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homestuckreplay · 3 months ago

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How Does Dave See John?

TG: dont talk to john anymore hes an impressionable doofus (p.1657)

Ever since reading Davesprite’s conversation with gallowsCalibrator where he chastises her for getting John killed, I’ve struggled to get it off my mind. There’s a few passing references in early acts, but Act 4 is the first time we’ve seen Dave talk extensively about John, with John not around – and he paints an interesting picture.

GC: SO JOHN 4CTU4LLY D1D WH4T 1 S41D? TG: yeah TG: im telling you TG: huge pushover TG: he will do what you say TG: unless it happens to be for his own good TG: then all a sudden hes a tough nut to crack go figure (p.1657)

In this chatlog, Dave hasn’t spoken to John for four months – before that, they likely spoke every day for years. That’s a big hole in Dave’s life, so of course he’s furious with the person who caused that. It makes sense, as well, that Dave’s opinions of John are overshadowed by that important final interaction, not by their day to day mutual teasing and goofing off.

Here, Davesprite sees John as someone he has to defend, and as someone who’s easily manipulated and not really capable of making his own decisions. Whether or not that’s actually true, it makes sense coming from someone who’s spent four grueling months mastering time travel and personal independence under life or death conditions, and pre-sprite future Dave expresses something similar when talking to Rose.

TG: i go back and tell john not to be an idiot and get trolled like such a gullible stooge (p.1643)

It’d be a fair interpretation to say that Davesprite’s hero complex is about wanting to save the whole timeline, all of his friends and maybe even the future of humanity, and John just happens to be the specific person who needs saving to accomplish that. However, I personally think this is about Dave’s feelings towards John specifically, and I have three different angles I want to briefly discuss this from: Dave’s birthday note, gender, and fan interpretations.

Dave’s Note.

A few pages after GC and Davesprite’s conversation, we see the note Dave included with John’s birthday package – most likely written in early April of 2009, a week or so before the kids play Sburb. Here’s about 2/3 of the note quoted in full.

i would suggest you put it somewhere and display it ironically but i know youre dead serious about this ridiculous shit so youll probably sleep with the damn thing and nibble its ear and stuff but the weird thing is thats whats cool about you. youre this naive guy like pinocchio tumbled ass backwards off the turnip truck and started liking ghostbusters. then the fairy godmother kissed your nose or some shit and you turned out to be not made of wood and also pretty cool to talk to. one day your gooberish ways are gonna land you in a jam and i know im going to have to get you off the hook but its cool i got your back bro. then we'll meet and hug bump and get each others filthy wife beaters that much filthier so yeah (p.1662)

Here’s the key points I’m getting from this.

Dave defines John by the differences between them.

The way Dave sees John is almost infantilizing; he definitely thinks John is more innocent than he is and less capable of taking care of himself.

Dave loves John so, so much, and he can’t help but express that, even when it contradicts his usual persona.

Irony versus sincerity is a big theme in John and Dave’s conversations dating back to Act 1, as is their respective opinions on pieces of media – usually things John likes and Dave doesn’t, with GameBro Magazine as a notable exception (p.26). Another theme is Dave’s ‘expertise’, with him often positioning himself as knowing more than John and flaunting his superior knowledge, like with their conversations about John’s sylladex and strife specibus (p.35).

In truth, Dave probably has more life experience than John. Bro certainly isn’t trying to keep him sheltered from anything, and Dave is constantly in dangerous situations and surrounded by adult content. He lives in a city, gets into fights, has partly raised himself, and probably hangs out in some weird corners of the internet. John’s life is hard in different ways – he’s a lot more sheltered, and he’s been allowed to have a longer childhood. Even their shared gifts reflect this. John gives Dave a gift that hides his face, makes him look older, shields him from a tough world, and was worn by an adult in a movie. Dave gives John a gift that’s typically given to a young child (Casey is around seven in Con Air) and represents vulnerability, softness, and a need for comfort.

Even if he doesn’t admit it, Dave might wish he’d had a childhood more like John’s. He wants John to have what he couldn’t, which might be why he tries to hide the weirdest things Bro does (and his own discomfort with them) from John. And he wants to use the combat skills he’s learning from Bro to protect someone, instead of hurt them. The love between them is defining and specific, and I actually do think that Dave would go further to protect John than he would to protect Rose or Jade, even though he cares about them a lot too. It’s difficult to find hard evidence for this – it’s really more of a feeling - but the closest I’ve got is that he sends Jade a signed Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff poster for her birthday, which isn’t even in the same league as the Con Air bunny.

