➥ PERSONALITY.

[torrent]

PERSONALITY:

Say hello to Dave Strider — the coolest, hippest, baddest, chillest 13-year-old you will ever meet in your life. He's got everything down to the sunglasses and DJ tricks and his love for irony, with an ego spanning a thousand suns and an eloquence with words that he uses for all the wrong reasons. He's quick on his feet and thinks almost just as fast. His rad sense of tastes covers music, fashion, photography, and technology. He can cut pillars in half. He has alien chicks finding him irrerristable. Even the people he shows no sympathy to (a.k.a. not his friends) still keep knocking on his instant-messenger door. Seriously, Dave Strider is fucking cool.

Except: no, not really. The problem is, Dave tries so hard to cover that he's actually a dorky-loser-thing. As the story goes on, we learn about just how much of a teenager he really is — he freaks, he has soft spots, he's gotta be loved by everybody and win the gold medal for the Insufferable Prick Games.

He's not much to show anything like that due to some (or a lot of) insecurities. He's so obsessed with wanting to be cool that he worries about being anything less. While all his friends call him "cool" at least once (although with John, he probably implied it in a different way), it just fuels the expectation and Dave tries extremely hard not to disappoint. When it comes to said insecurities, we should probably mention, his brother plays a huge part — In the beginning Dave expressed nothing but admiration for him, wanting to be him and his awesome ironic persona. Before his current shades (a birthday gift from John), he was wearing pointy ones similar to his brother's.

Which kind of brings up the point where Dave is actually very aware of his strengths and boasts on them. Strengths and weaknesses both become apparent once he fights in the Medium. They both stick out like sore thumbs if you pay attention to him, but because he's basically known as this "cool" dude, he can't shut his mouth at what he rocks at. Which probably also makes him really annoying and way more eager than anything else.

Dave's got some experience under his belt. Dave had a higher advantage over his other three friends from the get-go, making him one of the more capable fighters. Bro was the only guardian who trained Dave for the Medium, giving him a sword and teaching him from a young age, so wielding a sword was nothing new in Dave's case. He is also more tecnologically advanced, with an advanced sylladex and computer due to his experience with programming. Although prone to some dumbass things, Dave has shown that he's actually very intelligent in certain ways when it comes to hacking and time loop strategies.

He knows this and boasts it, bragging to his friends about how cool his skills tend to be, even in a life-or-death situation (he once insisted for John to listen to his ~sick beats~ while John was having a panic attack when him and his house got transported into the middle of nowhere). When met with compliments he soaks it up like a sponge, not really bothering with compliments back; but hey, takers keepers.

As a time traveler, he has seen some pretty bad outcomes in his and friends' decisions, even with some of those outcomes meaning death for anyone. But Dave never showed much reaction to it at first, outside a bit of frustration, but he simply rewinded and tried to avoid it. Later in the comic, he expresses that he didn't like his role in Sburb, and wished that he was just normal (Dave of Guy). He then implies that he's sick of all the doomed science and timelines, which was symbolized in a dream of his he had before the game started. This is largely related to his attempted suicide mention, which we're gonna cover in a bit.

Of course, trying to be a cool guy and loving every second of it is also a problem. Dave is extremely arrogant and shoves it onto others, which has costed him before. He tends to be stubborn and not to listen to orders at times because, y'know, Dave Knows All — but has only messed up and gotten himself in danger. He sometimes tries to take on more than he can handle because he can also, y'know, handle anything, but he just gets his ass handed to him in the end. He never tends to learn, though. But it's amazing that this is one of the factors that helped him go God Tier.

He's actually pretty forgetful too. He always forgets his bookmark on a webcomic and has to go back and find it, forgets that his timetables exists and therefore he can actually travel through time, and forgot to forget a troll's name when he said he would. This is also ironic. Totally.

But when all's said and done, there are instances to where he just breaks and freaks — when something makes him look anything but what he puts himself out to be. He texts Rose in a panic when he's buried under puppets (which he has a recent fear of) or when birds attack him in his room, or his reaction when he finds his dead brother. He also tends to kind of lose it when his prototyped Calsprite does nothing but laugh, but who wouldn't.

Dave has also shown signs of being afraid of death. At first, he stares at the blood on his hands from another Dave's corpse, and later could not find it in himself to kill an already doomed Dave because it was too much to take. We learn later that he once had a dream where he was in the eyes of a crow, watching himself die in different outcomes, and flew off into the sun. This kind of implies that he feels stuck, no matter what he tries it's hopeless, and he wanted to end it. He was then convinced that this dream meant he was the one meant for the Green Sun mission, and although having issues with his own death, he figured it was his only escape.

Dave's relationships bring out the most in him than anything else shown (besides the whole Derse deal), however. They all have an impact in their own way, whether Dave is aware of it or not. Even though he tends to rag on them in person or give off a fake judgement when talking to them about others, he's had the knack of expressing concern before, asking others if his friends are/will be alright. His best friends are John, Rose, and Jade, but he has a growing friendship with Terezi and then some sarcastic attitudes for... weird other troll dudes.

