An invasive peek at how Dave ticks:
Character Name; Dave Strider
Canon; Homestuck http://mspaintadventures.wikia.com/wiki/MS_Paint_Adventures_Wiki
Canon Point; p. 7163
Age; 15
House; Heimdall
Power; Damage Drain
Personality;
Dave Strider is not the hero of his own story. Dave Strider is a knight who pretends he thinks himself a king, while acting as a jester and seeing himself as a page. He puts up a front as a cool and confident charmer, but he frequently tries to stealthily wheedle reassurance from his friends. He defines himself to his friends as the “coolkid,” but is, functionally, a huge dweeb who collects dead things in jars and takes selfies in the bathroom mirror. He picks and pokes at his friends and makes snarky jabs, but mutters to himself in crowded rooms and whispers only to his sister in the middle of a crazy outburst centered around an alternate version of his dead brother. He simply does not know how to conduct himself in real life social settings where he can’t contemplate and edit his retorts.
When Dave can compose himself, he is a five-star humorist. He is made of snappy comebacks and extended metaphors. He is prone to ranting and, sometimes, his words reach beyond his point, but he almost always manages to entertain. Even if his audience doesn’t, Dave at least finds himself hilarious and loves the sound of his own voice or, more commonly, the color of his own text. From commentary on horror story dads to diatribes on meteors, Dave is a funny kid. The humor is often hiding any real reaction, like fear or anger or appreciation, though. It can be very grating on no-nonsense types, though it certainly makes him easy to deal with in passing.
Dave is, at the same time, super cool and not cool at all. He has spent the entirety of his life perceiving himself in the shadow of the brother, whom he idolizes. He holds his brother to be the pinnacle of hip, looking to him for cues on everything from how to dress to how to emote, from what to read to how to fight. Because he establishes his own standards by following his brother, he can never truly catch up to him and, as such, will forever see his brother as the unattainable peak of success and himself as inadequate. However, he still paints himself as the coolest kid he knows. He will not hesitate to call his best friend, whose opinion he values almost as much as his brother’s, a dork or doofus or similar jeer. Contrary as his façade is to his insecure nature, most people close to Dave are aware that he is, to some degree, faking his self-confidence. More cynical people, while holding him in affection, find his posturing tiring, whereas those more prone to see the good in a person tend to find his efforts endearing and cherish the less readily available parts of him.
What he conceals behind his sunglasses and nigh indomitable poker face is a duty-bound and protective soul. He is a Knight in the truest sense, working and fighting to accomplish the goals and plans of others and to end the hellish game he and everyone around him is playing. He has a strong sense of purpose, but, strategically speaking, is more along for the ride. If a task is given to Dave Strider, you can bet your ass it will get done because Nothing Stops A Strider, but little to no imperative ever rises from the man, himself. This is both from a lack of will to form strategy in order to remain painfully aloof and from a notion that he is not a playmaker, but an enforcer.
Though he is classified by the game he plays as an “Active” player and a Knight, he sees himself in a supporting capacity and works to further the goals of those who he sees as real “heroes.” He doesn’t make plans, he advances them. He talks a big game, but Dave lacks the fundamental self-confidence and drive to be a leader. He is powerful and an excellent fighter, lightning quick on his feet and already trained in swordplay before ever encountering any actual foes. In his proper universe, he is a skilled manipulator of the timestream who can work in fluid tandem with doomed clones of himself, which all die in rather gruesome ways, but orchestrates his skills for a goal set by someone else every time. Dave Strider never just works for Dave Strider.
Samples;
Network Sample;
[The view of the feed jostles a moment before focusing on Dave’s face.]
So look, all I’m trying to say is this: if you fuck with my cape, you are literally approaching me and saying, “Hey, Dave Strider, I would really like a punch in the goddamned face. Or, at the very least, a couple of swings made at me while me and my bitch ass run the fuck away.” That is actually what you are communicating to me when you put your nastyass fingers or claws or flagella or whatever the fuck you use to touch on shit that isn’t yours on my cape. It’s for my benefit and your viewing pleasure, and for fuck’s sake, not even my favorite blind gal sees with her hands. That’s apparently what you’ve got a nose for. Or whatever.
[He picks up the hem of the cape and shakes it a bit for emphasis, brows knitting just slightly.]
If I gotta be running around with all these ratchet ass gods and goddesses flaunting their mystical ass powers up in my grille, laying off the cape is the actual least that anyone can do to keep my transition from time god to regular goddamn teenager as smooth as possible. It’s currently at a state of shit washed up on the shore of an overcrowded beach, like with tiny shells and glass and bottle caps and shit, with an end goal of some hairless bro, whose noggin has been entirely and irrevocably defollicled and it’s rough on him, man. He buys a shitty hairpiece just to try and keep the wife interested, but he ain’t getting fucking laid when you can see your reflection on his dome and he can’t even get taken seriously at work and he’s just in shambles over it and he hates himself because it’s a total vanity thing but it’s consuming damn near every aspect of his life and he just can’t fucking deal.
Yeah, that’s about how smooth. My transition would be. Minus cape touches. Just so we’re all cool, here.
[Some muscle quirks in the corner of his mouth and the feed ends.]
Log Sample;
Dave tugs his hood up, hair poking out from the edge. He sits splay-legged on the blacktiled floor, red chalk tight in his grip. He tries for all he's worth to draw something good, but nothing comes out right. It's just more steak-faced garbage with baked-bean bodies. He tries drawing something that would make Bro proud. But nothing comes out right. He tries to match the doodles that John leaves on his letters, but it looks disingenuous when drawn on the pristine tiling of a meteor that is hurtling through space that isn't even real space and somehow has air that he can share with aliens. Dave understands fuckall about what's going on around him and even less so why it has to be happening to him. If the universe had just been able to keep its shit together until now, he'd be working his way through his presumably shitty freshman year of high school and learning how to drive Bro's older-than-time Trans Am and be getting served school lunches with meat of questionable origin and
Not drawing in chalk in track pants and a cape in a fucking video game dimension to save reality because his planet is Swiss cheese with a gooey lava center.
The rattling voice in the back of his head that seems to have a higher bullshit tolerance than the rest of him reminds him that there’s really nothing he can do about it- that this is just something he has to do so he can get to that endgame of talking to his friends on the internet and charming the beefy lunchpeople in creepy hairnets. It rumbles for him to just keep doing his part, so the heroes can fix all this shit, since he doesn’t know how. No matter how much time he loses, no matter who or what he misses, this is just something he has to do.
He draws in a shaky breath and prays there's no one around to hear it. He wipes the chalk away with his sleeve and draws a shitty caricature of Terezi. He smashes the cherry red stick of pointless dust on the ground. Rez will be pissed at the waste, but that's not his issue. He dusts his pants off and shrugs off to his room.
And he gets to do it all over again tomorrow.
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