Dave Strider


 * For the post-Scratch version of this character, see Dirk's Bro.

Dave Strider is a friend of John Egbert in Homestuck. He is obsessed with being cool, which manifests itself in his unceasing pursuit of new ironic depths. When the original name "Insufferable Prick" was about to be suggested by Sollux, he slashed the entry box right in half with a Ninja Sword because he's just way too cool to put up with that kind of bullshit.

On Pesterchum his Chumhandle is turntechGodhead. He has Pesterchum Version 7.0 as opposed to John's 6.0. His web browser of choice is Hephaestus.

His Associated Classical Element is Fire, as indicated by his web browser and the weather outside his house, and his Associated Item is Amber.

Personality and Traits
It's obvious that Dave is really fucking cool. He jeers at John's inability to set up his Sylladex's Fetch Modus when John asks him for help and berates John's interests constantly. Dave is much more skilled than the other three characters, who either through their own cluelessness, admission, or silliness are less capable than he is. Through the conversations of Pesterchum and his own introduction, Dave already has his Strife Specibus set and he has one of the most advanced Sylladices available, giving him a huge advantage over the other three characters. Jade may be able to maximize the use of her Sylladex due to her precognitive abilities, but under normal circumstances it'd be close to entirely useless.

His incredible coolness also enables him to stay level-headed when dealing with supernatural things, (like Sburb) incredible things (like Meteors or Time Travel), or generally disconcerting things (like seeing his own corpse or talking about his HS 3543 (dead friends)). The only thing that seems to deter him is Puppets.

Despite being the coolest thing since the Fluffer Nutter, Dave seems to be easily influenced by John. He has never removed John's gift, citing irony as the reason, and John's talk of the monster Howie Mandel stopped him from enjoying his Apple Juice. Also, it is important to note that Dave never feared his brother's puppets until John pointed out how unnerving they were. It might be that Dave is just an easily influenced person based on his inner desire to be super cool, but he has no problem keeping his distance with Rose.

Dave is a bit forgetful. He always loses his place in the latest MS Paint Adventure, sets several Sylladex traps, only to release them on himself moments later, completely forgets to pour out some Apple Juice for his homie, forgets all about his Timetables and thus, forgets he can go back in time, and even manages to forget HS 4675 (his own intentions to forget something) (though that one might be him being ironic again).

Dave keeps a calm facade up to the exact moment he flies off the handle. This has happened when something makes him look stupid, like being buried under a mountain of puppet dick or having crows invade his personal space.

He also seems to have trouble facing his own mortality. He spent a good bit of time staring at the blood of his deceased time-traveling copy (even though he joked it away), and he couldn't reach the God Tiers because "[H3 W4SN'T] 4BL3 TO F4C3 [H1S] D34TH." "

Underneath his cool facade he appears to be rather caring towards animals; he was visibly upset when he accidentally harmed a Rambunctious Crow and he may share Jade's interest in anthropomorphically persuaded fauna. However, this might just be one of his many ironic gestures. Regardless, his gift to Jade - a picture of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff as furries - seems pretty sincere.

Dave's Dream Self sleeps on Derse, in his room along with a dream Lil' Cal. Notably, there are drawings of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff on the walls of his dream room. His dream self is said to have been HS 3543 (awake all along) without Dave's knowledge.

He's friendly with Rose Lalonde, but finds her rather exasperating and demanding. Their conversations tend to degenerate into showdowns between his ironic coolness and her grandiose eloquence. On other occasions, he confided to her about his growing anxiety over puppets, and of course flipped when Rose gave the impression that her elaborate dream suicide would be the more traditional kind. It has been suggested by Rose that Dave's desire to be the coolest is due to an inferiority complex, but despite her constant teasing of him, she seems to believe that he is genuinely cool, if not in the same way that he thinks he is.

Jade Harley's bubbly, emoticon-laden text might seem to mark her as the traditional prey of the cool kid, but Dave doesn't seem to mind it at all. Conversely, Jade appears to take Dave's coolness at face value. He's been guiding and consoling her after she entered the Medium.

Dave is similar in build to John. He wears a graphic of a record on his shirt, which was sliced in half due to an incident with his Bro. His room contains swords and musical equipment. He wears a pair of sunglasses that look vaguely familiar.

