In Homestuck there are a lot of time and universe-hopping shenanigans, so I'll mostly be focusing on Dirk's timeline and the basic world mechanics. It all starts with a game called Sburb. Basically, a bunch of kids from Earth play this game and bring about the apocalypse via fiery meteors, and enter the Medium, which is essentially the game world. There are various constant features to every Sburb session. To give a brief overview, they include:

♥ Skaia, the world that the players must build toward in order to win the game. At the center of Skaia is The Battlfield, a planet that looks like a chessboard, and that changes every time a player enters the Medium. Around Skaia are two planets, Prospit and Derse, that engage in a battle here, and it is a fight that Prospit must always lose. Prospit and Derse are also where players' dreamselves reside, which are essentially an “extra life” should a player die.

♥ Player planets. Orbiting Skaia are a series of planets specific to each of the players, allowing them to level up and also host powerful creatures known as Denizens (“bosses”). Players will also find stone slabs known as Quest Beds, where a player can die upon it and ascend to God Tier, essentially the highest, legit level you can get.

♥ The Scratch construct appears on Time player's planets, and is used in the game's reset method.

The Scratch is eventually initiated during the original kid's session, which results in the alternate Earth that Dirk inhabits. In the original Earth universe, he was a forty-something puppet pornographer living in Texas, guardian of one of the original session's players, and simply known as Dave's Bro. Dirk's universe turned out very different.

An alien ruler known as the Condesce secretly arrived on Earth and spent the 20th century building up her Crockercorp empire, with plans to use it to take over the world. She finally revealed herself in the latter part of 2011, and the world's governments wrongly assumed she was the commander of an alien invasion fleet and planned for war with the aliens. Whilst the military was distracted, the world of media became a chaotic mess to a point where the most popular entertainers were given the same level of authority as world leaders. The Condesce influenced celebrities into supporting her and placed her most well-known supporters into high positions. Guy Fieri rewrote the constitution into a system of fascist, theocratic laws and Insane Clown Posse became Dual Presidents of the United States in the 2024 election.

No, really. That is a thing that happened.

With two juggalos in the White House western civilisation inevitably collapsed. Whilst they did what the Condesce wanted, they were otherwise pretty much left to their own devices and and passed a number of dangerous and absurd laws, such as replacing tap water with Faygo. Anyone who opposed their regime were sent to death camps, and they ended up killing five billion people.

Dirk's Bro, along with Roxy's Mom, were leaders in a resistance movement. Dirk's Bro was a successful film-maker who maintained a clear anti-Condesce message in his works and was highly influential. They emerged from hiding and Dirk's Bro killed the Presidents. With them gone, the Condesce took direct control of the planet. Though they were never seen again, Dirk apparently found evidence suggesting they confronted the Condesce directly, and were killed in one final showdown.

The Condesce attempted to essentially remake Earth into a new home planet for her species. However, she failed in her attempts to replace humans with her own species. She then tried to impose troll society on what remained of humanity, but failed due to her experiments and assumedly humans' incompatibility with troll reproduction methods. Eventually the ice caps flooded the plant and submerged almost all the land, with carapacians (inhabitants of Derse and Prospit brought to the planet by the Condesce) surviving in floating colonies.

Dirk arrived on Earth by a meteor, presumably with a home already set up for him. How he managed to survive as a baby is anyone's guess. He lived in a single floor of an apartment block supported above the water by metal beams, where the state of Texas once was.

Dirk Strider is one cool guy. The coolest guy you might even have the honour of bumping fists with, but whatever, no big deal.

The first thing one might notice about Dirk is that he is near-constantly stoic to a point where it might seem he looks down on other people. His cool air and flawlessly flashy habits may initially imply that he is simply a douchebaggy kid that is far too full of himself.

He may initially appear aloof, and that is how he likes it. In fact, he is even rarely drawn with varying facial expressions, if one at all. His speech can philosophical and informed while being contrastingly crude and, well, bro-ish all at the once. People seem to find it hard when he is being sincere or sarcastic, and his friends have often said that he can be frustrating to talk to due to his habit of lacing his words with irony and his intentionally vague way of answering questions. Nonsensical metaphors and bewildering subtext aside, Dirk is well-read, his academical understandings of certain subjects (robotics and history, for example) are impressive. Though he is intelligent, he was physically alone his entire life, left to fend for himself in a completely flooded post-apocalyptic earth, and his only contact was with a handful of people through the internet. Socially inept doesn't even begin to describe him.

