I was rereading the part right before dave goes back in time and becomes a sprite. He says Rose might wake up first "without all that fuss" and make him realize he was awake the whole time. Is that like dirk, who had both his dream self and regular self awake? How come he realized and Dave didn't? What fuss did rose have to go through? Do you think it's similar to Roxy's sleepwalking? Then again, I thought that was a void thing.
Dave and Dirk are different, Dave isn’t aware of his Dream Self while he’s awake, rather… His Dreamself is just already active. Just like Jade. But he denies himself of noticing this, just like how John couldn’t see the drawings on his posters or Rose couldn’t see the MEOW code on her wall, Dave already had an active Dream Self but just. Didn’t know it. Who knows how long it took for Rose to wake up properly on Derse, for all we know she may have had to go physically to her Derse Room and smack herself on the face.