#dave.pdf

Anti-Black Racism permeates throughout Dave’s character, he expresses it, like, all of the fucking time, and Horuss is Anti-Japanese and completely deranged about it. Dave’s racism is played off as a funny joke - Horuss’s isn’t. A lot of Dave’s racism flies over people’s heads because they’re laughing alongside him, processing most of it as 2000’s-brand Random Humor, but it’s pretty hard to miss what’s going on with Horuss.

Dave’s a white rapper from Texas fixated on the novelty of a Black president, using the existence of one as a punchline regularly, refers to Black - sorry, Urban - Art in jest, and, famously, says the N-Word and variants of it several times. Horuss is out here calling Japanese a vulgar, peasant tongue, practically spitting in Damara’s eyes every time she speaks to him. Though it’s being directed at another Troll, and Hemoloyalty is factoring into the bigotry here… That’s still real-world racism!

The part that gets me the most with modern DaveKat is the fact that they’re very aggressively in the spotlight. This… Is antithetical to the point of their relationship for me.

Dave and Karkat’s relationship started developing on The Meteor, earlier than some might think. Dave canonically thinks The Meteor is the place he grew the most as a person - it’s the first time he’s been able to really put his swords and shields down, rest, relax, and allow himself to love and be loved.

It is also the first place he’s ever had privacy.

Dave’s life has been absolutely fraught with constant surveillance. He never knows when there’s a camera on him, when Bro is watching, et cetera. Eyes, eyes, eyes. Eyes on him constantly. He never knows when his random fooling around in the walls of his own home are part of some creepy guys’s fetish material, he never knows when he’s going to be expected to pick up the sword and fight an unfair battle again, he never knows when he’s going to wander into some random traps burying him in his adult brother’s sex toys. Surveillance. Hypervigilance. Cameras. Cameras. Eyes.

His relationship with Karkat having been formed and developed largely offscreen… It meant things to me. Offscreen development is good sometimes, actually. This relationship, this thing that’s really helping Dave calm down and recover, is being done in private. Away from everyone’s eyes. Even those of the fans.

That’s perfect, I think. Their relationship being mostly offscreen really fits them.

The idea of calling that statement "Absurd" and "Chronically Online" is baffling to me, because you'd honestly need to do significantly more mental gymnastics to say that Dave hasn't been sexually abused by Bro. It's textual, and it's a major part of Dave's intro.

Putting this under a cut, because you're entirely correct- this is a really touchy, disturbing subject matter. But it still needs to get talked about. Lucky for you, I'm perfectly okay with talking about the darker aspects of Homestuck's writing... Without filtering it through a fetishistic lens. I apologize in advance if this is more rambly than my usual essays. It's an uncomfortable series of topics that's hard to tackle for any normal person.

Let's do this.

Content Warning: Heavy Discussion of CSA, Mentions of Incest and Pedophilia.

I'll give as many sources to what you said here as I can, just so people listen more. Wasn't able to track everything down, so some things are more up in the air, but overall, you're on the money.

[Blog of Dave Strider- February 17, 2010.]

I heavily agree and identify with your frustration. Just because it's "not in the comic" doesn't mean Hussie didn't write it and that it's not worth evaluating. This isn't a case where you can disregard it for noncanonicity reasons, like Post Canon. This was written concurrently with canon, and therefore it reflects the political mindset of Hussie during the time of writing Homestuck. That much is valuable information. What I will point out is that the next paragraph here contains yet another phrase that is rather telling of Hussie's... Racial vocabulary.

Definitely not the most comfortable thing in the world, to put it nicely. Haven't personally seen it get mentioned, and I feel like it's apt to bring up here, since this is the closest I've seen Hussie get to the big Hard R. Typically, they default to Soft A, which doesn't make it less racist, but does have a different... Vibe, so to speak. It's more hateful sounding.

Moving on.

[Andrew Hussie's Formspring- Feb 24, 2010 - Mar 7, 2010. Exact date unknown.]

The fact that Dave is a near exact emulation of Hussie themself in speech mannerisms, down to the lifting of entire chatlogs, is telling. As we've seen from Hussie's past work, he was clearly... excessively comfortable with throwing around the N-word, as a white man. Why would Dave be any different? It's hard to argue that Dave's racism is "not indicative of Dave's flaws, but indicative of Hussie's", when Dave as a character is both a product of Hussie's mind and a direct extension of her. You can't truly divorce the two. Dave is racist because Hussie is racist. Dave is an extension of Hussie.

[Homestuck, Act 2, page 294- June 23, 2009.]

I believe this is what you were talking about in reference to that particular version of the N-word being used, as well as the references to slavery. This is in Act 2. I couldn't find much in Dave's other raps, outside of his fixation on the idea of Black presidents as a novel concept... Other than this.

[Homestuck, Act 5 Act 2, page 2825- November 1, 2010.]

Apparently using the term "Urban" to refer to Black people, culture, art, and music is a recurring Hussie-ism, even in Homestuck. Rose also uses this a couple times, notably more than Dave does. It sees more usage in Problem Sleuth as well- unsurprising, considering it is an older work than Homestuck is.

[Homestuck, Act 4, page 1590- March 17, 2010.]

[Homestuck, [o], page 3879- July 2, 2011.]

