YMMV / Pony Pals: Dirk Strider Edition

• Harsher in Hindsight: The fic as a whole, while hilarious, is also eerily prescient of the much darker events of The Homestuck Epilogues released years later. Dirk taking control of a narrative and turning it Darker and Edgier? Okay, that's from the comic itself. Dirk ending up in a tussle with another, female-identified narrator who wants a happier story, a character being given a choice of returning the world to canon or staying in the altered timeline, characters deciding to Rage Against the Author by fighting Dirk's influence, Dirk being a Shipper on Deck for two characters in the story, and long ruminating on the nature of canon? Harder to see in the same light after much of the same stuff happens much more seriously in the Meat route. The bonus comics for Homestuck: Beyond Canon take it further: Dirk, the self-appointed author of the new series, gets into meta arguments with Hussie, the author of the original series Dirk's basing his new "narrative" on.
  • In light of the above, Dirk giving Jane what reads like his future self's manifesto is arguably made worse seeing as he manipulates her presidential campaign for his own ends in the Epilogues, along with both of them becoming major antagonists in the process.
• I Knew It!: This fic, which was written while Act 6 was still underway, ended up predicting a significant twist in The Homestuck Epilogues (spoiler follows). Specifically the meta manner in which Dirk manipulates characters and screws with reality is repeated in the Meat portion of the epilogues, and the general "battle for the authorship of the story" plotline is the major overarching conflict of both parts.
• Signature Scene: The meme rant. Dirk's two-page, heavily-ironic Author Tract about how memes are the downfall of civilization is almost universally considered one of the funniest parts of the entire project.
• Squick: Minos the cat constantly shitting everywhere.