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. 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.

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.

Biography
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 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. 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, 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.

Time Travel
Dave, as the Knight of Time, has the power of time travel, 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 and "dead daves start piling up and dead daves are the enemy remember".

Alpha Dave
An "alpha Dave" is any Dave who originates from and belongs to the alpha timeline as it naturally occurs and aren't the product of an offshoot timeline. Several of these were present in the LOHAC Stock Exchange, working on owning the entire planet's economy; later, using her Junior Compu-Sooth Spectagoggles, Jade found 13 different Daves (including Davesprite) currently existing at that point in time.

Pre-travel Dave
Alpha Dave before traveling back in time for the first time. In this time, Dave obtained the Broken Caledfwlch, was trolled by Gamzee and Equius, 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.

Felt Dave
Alpha Dave wearing the Felt Duds, at a point in his timeline after being original Dave but before becoming Red Sleeve Dave. He is seen manipulating the LOHACSE, and at some point a version of him splits off to become Coinflip Dave.

Red Sleeve Dave
This Alpha Dave is from one of the furthest points in the concurrent future of the central timeline, and thus is at a rather high level and is in practically complete control of his temporal abilities; he claims to have performed enough time travel to have experienced three days' total playing Sburb, whereas the game itself will linearly have taken 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. At some point he found Bro's corpse on the Land of Wind and Shade, and failed to retrieve Bro's katana from it. Shortly after John's ascension, he travelled 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.

He later 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's inability 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 helps 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.

Alternate Future Dave / Davesprite
As a result of John's decision to enter his seventh gate prematurely, a future was created where only Rose and Dave were left alive. This alternate Dave travels back in time and prototypes himself with Dave's sprite instead of Lil Cal, and so became Davesprite. Though he was believed to be dead following a fight with Jack Noir, he later proves to be alive, talking with Jadesprite on Skaia.

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 himself 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 timeine 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.

Personality
It's obvious that Dave is really fucking cool. He jeers at John's inability to set up his Captchalogue Sylladex 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.

Although he is one of the most capable characters in Homestuck, Dave 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, get into confrontations with highly skilled characters, or not release important information because he's just too cool to do that.

He seems to be a bit forgetful too. He always loses his place in the latest MS Paint Adventure, sets several Sylladex traps, only to release them on himself moments later, he completely forgets to pour out some Apple Juice for his homie, he forgets all about his Timetables and thus, forgets he can go back in time, and he 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.

Jade Harley's bubbly, emoticon-laden text might seem to mark her as the traditional prey of the coolkid, 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.

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.

Jade prototyped Dave's sprite with the Rambunctious Crow he accidentally slew with a Sylladex mix-up. He originally (in an alternate timeline) double-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 double-prototyped the sprite with himself, taking over as a guide for his past self.

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

He eventually finds Bro's corpse on LOWAS, but decides he isn't too upset over his death. However, he cannot bring himself to remove Bro's sword, as removing it would spill more blood. Dave resolves to break the sword horizontally instead, by a flying kick. Dave misjudges the strength of Bro's sword however, and flies backwards and onto his face. It is unclear at this point whether or not Dave has actually taken Bro's sword, whole or broken.

Trivia

 * Dave was named by Doomish.
 * His Hash Map Modus was chosen by TheGentleman.
 * Dave's eyes are red, matching his pestertext. This follows the trend of the kids' eye colors matching their text.
 * 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's head, foreshadowing his prototyping of a crow and later Davesprite.