#catdave

catdave, like a lot of stuff in the gf3 prologue, just sort of happened. it's one of those things where in writing that chapter, jade grabbed a button that did a thing as a way to keep their villain-narrator honeypot from collapsing, and i decided to roll with it. turning dave into a house cat seemed like a fun gag, especially considering awkweet purrmusk and davepeta and all that. karkat picking up catdave with horror and protectiveness was really funny to me, just like NO HE'S MY BOYFRIEND YOU LEAVE MY SPECIAL MAN ALONE. then i thought, wait, what if a cat had time-distortion powers. what if catdave was like, i'm the hottest fucken kitty that ever did strut, i'ma slow down time and make everyone admire me. that joke alone was enough to keep catdave in, and i figured okay, we'll roll with this for a minute and then reverse it at the end and it'll be a funny anecdote. "hey remember that time dave turned into a cat?"

but unfortunately for dave, this is godfeels. i can't ever just do a fun joke about transformation. if we're gonna accept that jade has a button that can turn people into the animal they secretly want to be, that's gotta have CONSEQUENCES. what is this, fucking rick & morty??? there will be no resetting to the status quo at the end of THIS episode thank you very much!

of course by the time i got to publishing that first catdave chapter i'd figured all this out. dave's sort of defined by his repression and embarrassment at himself and his wants. i've imagined him sticking to his "i don't want to be a hero" thing very closely, and with that just kinda chilling with karkat all the time. (oh there's actually a funny pseudo-continuity error related to this-- in gf1 someone mentions what makes dave and karkat such a good couple. i'd imagined then that davekat were absolutely a totally out gay together couple. then the epilogues said actually no they were still too repressed to actually DO anything, and i decided to lean into that because two incredibly gay men no-homoing together for seven years is really funny/tragic to me from a story perspective. and since i decided to make gf2 parallel the epilogues, it seemed appropriate to fold that back in. i think in gf2 this gets papered over with june being surprised that they hadn't kissed yet? but that's def a thing that changed between fics from my perspective lmao)

so it seemed to me that catdave was a minor analogue to trickster mode- an unexpected jump straight to Personal Apotheosis without the journey necessary to give it any meaning. and that quickly mapped onto the problem of out queer people treating obvious eggs like their own Pet Project, pressuring them and pushing their boundaries even when it IS to some extent what they want. so dave keeps his cat ears and tail because he's a closeted furry with Some Gender, but because his friends all thought the transformation was funny and cute the end result was actually pushing him even further back into the closet. and since i knew that we were aiming towards davekat divorce fever anyway, that felt like the *perfect* dramatic intervention on his character. this is the hardest part of building an ensemble cast drama; giving everyone something Clear and Concise to deal with that can stand in for all their problems, so we can cut right to the chase when necessary.

bit of a complex answer to this one but to start, even as a defender of the epilogues and hs2 i find their treatment of dave and karkat rather frustrating. there are some good davekat conversations and i'm personally a fan of how willing candy is to throw a wrench in their dynamic... but overall it feels like davekat are "solved" in post-canon. they have nothing to do, there is no real drama between them, they are a finished ship and that's all they will ever be.

i've known for a long time that 3.2 would be much more of an ensemble cast affair, so for 3.1 and the prologue i spent a lot of time thinking about how to give everyone something to do. well, no, "something to do" isn't really accurate, it's more like i wanted to push them forward into a new state of conflict that they then must resolve as the story goes on. that's distinct from "something to do" in the sense that putting davekat on some kind of Quest may force them to be more active, but it won't fundamentally change their (in my opinion) stale dynamic. so i really wanted to find a way to organically interrupt the davekat dynamic that didn't involve killing one or the other of them or, crucially, just completely outright separating them. because i think with davekat, if you accept that they are that rare couple that can really weather the years despite getting together so young, you get an opportunity to play with all sorts of new relationship dynamics.

