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[knighthooded]

IC INFO;

CHARACTER NAME: Dave Strider
CANON & HISTORY: Homestuck | Dave's wiki page
AGE: 16
CANON POINT: [S] Game Over - post death
PERSONALITY:

Dave, in the first group of four kids introduced in Homestuck, takes up position as the resident "coolkid." He mixes his own music, seems to be ahead of the curve in new technology, raps, doesn't type grammatically correct, and never takes off his sunglasses indoors. Dave considers himself to be cool. Dave is not cool - at least, not in the way that he'd have people believe. Irony is a cornerstone of Dave Strider's philosophy, and ironic is how Dave actually comes across when considering who he really is.

Though Dave's sense of humor is the dry, sarcastic type typical of a cool guy, what comes through half the time instead is a precursor to rambling, weird metaphors that end up putting him a good ten feet away from what his point was, or beating it down to the point where the horse might as well be embedded in the dirt. Talking about Rose taking a nap, at one point, turns into:

TG: yeah i saw her there
TG: all tuckered out
TG: like she got smacked in the face with a pillow case full of the snooze wizards beard dander
TG: cause obviously its fuckin prime time for swiping some shuteye about now

And that's a more mild version of the tangents he can go on. The odd, absurdist sense of humor he has shines through his Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff pages, his raps that call out pop culture figures or maybe are just made in order to unsettle trolls, and covers everything from what really could be irony to drawing penises all over a book to get under Karkat's skin. He isn't someone who really cares about or knows how to stop himself from blurting out exactly what's on his mind, be it going into convoluted scenarios, using an almost excessive amount of profanity, or referring to Jane as "John's hot mom." It also tends to lead to him talking to himself, either on chat long after the other person left the computer or out loud, something he's definitely teased for on the meteor. Whether or not it's a cool thing to do isn't really impacting him doing what he's admitted is a habit. Combined with being occasionally forgetful and at times just vulnerable to the general stupidity of being a teenage boy, Dave more or less undoes all the hard work he does trying to convince other people he's cool.

Still, just because Dave isn't the stereotypical cool guy, it doesn't mean that all of it is a front. Dave does tend to reserve his emotions, keeping the outbursts tempered and his real feelings hidden for all but a select few. Though with time he's become slightly more open, he still tends to keep things locked up - it takes a lot for him to admit anything truly serious regarding himself. When asked about losing to Bro in a strife, Dave kept his answers short and blunt, not referring to how he felt. Even after traveling on the meteor, Dave is most eloquent when it comes to other people and their problems, not his own. He struggles to admit things that could be construed as weak, in part influenced by his upbringing. Bro's harsh training and abusive behavior conditioned him to fight, but at the cost of instilling a fear of blood and the sound of metal hitting together - something that at his canon point, he still hasn't quite admitted to himself. He still respects and idolizes his Bro, but deep down, he's conflicted by that, and chooses to instead overlook the disturbing aspects of his childhood in favor of preserving his brother's image.

Despite being a sixteen year old boy, Dave has the capacity to remain somewhat calm in the face of large surprises or changes - though Sburb definitely unsettled him, he didn't panic, and when needing to discuss heavy topics, he's capable of dismissing his usual attempts at wit to take things seriously. If he's going to break down, it's going to be internally, and he's going to keep moving forward. If the world is collapsing around him he's going to find a way to work with it - even if that means going into the abyss on a suicide mission to try to take down the Green Sun. Still, Dave is only sixteen, and is no hardened action hero despite how much he might try to seem unaffected. He is scared, not just of blood, but his own mortality, and it impacts him like it might affect any young man still uncertain of the world. He cannot bring himself to die on his quest bed and ascend to godtier that way - Terezi says that he couldn't face his death - and though it's played off, when he saw his own corpse, he froze, and eventually had to force himself to action. Dave knows his own flaws, and because of them, he doesn't consider himself the hero of this tale.

