HE DISSOLVES. INTO THE GAME. dirk strider quits. he GIVES UP. his plan has failed and everyone is dead or dying and he just disappears into the glitch. potentially forever. this is the guy who battled galactic invaders that tried to wipe him out to prove to himself and to others that he was strong and capable of protecting them. but here he is. not strong or capable of protecting them and he has failed. and he stops doing the thing which he always depended on for his own strength, and that’s fighting everything that was against him so that he could live.

in conclusion, yes. dirk’s a dick. that’s not the argument here. dirk strider is gone maybe for good. dirk strider is not self-centered in the way that people are painting him. dirk strider fucking hurting right now. so just bugger off and leave him alone.