so i knew all of this in abstract when i was writing the gf3 prologue (though admittedly my plans for gf3 as a whole didn't yet extend much farther than "it's gonna be a space opera"), but i didn't specifically have the idea to turn dave into a catboy until writing the chapter where it happens. sometimes you're writing a dialogue scene and then one of the characters will say some shit like "okay karkat ask a question or i'm turning your bf into a cat," and you as the writer have to be like. okay. hold on.

because you can't just say you can turn characters into cats and then not follow through, right? it was one of those moments that really make me love writing, where a character just said some random shit i thought was funny and then i had to seriously ask myself what it meant for the story. and i realized like, holy shit, dave has all this history with cats and cat people and furries where he's always been the sort of tsundere closet case of the beta kids, WHICH i always saw as a contributing factor to the way he reacted to june coming out in gf2.1.

and then it just dawned on me that like, maybe dave likes being a cat, and maybe it spoke to him so much that he kept the cat ears and tail. and maybe the fact that he keeps those traits is this unconscious admission that he is a lot queerer than he acts. and honestly, all the rest just sorta followed on from there! we see in 3.1 ch6 that dave and karkat are sleeping in separate rooms, that dave is isolating himself, and he's still very much embarrassed about and in denial of his cat-ness. and meanwhile, karkat is trying to convince jane to become a communist! which is admittedly a bit silly as a plotpoint, but like, it's karkat and jane. what's wrong with a little fancifully positive pitch romance between a wikipedia marxist and a globetrotting capitalist? uh but i digress

▲: The facts of life were pretty simple ones to grasp. When a person hits about 12 or 13, they go through puberty. Grow a bit, hormones act up, boy and girl equals baby. Yada yada yada. The problem was, they didn't really explain the part where your crazy spell toting sister changes you into a part cat because she messed up an experiment. And the part where those hormones decided to mix with your human ones into a crazy fucked up cocktail of lust and need. The part where you literally had to stay at home, miserable and hot all over because you were afraid you were going to jump the first person you saw that wasn't your sister. Ah, the joys of going into heat. ( Part cat Dave in heat. NSFW Paragraph, looking for a John. Indulge me, I'm feeling ridiculous :P ))

▼: John had been worried about Dave all day since he hadn't seen him at all! So when his last class of the day ended, he hurried his ass over to Dave's place. He stood before the door and hesitated a minute before knocking on it. "Dave? Are you in there? You haven't been answering any of my texts and I didn't see you at school today.. Is everything alright? You're not in trouble are you?" ((Sorry its a bit short))

▲: (( it's okay haha ))

▲: Dave let out an involuntary and pitiful meow, hand clamping quickly over his mouth. He pushed himself further against the wall of his closet, trying to absorb the coolness from the plaster and paint, willing himself to calm down. John was here. /John/ was here, at his apartment, and he wanted in. Dave could not deal with that. He shut his eyes tightly, trying to clear his throat. " J-John, don't come in here. I- I'm sick. " he stuttered slightly, cursing himself for losing what cool he had.

▼: He raised his brow a little upon hearing his voice. Dave didn't sound sick at all, so what was he up to? A sigh escaped his lips before he reached down to check if the door was open, and sure enough, it was. John decided that he would have to take a look inside and see for himself what was wrong. "Sick? Dude you don't sound sick." He closed the door behind himself after he was inside, listening to figure out where Dave's voice was coming from exactly. "What the hell is going on Dave?"

▲: " I'm sick dammit!" he growled, tail flicking with irritation. He was trembling slightly, hearing the other come closer and closer. He wanted to see him, he missed John so much. An entire day away from him was torturous, he /needed/ to see him. But he knew better. That was his hormones trying to get him laid. And as wonderful as that sounded, he had a basic sense of dignity left. " Just... Just go away please." he said softly, the words barely audible through the closet door.