To start off, John is Dave's best bro who digs terrible movies unironically. Either way, Dave still rags on him regardless, anything to make John look like a nerd and for himself to be hilarious. But in truth, John has heavy influence on Dave. John once joked about Howie Mandel which pretty much ruined Dave's apple juice for him, so he couldn't drink it. He also started showing signs of some type of puppet phobia when John also joked about how creepy they were. Everything is probably John's fault, as far as Dave is concerned, but he has also shown a type of devotion for John. He went out of his way to get the original bunny from the last scene of Con Air as John's birthday present, and went back in time to save John's life when he was about to do something stupid. However, he is also jealous of him and puts him in the same branch of his big brother. Traits that come naturally to John, like his attitude and flexibility, plus his overall growth, is something Dave always has to struggle for. He knows there's bit of resentment on his own part and he hates it, but since going God Tier, it's hard to tell by now.

Out of all the relationships he has, Rose might be the most complicated, or he's just anal about it. He describes her as insufferable when talking about her with John, but when we see his actual conversations with her, it's easy to see he actually thinks differently. He tends to open up more to Rose than anyone else, admitting his problem with the puppets among other things. He's expressed apparent worry towards her when she suggested a suicide mention (although she meant her dream self, not the real her) and when she points out that his outburst was sweet, he took it with pride. When Rose took the trip to the Green Sun instead of him, Dave very bluntly told her he didn't want her to die. Either way, he's closer to her than he'd care to admit, but that's Dave for you.

He seems to have a soft spot for Jade (in a different way from Rose), especially since she just loves to fuel his ego. They both also seem to share a love for animals (for her birthday, Dave sent her a poster of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff as furries), although they've never directly talked about it. He seems to be easier on her and never really rags unless she does something apparently stupid in his eyes, like place equipment in the wrong spot or fall asleep randomly. His future self seemed much more kind to her though, even offering to listen to any problems she might have. However, she's also an example that his douchebaggery is an exception for no one (made her slap herself and used her as a human shield), no matter the demeanor.

The trolls are weird as far as Dave is concerned. Dave's first "friendship" with any of them would be Terezi, his patron troll. Their first encounter went as any other typical Dave-and-troll conversation, with him pounding in sarcasm and jokes and irony all over the place. But when he learns to trust her, he becomes more friendly although he's pretty aware of her strong flirting. He doesn't seem to mind and even exchanges comics with her, becoming pretty clear that she is the troll he gets along with the most. She's not afraid to call him out on his bullshit, which he's got a lot of, and very clearly saw through him when he tried to act alright about his dead brother. It says a lot when Dave is offering his advice, so he does care for Terezi as his friend, and started to bro it up when they both met on the viel.

He's not so good with the troll guys, though — he once counter-trolled Tavros who was attempting to troll him but just ended up blocking Dave instead. He once declared Gamzee as the best rap-off troll he's ever met and links him to a youtube video that only pisses Gamzee off. He's had an awkward rap-off with Equius that Dave called off pretty quick, and a ongoing annoying argument with Karkat that sees no end to this day. Either way, he tends to appreciate the help although he never voices it (except to Terezi probably) although, again, his arrogance can make him do pretty stupid things in this department.

Last, but definitely not least, is his older brother slash slime dad. Bro himself is a large, if not central (along with his own mortality), theme of Dave's character. He raised Dave by the sword and a helluva lot of suggestive puppetry. Dave later remarks it was more of a kinship than anything actually brotherly, given the nature of the hobbies he was taught from Bro and what they shared. Dave idolizes him like nothing else ever. He even shared his glasses up until John sent him a new pair, who mentions that Dave should step out of his brother's shadow more. He often called him awesome, hinting that he wanted to be just like him, but something ticked when he was in the medium, and he starts showing a resentment for Bro. Part of it probably stems how whenever he tried to take a step on his own, Bro had to step in and save him, wrecking his chance. Mixed feelings are finally put to light when he finds his Bro dead, and although showing a weird reaction and (literally) flying off the handle, he resolves that his killer (Jack Noir) has to pay up for what he's done. Bro is a hero in Dave's eyes, no matter how much he tries to convince himself different.

Overall, sometimes you don't know whether or not to judge a book by its cover. Dave has some kickass cover art but then you open it and it's the weirdest thing you've ever read. There's also some hidden diary entries in the back, which he folds up and makes it so tiny with the hope you probably won't notice it. And then you finish, and you understand jack shit, except you're pretty sure you haven't seen anything like it.

ABILITIES:

Dave is the Knight of Time. Back in the Medium, he was able to go back in time to help himself and his friends through the game at any point. Jade detected 13 Daves running around in the present time, although he has to be careful and not step out of line or some Daves might start dying.

Dave is the most physically experienced out of the four main kids. Bro specifically raised Dave as a cool roof ninja rapper, but the "roof ninja" is probably the most important thing in that title right now. Dave's ninja speed is nowhere as polished as his brother's, but he's still got a hell of an advantage. Dave's weapon of choice is a sword, of any kind — ranging from a katana to the traditional longsword.

He's also proven to be pretty intelligent. He hacks computers to his advantage, jacked a stock market and owned his planet's economy, and has careful calculations and steps to his time looping. And let's not forget the colorful vocabulary.