I guess everyone is reacting to their parents' deaths in this arc. Dave's relationship with Bro has always been a little... complicated, so this should be a very interesting conversation.
TG: oh my fucking god […] TG: we just got done talking and agreed it would be awesome if you didnt bother me for a while […] GC: OH GC: TH4TS R1GHT GC: 1 FORGOT! TG: it was five seconds ago
Girl, get your damn timelines in order!
GC: D1D YOU LOV3 H1M D4V3? TG: no
I believe you.
There's something about the Strider brothers which I noticed a while ago, but haven't had the opportunity to talk about. This is the perfect moment to discuss it, though, because it explains a lot about why Dave is the way he is.
So - let's talk about the Strife fights.
When John first attacked his father with a hammer, I decided to roll with the assumption that this fight was symbolic, rather than literal. John loves his dad, and it can be safely assumed that he doesn't want to kill the guy.
Instead, this scene serves as a stand in for the familial strife between father and son. John finds his father's parenting style to be mildly frustrating, and their interactions sometimes feel like a fight to him.
Likewise, Rose (probably) isn’t actually going for Mom with those needles. Instead, their fight represents Mom’s 'ironic' negligence, and the gifts that Rose refuses to believe are from the heart. The Lalonde relationship is clearly more fraught than the Egbert one, but I don't think Rose actually wants to skewer Ms Lalonde.
Jade doesn't really fight her Grandpa, but their Strife clearly demonstrated how deeply in-denial she is - not about his death, but about the fact that her life isn't normal. She's desperately trying to have the same childhood that John and Rose are describing, but she can't, because she doesn't have a parent to bicker with.
Now, I'm sure you've guessed where I'm going with this. What, exactly, did Dave's Strife scenes represent?
Well...
...first of all, it's worth noting that Dave is the only Player to explicitly describe the events of his Strife to a third party. We've never heard John reminiscing about bludgeoning Dad, but Dave's constantly complaining about getting beaten up by puppets.
And - rather more worryingly - Dave is the only Player to retain his Strife injuries, even after this ostensibly 'metaphorical' fight is over.
In fact, one of those Strife injuries still marks him to this day.
The point I am obviously dancing around is that I don't think Dave's Strife was a metaphor at all. Unlike his friends, there's no pretense to these fights. They're literal. Dave's brother routinely attacked him.
Odds are, this was Bro's way of 'preparing' Dave for the game he surely knew was coming - but you don't need me to tell you that he took it way too far. The guy might have been Dave's assigned Guardian, but he really shouldn't have been raising anyone.
