The Fundamental Interconnectedness of all things

Dirk Gently (as he currently introduces himself, whatever his name may have been in the past), is short, heavily overweight, and dresses to make an impression. What that impression is specifically meant to be is hard to say, but he's definitely memorable. He wears shirts and ties with complete disregard for whether or not they may be migraine-inducing in anyone else who has to look at them, all of his suits look like they have, at best, been slept in (and they probably have), and the thick glasses are a necessity. He is also extremely fond of a most singular red hat, which looks like it has seen better days, but so does the man who wears it. Frequently he wears a long leather coat that is clearly an essential wardrobe piece for any private detective.
The man himself, aside from his clothes, is in his mid to late forties and looks it. His nose, which has been badly broken at least once, is slightly crooked, and the bags under his eyes would require a claim check in an airport. He's usually clean-shaven or close to it just because he's incapable of growing a beard that doesn't look ridiculous. His manner of walking has been described as a strutting waddle, and most people realize within less than a minute of meeting him that Dirk is very fond of the sound of his own voice. He may not be attractive, but he is at least unforgettable.

All of that said, Dirk is very intelligent, if in a slightly focused way. He's a detective by nature as much as profession, because it is his instinct to puzzle things out and collect clues, to observe and analyze and try to unravel the mysteries of the universe. He'd make a brilliant scientist if he wasn't so lazy, and while he has an incredible amount of knowledge and the out-of-the-box thinking to use it creatively, Dirk has next to no drive or great ambitions in life. He tends to take the laziest approach possible to things, resulting in a lot of bad debts and a perpetual lack of paying work. Why solve a mundane case, when he can talk his way into keeping it open perpetually and running up a client's bill (which tends to result in said clients not paying him on the advice of their lawyers), and why pay for goods and services when he can talk, sneak, or outright steal what he needs? Dirk is never deliberately felonious, and almost never malicious, but he's learned to use his skills to misdirect and manipulate with success and few consequences. As he does often end up dealing with shadier types who do the same, he's gained the impression that this is simply the way the world operates and he is not, ultimately, doing any great harm. That this makes him look like a sleazeball to some people has never even occurred to him.

Despite all this, Dirk tends to think of himself as a basically friendly guy just muddling through life like everyone else. His ego regarding his skills is impressive, but he's not unrealistic about his own physical appearance and limitations. Like most people, he'll make an effort to help those he likes and who are nice to him in return, and while it's not safe to loan him money, he's not as much the cut-and-run type as he seems when it actually matters. If one can handle the intense vocabulary and tactlessness, Dirk is not hard to talk to.

Backtagging: Sure!

Threadhopping: I don't unless invited, but I usually play Dirk in the Nexus where anybody could just wander up. Unless it's a post that says For: (name) or something, I am open to this.

Fourthwalling: Dirk was told on his very first day in the nexus that there's a book on him and he was given a copy. I'm more likely to break the fourth wall in narrative, but his brain is pretty hard to break, so...
Offensive subjects: I don't have an specific triggers... I'll speak up if something bothers me.

Hugging this character: Dirk is squishy and squishable.

Kissing this character: At your own risk. If you're a pretty girl, Dirk will be thrilled. If you're not... well, he may not enjoy it but he probably can't stop you.

Flirting with this character: See above. Also, Dirk flirts badly.

Smut: On the one hand this doesn't seem likely to come up, on the other hand, he totally once got laid by a character he met in a bar. Granted, she was an alien love slave. I prefer fade-to-black because writing out sex scenes with Dirk would be painfully ridiculous.

Fighting with this character: ...is not likely to end well for him. I'd prefer some OOC communication for it, but I'm not opposed.

Injuring this character: Minor physical damage is fine, OOC communication for anything more but as long as it's not permanently disfiguring it will probably be okay.

Killing this character: Not unless we've talked OOC and have plans to resurrect him.

Using telepathy/mind reading abilities on this character: Expect resistance. Dirk isn't metahuman super-powered psychic, but he does have some definite if erratic psychic ability and he has worked deliberately to hone that. As always, when in doubt, message me!

Gradually it became known around the student body- and verified, that Dirk would mumble answers to upcoming tests in his sleep. Other students would wine and dine him and let him crash at their place just to catch and record this, and the results (which were actually just a matter of perceptive reasoning and some basic study skills on the part of a not-really-asleep Svlad) were astonishingly accurate. He, of course, strenuously denied this too, but then began to make murmurs about his mother having expensive medical woes, and made a great show of reluctantly letting people cheat off his tests in exchange for donations. Things came to a head when he agreed to attempt to produce a copy of the final exams through automatic writing under hypnosis, while profusely declaring the purpose of this experiment to disprove once and for all the rumors of his psychic abilities. Of course other students, impressed by his track record thus far, bought copies in droves. Svlad aimed to make the fake exam he produced accurate enough to keep his scams going, but inaccurate enough to look like a foolish scam to any and all professors and staff.

The 'fake' exam Svlad produced was absolutely word for word accurate, down to the punctuation. Nobody was more surprised than he was.

There were newspaper reports. There was an investigation (which never did turn up a solid answer how he did it). There was a black police car, which drove the stunned student off to prison where he spent a number of months incarcerated under charges from the school.

Thus began not only Svlad's efforts to change his name and dodge his past, but also a serious analysis of his own alarmingly genuine abilities. Over the next few decades he frequently changed names and worked an assortment of brief jobs, picking up skills and debts, and generally muddling his way through life. Eventually he settled into being Dirk Gently, private holistic detective, occasionally moonlighting as a palm reader (in drag) at the back of a local pub when that failed to pay the bills. He has, over the years, become painfully aware of his genuine psychic abilities, and even more painfully aware that they are uncontrolled and seem to work best when he isn't trying. He has a history of making accurate predictions in offhand comments, and the unreliability of his precognition is an endless source of frustration.

Then one day, while in pursuit of an experiment in the quantum fluctuations surrounding clothes dryers and the disappearance of socks, Dirk crawled through a wormhole and landed in a multiversal Nexus. Here he met strangers who knew who he was and claimed to have read about him in books, of which he was able to obtain copies. He was not entirely pleased by what he read. The multiversal Nexus granted him the ability to visit whenever he likes through a PINpoint device, gained him a few friends, and also added yet more chaos to his life. He once spent months as a cat, living under the roof of a woman on who he'd long harbored a crush and her husband, both of whom had no idea the cat was him until he turned back and they woke to a naked and bewildered Dirk in their living room. He was once temporarily turned into a loud dinosaur, and another time attacked by a dryad who caused him to gradually turn into a tree. He has come through all these incidents relatively unfazed, and used access through the Nexus to a Dimension of Shrimp to start Cjelli's wholesale shrimp company in his own world. He has, even before encountering the Nexus, encountered Norse gods, jetfighters turned into eagles, a time machine, and a cat living in a permanent state of quantum flux (the back half was missing). To this day Dirk's sanity, such as it has ever been, remains intact, and he continues to embrace whatever reality throws at him with an open mind.

He also recently quit smoking.