Dirk has a sincere interest in people, shown by his obsessive studying of Earth history and pop culture, particularly his late guardian's films. Although he has a high amount of respect for his bro and his works, he strives to be better than him and perfect the art of irony himself. Having only ever been a spectator and studier of people and their societies, it's not surprising he may come across as odd. With no people around him he instead seems to take comfort in artificial life. Like his alternate self, he has a liking for puppets and thinks they are the coolest things ever-- even using his ludicrous speed to move them while he interacts with them himself. He even goes as far to claim that the puppet Lil Cal is his best friend who practically raised him. He also created a programmed clone of himself when he was thirteen years old, known as Auto-Responder. He claims the intention of it was to take messages and reply when he was unavailable, though as much as the AI seems to grate on him as time passes, he still indulges in conversation with it when he doesn't have anyone else to talk to. He also built robots to spar and rap with in a bid to satisfy his physical and verbal stimuli.

Through his scrutinizing studies, Dirk has an impressive amount of knowledge on past societies, however he grew up in a time when society had all but diminished in wake of an alien dictatorship, and this has shaped him. He feels many aspects of Jane and Jake's time to be primitive, mentioning his distaste with the need to label sexuality in particular.

Dirk likes to be the one pulling the strings. He always likes to have a game plan for whatever challenges he or his friends may face in life. He has proven himself to be a capable player when his plans go into motion, and he does possess impressive foresight. He has proven to be a quick thinker and once he has a way, he has all the will in the world. Thinking on his feet, he managed to not only gather his friends together in one place and time period, but also brought them back to life in one pretty awesome fell swoop.

He is not above manipulating his friends for what he believes to be in their best interests, and even for his own selfish reasons. However despite his controlling ways, Dirk genuinely cares for them. He puts a lot of time and effort into gifts, like editing a whole book with his snarky commentary for Jane's birthday. He believes they all have the potential to be better, and will do anything to aid them in getting there, such as sending Jake a robot to spar with with the intent of toughening him up. He also places a lot of trust in them, for example he did not hesitate to decapitate himself after saving Roxy, fully believing Jake would revive him. He would quite literally do anything for them. Jake does tend to get the lion's share of his attention. He harboured a crush on him for years, and attempted to win his affection by manipulating a situation he felt suitable for admitting his feelings. He also granted his wish for a sparring partner by sending him a robot clone of himself piece by piece, intending to toughen him up for the oncoming trials.

However, he is not entirely the puppet master he fancies himself to be. Though his special brand of stoicism is his typical reaction to things, Dirk is not completely unflappable. If you pick the right target, it is not very difficult to make him uncomfortable. What shakes him the most is being pressed about himself and his feelings, and is self-conscious to a point he feels unnerved by the thought of people talking about him amongst themselves. Though he has a tendency to boast about his accomplishments, he takes a more clinical, arms length approach when it comes to talking about his feelings, and he is annoyed with people pointing this out.

Underneath that cool exterior is a very different kid from what people may perceive. Dirk has crippling self-loathing issues, and being surrounded by splinters of himself only fuels his self-hatred more. He has broke down and confessed he believes himself to be difficult, clingy and have a shitty personality, and is terrified of the people he cares about leaving him. However, the more scared he gets of Jake ignoring him, his reaction is to cling more, and his AI clone of himself only fuels the fire. Due to being isolated his whole life he appears rather awkward when the focus is on him in a large group of people, such as when he accidentally appeared to several trolls and kids from the last session and ended up leaving rather hastily.

Excessive issues aside, Dirk is still a kid and does have his goofy little habits. As mentioned, he thinks puppets are the greatest thing ever. He likes hats, although he doesn't want to muss his hair wearing one, so instead he has one printed on his shirt. He also made a pair of robots to rap with, and his inventory system relies on rhyming to hold items. He has a tablet at his desk, and compared to other characters in the comic, he can apparently draw decently. He also enjoys skateboarding, proving to be very skilled (and kind of a show off) on his rocketboard. He mentions he spends a lot of time reading, fishing and exploring the underwater ruins. Admittedly, he is also a bit of a furry, and seems to have a fetish for pony play and muscular bunnymen. He does just like horses in general, even claiming that although he only watched My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic for academic reasons, he is rather fond of Rainbow Dash because “she is so spunky <3”. Complete with heart emote.

♥ Dirk has the ability to flashstep, which is essentially superhuman speed. For example, he can use it to manipulate objects around him without seeming like he's moved from where he's standing.
♥ He's an expert with a blade, and the katana he uses is unbreakable.
♥ He is highly skilled with technology. He can build robots for a variety of functions, and create impressive AIs.
♥ His God Tier is the Prince of Heart. The abilities that come with this meant he had dual conciousness over his own body and his dreamself for as long as he can remember. He also can cause splinters in his personality, like a small splinter of his mind in Jake's, for example.
♥ Superhuman ninja skills aside, Dirk is still vulnerable to everything your average human is.

-His katana.
-A spare set of shades.