His interests are described as having a penchant for spinning out unbelievably ill jams with his turntables and mixing gear. He has passion to talk about bands that no one has ever heard of but him. He also has a more bizarre hobby of collecting weird dead things preserved in various ways. He is also an amateur photographer, and has his own makeshift darkroom, and operates a number of ironically humorous blogs, websites and social networking profiles, including a webcomic called Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff. At any moment he'll drop some phat rhymes on a mofo and obviously represent. When away from his desktop computer, he communicates using his Phone.

He also has a brother (who owns a collection of totally badass puppets) that he doesn't seem to want to bother due to some sort of friendly sibling rivalry. He does not seem to carry the same feelings of angst toward his brother as John and Rose carry towards their parental figures -- rather, he regards his brother with respect, even emulating him by picking up his interests and wearing his shades. At first, he did not seem at all perturbed by his brother's habit of collecting puppets and, in fact, seemed to admire his brother's ventriloquist rap acts. However, he's mentioned to Rose that the puppets are starting to freak him out and that he's had dreams where Lil' Cal speaks to him, causing him to wake up in a cold sweat. This likely has to do with Cal's presence in Dave's dream tower.

He seems to know a lot about Captchaloguing and Fetch Modi. His current Fetch Modus is Hash Map, which is similar to John's and Rose's in that it is based on a type of data structure, though he later receives an unknown one from future Dave. He helped John with his Strife Specibus and Kind Abstratus. Despite this, Dave is prone to making occasional mistakes with his Modus, such as spilling apple juice on his turntables, firing his ninja sword at a rambunctious crow, and shooting many deadly shuriken at himself.

Biography
Dave was raised by Bro, who was genetically his father due to ectobiology. At some point he befriended John, Rose, and Jade through the internet, and is now friends with them on Pesterchum.

Though he did have the game, Dave, unlike John and Rose, had no interest in Sburb and thought it was a total piece of shit, going so far as to blow off Rose and further antagonize John for wanting to play the game. However, this may just have been him making excuses so that he wouldn't have to admit he lost his Sburb beta discs in an incident involving a crow and a worthless piece of shit sword.

Nevertheless, Rose's pestering eventually wore him down, and he went to retrieve his Bro's copy of Sburb. The two had a duel on the roof of their apartment for no apparent reason beyond the awesomeness of it, during which Bro's puppet Lil' Cal was destroyed. Bro defeated Dave but let him have the discs anyway before flying away on his rocket board. He was then able to connect to Rose, who was by that point in extreme peril.

Shortly after Rose entered the Medium, Jade connected to him as his server. Jade prototyped Dave's sprite with the Rambunctious Crow he accidentally slew with a Sylladex mix-up. The two also investigated the functions of some Sburb equipment. Dave was trolled by AT in this time, who he was able to countertroll to the point that AT blocked Dave. He also made his entry item, an eggy-loking thign[sic], which was taken by his kernelsprite to a nest it had built out of shitty swords and soft puppet ass. When his time was running out, he attempted to reach the nest to break the artifact, but was repulsed by the crowsprite, causing the meteor to come dangerously close to Dave's apartment before it was sliced in two by Bro. It turned out that the artifact only needed time in order for it to hatch, sending Dave to the Medium.

In an alternate timeline which began shortly afterwards, Dave Tier 2 prototyped the sprite with Lil' Cal after entering The Medium. However, since this new sprite was a useless guide, not to mention annoying as fuck (also because John and Jade were dead), Dave went back in time and Tier 2 prototyped the sprite with himself, taking over as a guide for his past self. This version of Dave is referred to as Alternate Future Dave or Davesprite. Because of Davesprite, Dave had a lot of high-level gear early on.

After this, Dave was able to trick John into giving him the code for Rose's journals (Rose was asleep, and John was in her house. It's not as creepy as it sounds.). Soon after getting the code, however, Dream Rose paid a visit to Dream Dave, forcing the waking Dave asleep. The two of them had a dance party.

While he was asleep, Jade built up his house. Upon waking, Dave did lots of alchemization, including creating a copy of Rose's journals. These he promptly lost when a Dersite agent stole them. He considered preventing this with time travel, but noticed that one such Dave had tried that and died, so Alpha Dave decided against it. He soon entered his first Gate, transporting elsewhere on his planet, the Land of Heat and Clockwork.