▼: John flinched a little from the way Dave yelled at him, feeling a little bit hurt from the tone in his voice. Had he done something wrong..? He had his hand on the doorknob of the closet when Dave had told him to go away, and his grip was slipping a little before he let go. "God Dave.. if you didn't want to see me, all you had to do was say." His hand slipped from the handle as he stood there for a moment, then turning to walk away with his head hanging.

▲: " John I'm... sorry. It's not just you. I just... something's wrong with me John. " he mumbled, ears pressed against his head in shame. He didn't mean to make John upset. John was his best friend, his closest friend. And he didn't want to make him so upset. " I'm sorry... Please don't be upset with me. I'm not trying to be so angry. I just don't want you being upset with me. I don't want you seeing me like this. " he said softly, wishing he could hug and cuddle with the other. Maybe a lot.

▼: He stopped and looked back at him, reaching to open the door again. "Dave, you of all people should know that I don't fucking care what people look like. If you're just overreacting from bad hair day!" John yanked the door open and was shocked to see Dave standing there with the new cat ears and tail. "Uh.. Is this come kind of joke..?

▼: "**

▲: (( ? ))

▼: (( I forgot the quotation mark ;;; sorry ))

▲: Dave winced, shrinking back into the closet when he heard the door open. He didn't want the other to see him like that. So needy. " John don't pull this shit, don't you dare make fun of me this sucks more than you could possibly think of." he practically cried, cheeks bright red. " This is horrible. I feel ridiculous and there's all this shit going on with me. " he mumbled, not wanting to tell his best friend that it was taking almost all his concentration and energy not to throw himself down in front of the other and beg for him.

▼: John rubbed the back of his neck a little, feeling genuinely bad for him. "Fuck.. I'm sorry dude. I'm just surprised I guess. Did Rose do this to you?" He carefully reached forward and felt one of the ears, surprised from how warm it was. His ears were so soft and matched his hair perfectly, John couldn't help but smile a little and lightly rubbed at it. "Come on it can't be that bad. Do you have some kinda cat superpowers too?"

▲: (( sorry for being slow me and my grandma are talking. ))

▼: ((Ah its okay :) )

▲: " Rose did it... She's fucking crazy, and she did some stupid spell and I just hate it so mu..ch." he said, voice trailing off. Johns hands were touching him. Oh fucking /hell/ his fingers were amazing and so warm. He couldn't believe that he could be so lucky that John was touching him. He relaxed, his cheeks heating up even warmer as his thoughts wandered to something a bit more graphic. He let out a soft meow before John's words stirred him, his eyes opening up halfway. " N-No... Not really. My senses are just stronger. My sight, my hearing, my smell and... especially my sense of feeling. " he sad softly, nudging his face deeper into the others hand.

▼: He chuckled a little and continued to rub his ear. When he seemed to be enjoying it, John started to rub the other ear with his free hand. It was really cute how he was acting, almost like a real cat. John smiled as he kept at the rubbing until one hand moved to scratch under his chin. "So that must feel pretty nice huh? I've never had a pet before, but you might be turning me into more of a cat person rather than a dog one." He chuckled again.

▲: Dave's lip trembled, and he crawled closer, slowly laying himself down in the others lap, pulling Johns hand with him so that he could keep going. He wanted attention. He wanted to be touched. He wanted John, all of John. His face showed absolute pleasure as the other pet him and he couldn't help but let out a gratified mewl. He gazed up to the other, pupils blown and lids half closed. " feels really good." he said softly, half wishing John would just get it over with and figure it out, and half wishing he wasn't so damn obvious. This was the first time he had felt happy in over two days.

▼: John blushed a little as he watched him push himself into his lap. It had been true that John had developed some feelings for Dave over the years, but he honestly never expected him to ever feel the same way for him. That was probably why he was so uptight about being called a homosexual at school. He bit his lip a little as he continued to pet him, and some of the things slowly started to click for him. "Dave.. if.. if you need anything.. you just have to ask."