But despite claiming to not be the hero, Dave is almost classically heroic in his loyalty to those he cares for and what he'll do for them. He swears off his time powers, his most powerful weapon against their foes, because the Condesce wants them - and she's hurting Jade to get them. By refusing to use them, he is cutting off her reason to be there - to keep hurting Jade like that, and he thinks later that he misses "not crazy Jade." He deeply loves his friends, and regardless of whatever face he puts up, he shows it through his actions. Despite whatever he claimed about the sunglasses to John, his trademark aviators were a gift that he cherishes and keeps ever close from him, and though it killed a timeline, Dave traveled back in time to save John from trollish machinations, as well as put enough thought into John's birthday present to make sure it was something he'd really cherish. For Jade, he'd engage in furry roleplay, send her music, and aid her in breeding the frogs on her planet, as well as dispose of his own corpse - something that horrifies him - just so she didn't have to see it. Though his attempted relationship with Terezi ended in flames, he still put aside his own hurt and went to ask Karkat to step in when she was turning into a juggalo and entering into a horrible hate relationship with Gamzee. Past his canon point, he shows how deep that love goes when he needs to fight by Dirk's side, and though he didn't wish to use his powers again, he did so in order to win with him and save his head so he could be revived. Not to mention that he died in a last stand in this timeline, protecting Jade's corpse for the chance of her being revived, fighting until his last breath against two creatures with powers that far exceeded his own, and because of his sacrifice, his death as a god was ruled Heroic and allowed to stand.

So Dave may not be the hero to go and lead the charge, but he has the heart of one in how he stands by his friends, in what he will make happen for their sake. And that, after all, is pretty cool.

POWERS:

Combat: Dave was trained as he grew by his Bro in combat rigorously, and has a very good grasp on fighting and particularly swordsmanship, enough that he managed to cope with using broken swords to fight.
Flashstep: He can move extraordinarily fast - innate superspeed under a different name.
Sylladex: He has a type of hammerspace inventory in which he manages to carry things that just don't fit in his pockets.
Godtier: Having died on a special slab of rock out in the middle of space, Dave ascended to godhood. This has several perks - the ability to fly, a sweet set of pajamas that stay clean and whole, and conditional immortality. He will not die, unless he is killed in either a Heroic fashion, such as sacrificing himself for another and it being a hero's actions, or a Just fashion, which would come after he took a villain's actions.
Time: Dave's title is Knight of Time, and like other Sburb players, that indicates his game given powerset. The Knight class is that of one who uses their aspect as a weapon - whatever that ends up meaning for the person in that place. Dave utilizes time as such - he is gifted with the ability to naturally make stable time loops, which work for him in various ways, like breaking a stock market or using time to be in multiple places at once. As long as he can fullfil his future self, the loop will hold, and the timeline will be unaffected. He's spent long enough with this power to understand its implications fully, and to understand what it means. Canon classifies Dave's intentional breaking of timelines as "shenanigans", and that's pretty much what they are, given that messing with time and making nonstable loops creates doomed timelines in which the alternate Dave is going to die. Dave also, by extension, can sense alterations to the timeline he's in. However, Dave has currently sworn off using his time powers, and would be very, very hard pressed to use them again.

OTHER:
Dave has a strong love for creating music, particularly through mixing and remixing it. He also has the hobby of creating absolutely abysmal art, an interest in collecting dead things, and is something of a casual photographer.

GAME INFO;

MAGIC ABILITY: The ability to heal people through performing music. The healing is limited to the size of a performance - a quick beatboxed rhythm just to one person could heal minor aches and pains, while an actual song could staunch bleeding. The bigger the performance, the more powerful his healing can be, but he gets better results from performing original works as opposed to covering someone else.
PRICE: The sunglasses his Bro gave him. A present from his father figure.
ACCLIMATION: 6 - While initially Dave will be accepting of his changes, due to both Sburb's massive upheavals and the shock that comes from knowing he truly died, once the numbness wears off, he'll be more skeptical and ready to ask a lot of questions, and the idea of following one person with great power will sit uneasy with him both in his tendency to reject some aspects of destiny and him being reminded of things in the game. Not enough to want to dismantle the system as it exists, but Dave will remain looking for the truth.