It is around this time that Dave, as the Knight of Time, began exploiting his time travel powers to the full, allowing him to establish time loops which work to bring about the events of his present and the time point's future. The loops must be stable and internally consistent, otherwise offshoot timelines ensue that can only be fixed with dead alternate Daves. The version of Dave that follows the correct timeline is referred to as Alpha Dave; this version can be found in many different locations at the same time, and all of the Alpha Daves will eventually become or already were all other Alpha Daves.

He also talked extensively with Terezi Pyrope, forming a close bond through shitty cartooning. Initially he was hesitant to trust her, but he was reassured by his future self giving him a thumbs up.

Next, Dave obtained the Broken Caledfwlch, and was trolled by Gamzee and Equius. He then fell asleep and observed the Furthest Ring for the first time, and talked to Rose about her plan to destroy the Green Sun. He was last seen wearing the Four Aces Suited before beginning time travel in earnest, mostly to exploit the LOHAC stock exchange and become filthy rich.

For some period of time during his travels, Alpha Dave wore the Felt Duds. He was seen manipulating the LOHACSE, and at some point a version of him split off to become Coinflip Dave.

At the point where Dave was followed closely by the story again, he was at a rather high level and was in practically complete control of his temporal abilities; he claimed to have performed enough time travel to have experienced three days' total playing Sburb, whereas the game itself linearly took just one day by the end. First seen in the LOHAC stock exchange, Red Sleeve Dave received a boonbuck from John and funneled it into the network of investment scams that he had set up to HS 4641 (make a goddamn killing). He gave a past version of himself the thumbs-up to trust Terezi, and then started his own time adventures.

He eventually found Bro's corpse on LOWAS, but decided he wasn't too upset over his death. However, he could not bring himself to remove Bro's sword, as removing it would spill more blood. Dave resolved to break the sword horizontally instead, by a flying kick. Dave misjudged the strength of Bro's sword, however, and flew backwards did an acrobatic pirouette right off the handle and face-first onto the ground. It is unclear at this point whether or not Dave has actually taken Bro's sword, whole or broken. He talked to a future version of Terezi during this, who he advised regarding recent events with Vriska Serket. The Aimless Renegade contacted him during this time. Unlike the other kids, he just mindlessly repeated what AR said to him, thoroughly confusing Terezi.

Shortly after John's ascension, he traveled to his own Quest Bed on Terezi's instruction to kill an alternate-timeline self, but struggled to come to terms with the notion and abandoned it, despite the fact that this Dave would inevitably die anyway.

He then travelled to the Land of Frost and Frogs, witnessing Jade space-warping fight with an Uranium Imp. Shortly thereafter, he contacted Jade and had her deploy an Intellibeam Laserstation in his house to allow him to duplicate his server disc, effectively becoming Jade's new server player in lieu of John, who was unable to continue the role. He then deployed a heavily upgraded alchemiter to replace the equipment broken in Jade's entry to The Medium. Near the end of the timeline, he helped Jade collect Frogs for breeding, speeding up the process through time travel. The two were attacked by Jack Noir, and Dave was killed when Jack warped Jade's bullets into shooting him in the back. Dave woke up as his dreamself and assisted Rose on Derse in planning the destruction of the Green Sun. According to Karkat Vantas, Dave does not travel through time any further from this point until the Scratch occurs, where the trolls' feed cuts.

The Tumor was delivered to Derse's moon by Liv Tyler. Rose attempted to trick Dave into staying on Derse while she carried out the mission to destroy the Green Sun. She put him to sleep on Derse, where he talked to her via Dream Bubbles. The Draconian Dignitary had stowed away on the moon, prompting Dave to wake and fly off to the moon and dispatch him. Thereafter, Rose and Dave set off to destroy the Green Sun together. As they flew to where the Green Sun should have been, they discovered a set of Quest Beds and stood on them as they set up The Tumor, which physically contained both the kids' and trolls' universes. As both universes ended, the Tumor exploded, creating the Green Sun instead of destroying it. Dave died, rising out of the Green Sun and ascending to the God Tiers as the Knight of Time, rising to the rank of HS 6247 (Revenge of Ricky Schrödinger) in the process.

Alternate Daves
These Daves were from alternate timelines which they went back to prevent, intentionally or not.

Alternate Future Dave/Davesprite
See main article: Alternate Future Dave.