[Problem Sleuth, page 62- March 15, 2008.]

TL;DR: I don't think there's any real excuse to leave Hussie's racism out of genuine discussion of the contents of his works. It's obvious. The only valid defense for leaving it out of analytical conversations is ignorance, because... Well, some people just aren't that observant. Homestuck does not exist in a vacuum. Hussie did, in fact, write this, and Hussie is, in fact, bigoted. Bigotry shows throughout their works not because they're spinning a grand narrative of overcoming your moral failings, but because they kind of just suck. Dave isn't an exception, and shouldn't be divorced from the context of having been written by Andrew Hussie. There's no debate to be had over the existence of Hussie's bigotry, because contesting such a clear cut fact is pure stupidity. It's like arguing that evolution isn't real because you, personally, do not understand it, or don't find it comforting. Hussie's bigotry is one of the only things we can be 100% sure is a real part of his personhood, rather than another figment of his ironic online persona. The level of "Well, Actually"-ism people will engage in over this is mind-numbing, quite frankly.

Hello, Anon! I'm glad you've been having fun with Homestuck lately!! Despite its many flaws, it is a deeply compelling piece of fiction, and I'm always glad to see new eyes on it and new voices being added to the analytical sphere. To answer your question...

Personally, I have never seen what people are talking about with regards to Dave's whole character arc surrounding overcoming Internalized Homophobia and Toxic Masculinity. These are fundamentally not what his arc is about, and this is never what his arc has ever been about. I'd honestly never seen that analytical lens until after DaveKat rose into prominence (mostly due to Post-Canon's heavy featuring of the pairing), and I feel as if these things are related. It is easier to make easy-to-stomach, shippy angst out of addressing your own personal shortcomings than what Dave's arc is actually about. No shade intended. This is because...

Dave's character arc is, and always has been, about Recovering from Childhood Abuse.

This is the conflict we are made aware of in his introduction, and it's a theme that persists all throughout the story. We meet Dave as a 13 year old boy suffering some pretty extreme abuse at the hands of Bro- Physically, Mentally, Emotionally, and Sexually. Dave's home life is such an active threat that he struggles to even admit to himself that it is abuse in the first place- that's an admission that takes a level of vulnerability that he just could not afford, and it's something he's only left to truly unpack during the Meteor Arc.

I have a couple major problems with the "Toxic Masculinity and Internalized Homophobia" takes. Firstly, Toxic Masculinity is not inherent to any expression of Masculinity. The only Toxically Masculine trait we see that's applicable to Dave is that he struggles deeply with vulnerability and sincerity in his emotions. However... These don't really have anything to do with what his views on what a man is or should be. They have everything to do with the fact that he was abused by someone who punishes any display of weakness, because Bro excused his abuse with it being "Training". Secondly... Dave is Bisexual. Even if the process of Dave struggling to accept being attracted to men was a major point in the story, it would not be called Internalized Homophobia. It would be called Internalized Biphobia, because Dave is canonically Bisexual, not Gay. We have seen Dave be attracted to more women than men, and attraction to both genders was present simultaneously. It was not Compulsory Heterosexuality. If it was, it'd be actually written into the story. Bisexual people exist. This is not a Homophobic argument to make; I am literally a Gay man.

It's anthropologically fascinating how this take arose... Basically out of nowhere from my perspective, especially considering how all of Dave's most iconic dramatic lines have something to do with him having to sort through his own abuse. Does no one remember the rooftop scene between Dave and Dirk, where Dave starts telling Dirk all about the horrible way that Bro raised him, and how deeply it affected him?

If not, I'm posting the most striking part of it here.

[Homestuck, page 7749.]

... So, yeah, no. Dave's character arc is not about "Overcoming Toxic Masculinity and Internalized Homophobia". It's about Abuse. Dave is an Abuse Victim. Point blank period. Any trait even loosely attributable to the ideas of Toxic Masculinity and Internalized Homophobia are a consequence of how he was raised, and how he was abused. This does not mean that this is what his character arc is about. That just means that's included within his character arc. It's a way to show growth, not a way to define his arc in its entirety. That is legitimately not how character writing works. To claim such would be to express a remarkable amount of Tunnel Vision.

The Beta + Alpha Kids are... By no means my specialty, as everyone knows, and I personally have zero interest in writing them. That said, I'm pretty sure that most "guides" like that are written by and for writers of lighthearted, canon non-compliant roleplaying, and all the ones that I've seen... Aren't good, and are typically incredibly biased. They definitely tend to want the reader to portray the character in whatever light they see the character in, rather than... How they are in canon. For example, some lean heavily into making Dave a soft, perfect victim, Rose into a tea-drinking lesbian, Jake into a lowkey villain, et cetera.

This is about to get pretty long. It's been a while since I've had to put something under a Read-More... But here we are. Let's get going.

Content Warning: Long, Whole Lot of Rambling about the Technical Aspects of Writing.

Yeah, Dave's accent probably isn't too terribly strong. It's definitely there, but it's not cowboy thick. No one comments on it, and the most we get as far as implication that he has one is that he says "Y'all" when speaking aloud. He doesn't use it over text, but he does use it in verbal conversation. Strictly in verbal conversation.