Dave Strider

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.

Dave is the third person to have his own loading screen, which features a spinning record on a sunny horizon.

Biography
Dave uses the callsign turntechGodhead when chatting on Pesterchum. When the original name "Insufferable Prick" was about to be suggested, 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.

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 literally no one has ever heard of. He also has a more bizarre hobby of collecting weird dead things preserved in various ways. He also is 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.

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.

Dave uses an online application known as Pesterchum to communicate with his other tech-savvy friends. His Chumhandle is "turntechGodhead". His name may also be abbreviated by the chat client as TG. The color that denotes him is red. He has Pesterchum Version 7.0 as opposed to John's 6.0. When away from his desktop computer, he communicates using his Phone. His web browser of choice is Hephaestus.

He seems to know a lot about Captchaloguing and Fetch Modi. His current Fetch Modus is Hash Map, a more advanced version of John's. 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.

Dave's Associated Item is (probably) Amber

Personality
It's obvious that Dave is really fucking cool; he jeered at John's inability to set up his Captchalogue Sylladex when John asked 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 him. Through the conversations of Pesterchum and his own introduction, Dave already has his Strife Specibus set and he has the one of the most advanced Sylladexes 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.

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.

Albeit being one of the most capable characters in Homestuck, he does have a glaring weakness - his arrogance. His refusal to accept the surreal actually happening and his stubbornness to listen can be a critical issue when dealing with anything in Homestuck. Dave is likely prone to ignore important commands, stubbornly push forward toward bad ideas and getting into confrontations with highly skilled characters, or not release important information because he's just too cool to do that.

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

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

He's friendly with Rose Lalonde but finds her rather exasperating and demanding. He called her a flighty broad and claims that she spouts snarky horseshit, but since they converse rather easily and frequently this might have just been Dave acting tough in front of John. However, his confiding in her of his growing anxiety over puppets may reveal that he is closer to her than he lets on.

Dave has mentioned to Rose that he loves John, to which she replied "I know." This could be guy-love, irony or just plain sarcasm.

Sburb
Dave, unlike John and Rose, had no interest in Sburb and thought it was a total piece of shit, going as so far as to blow off Rose and further antagonize John for wanting to play the game - and to warn John to stay away from it. However, John has ignored his warnings thus far and has continually plummeted himself farther away from reality. It's not really certain why Dave and his brother even have the game in the first place as neither of them wanted to play it. Dave himself does not want to be involved with Sburb, but is well enough friends with John that he will go and get the game started to help John and Rose out only under the circumstance of their lives depending on it.

In one of the Wayward Vagabond's computer screens, however, it shows Dave next to a Sprite that is prototyped with the Rambunctious Crow (courtesy of Jade) he accidentally slew with a Sylladex mix-up. We can conclude that he not only prototyped it, but also has been transported into The Medium, as this Sprite seems to have been split from its Kernel. This fulfills the "dead thing" element that appears to be consistent with all sprites.

Dave may also fulfill the role of "Knight of Time" that Nanna mentioned in her note to John at the beginning of Act III, as his weapon of choice is bladeKind, much like a knight, and the fact that AT calls him the knight.

Dave's copy of Sburb has ended up in the possession of Jade, and she now is his host, suggesting she will enter via John.