Journal Dave
This alternate Dave was the product of Alpha Dave's first attempt to travel back in time. He attempted to stop the Draconian Dignitary from stealing his copies of Rose's Journals. This Dave was killed in his attempt, and the Dignitary escaped to an ectobiology lab in The Veil. Upon seeing this Dave's corpse, Alpha Dave decided that the Dignitary was too powerful to stop, thus avoiding making the events of his death the alpha timeline. This alternate Dave's body was thrown out of the window into the lava of LOHAC to avoid freaking out Jade, but this didn't stop Dave himself briefly freaking out over having to dispose of his own corpse.

Coinflip Dave
This alternate Dave is the product of a coin flip by Terezi Pyrope, split off roughly around the time of one of his earlier temporal backtracks. In response to Dave's constant pestering over John's attainment of greater power, Terezi responded with an offer for a coin flip. Whereas Alpha Dave's choice was putting it off if the flip was "Bad Heads", this Dave made an opposite choice in his timeline, resulting in him briefly branching off to an alternate timeline before returning to the alpha one as a doomed timeline clone. Terezi revealed the existence of the God Tiers to him and guided him to his Quest Bed, whereupon he fell asleep. Alpha Dave was later guided to the Quest Bed and told of this Dave's origins. Tired of Terezi's riddles and unable to face killing himself, alternate self status notwithstanding, Alpha Dave left this Dave alone. Some time later, he wakes up and pesters Terezi seconds before being killed by Jack Noir.

After death, this Dave met Aradia Megido through the Dream Bubbles. She explained the mechanics of the dream bubbles to him, and the two discuss matters of time shenanigans and the nature of their roles as time players. Aradia took him on a tour of both their memories, where he witnessed the alpha Dave encountering Bro's corpse, and the two were visited by the also-deceased Tavros Nitram, who brought with him a gift of some truly unhealthy incendiaries.

Relationships
He has been friends with John, Rose, and Jade for some time. Despite their disparate personalities, he is probably best friends with John, as evidenced by their birthday letters to each other. Any conversation between him and Rose is completely saturated with sarcasm and irony, but they seem to enjoy trading barbs. He is more gentle and supportive towards Jade, but he can get exasperated with her silliness (especially when she is asleep). When faced with Karkat shipping him and Jade, he responded with sarcasm, but he has not brought it up with Jade, leaving his true feelings unknown.

Early on he was trolled by Tavros. He has a low opinion of Tavros, considering him an awful rapper. He also doesn't like Karkat, who attempted to stop him from talking to Terezi. Because of Terezi's influence, he has a low opinion of Vriska.

He had one conversation with Kanaya, in which he gave her deliberately bad advice for talking to Rose. He had a conversation with Equius, who he thought was not ironic enough. He considers Gamzee "the best troll" due to his "ICP" obsession, and he considered their rap-off one of the best in paradox space.

His patron troll is Terezi Pyrope. During their first conversation, he showed her his comic which was the predecessor to SBaHJ, which he considered to be too derivative of his Bro's stuff. Nevertheless, he considered Terezi just another troll, and acted vaguely hostile to her. He planned to forget her name just after their conversation, but he forgot to. During their conversations in the Medium, they traded shitty comics, and Terezi guided him through his quest. During their final conversation from his perpective, he got angry at Terezi for intentionally creating a doomed copy of himself and putting him in a position to kill the copy.

Trivia

 * Dave was named by Doomish.
 * His Hash Map Modus was chosen by TheGentleman.
 * Dave's eyes are red, matching his Pesterchum text. His reluctance to remove his shades is likely due in part to this abnormal - almost mutant - HS 4748 (candy red color). This, combined with his hair colour, may suggest he is an albino.
 * Dave and the author share some similarities. Notable points are Hussie's frequent use of Dave's HS 4970 (rad)HS 5130 (outfits), recurring referrences to Dave's HS 4690 (pursed)HS 5598 (lips), and Hussie's own admission that he finds Dave's dialogue to be the most natural one to write and that some of Dave's early dialogue was borrowed from actual chatlogs of his own. The two also ostensibly draw the same webcomic. Also, they both look insanely stylish in shades.
 * His astrological sign is Sagittarius.
 * Dave's hair is shaped like a bird, foreshadowing his prototyping of a crow and later Davesprite.
 * Dave's surname and use of broken and un-broken swords are a reference to Aragorn of the Lord of the Rings series, a character also referred to as "Strider."
 * Dave shares some similarities with the character "David" In the movie The Sandlot 2.