There are definitely examples of Dave being naive and oblivious to the world, like when he’s telling himself he loves puppets and is totally chill with Cal, and there are examples of John being smart and intuitive, like when he starts to realize WV is controlling him and fights back. Those things are true of them as individuals, and are even visible in a fair few of their conversations (see p.287 for a great example) but when Dave talks about John, he leans really hard into their experienced/naive dichotomy. I think it’d be so interesting if, when they meet in person one day, they’re forced to confront these other sides of each other and put into a situation where John gets to be the one to take care of Dave and demonstrate his own capabilities.

Gender.

ok so that was all based on the text, now let’s talk headcanons and wild speculation: I think these kids might be transgender.

John, in Act 1 and 2, is characterized by detachment from his life, discomfort in his relationship with his father, and a strict, by the numbers understanding of certain trappings of ‘normal’ life. Dad leaves a piece of paper taped behind his safe, addressing John as ‘son’ and focusing on John’s strength and manliness (p.546). Dad himself is extremely strong, able to lift anything Jack Noir uses to keep him contained and fight the strongest Derse agents, and these are clearly the qualities he prizes in his son too. John also thinks that a ‘proper gentleman’ needs a monocle (p.27) and that a father needs a pipe (p.74), both of which are pretty weird and outdated ideas about masculinity which definitely come from old movies, not from actual deeply held beliefs.

John is also 100% capable of repressing very obvious parts of himself for a very long time, like with the clown graffiti on his walls (p.1001). So, distancing himself from being a man combined with obliviousness towards parts of his own mind makes it possible that John is a trans woman, and hasn’t figured this out yet. Worth mentioning also that John is the only kid to change his Pesterchum handle within the timeline of the story, and John later changing his name would be a very cool resonance.

Dave is more complex, and in a vacuum I think it’s possible to read his gender a few different ways – but it’s most interesting to me if he’s a trans man who came out and socially transitioned when he was a young child. It explains why he spends so much time online (it’s the place he can guarantee being stealth) and why he works SO hard to consciously construct his ironic persona, and works even harder to make it look effortless. Dave has always struck me as this person who’s constantly working twice as hard to keep up with what comes easily and naturally to others, and still not always getting it right. That applies to coolness, which he fails at because wearing sunglasses indoors isn’t actually cool, it applies to fighting, which he fails at when Bro kicks his ass every time even after years of training, and it applies to masculinity, where he’s constantly fighting against hitting puberty and how others perceive him when other boys around him don’t have to deal with any of that. And because he’s working so hard to pass and be accepted, Dave has definitely internalized some gender roles which aren’t that great, and leans way too hard into the ‘asshole teenage boy’ stereotype – like in his first conversation with adiosToreador (p.1099). It’s shitty for sure, but he also doesn’t have someone like John’s dad to be a better example of masculinity.

So I think Dave actively and intentionally buys into masculinity infinitely more than John does, and part of that is leaning into the ‘protector’ role when it comes to his friends. In this read, I don’t think either John or Dave consciously suspect anything about the other’s gender or trans status – but a real-world phenomenon that I and a lot of my friends have experienced is making queer friends while young and feeling a strong connection to them, despite not knowing each other is queer. Consciously, John and Dave think of each other as ‘best bros’ but there’s also an unconscious understanding that they share something deeper. Dave’s protectiveness of John extends to being ready to support and even physically defend John if and when he starts exploring gender, and John’s clear respect for Dave is partly because beneath the irony, Dave is taking the risk of expressing a very authentic part of himself in ways that John is currently not ready to.

As mentioned above, although they tease each other, a lot of their interactions are roughly built on this perceived dichotomy between John’s earnestness and whimsy versus Dave’s irony and impatience. So I think it’s interesting if the difference between them extends to being different genders, and is subverted by John being the one who’s actually putting up a front and Dave being the one who’s actually being himself. And, of course, their close friendship represents a shared trans solidarity.

Fan Interpretations.

I really like my interpretations here, but I’m not the only person reading this comic. On April 10, 2010, which of course is today, lots of people feel very differently. A lot of first-year Homestuck fans were also Problem Sleuth fans (or read it after catching up on Homestuck), and Problem Sleuth, plus a good number of other webcomics, don’t invite much complex character analysis. I’ve seen people shocked by the tone shift following ‘[S] Dave: Accelerate’, because they’ve never seen a webcomic kill two of its main characters, send two others to a dark timeline, and take those ideas seriously.

I have no way of knowing what’s discussed on the MSPA forums, but across multiple other forums, most people one-dimensionally see Dave as ‘cool’ and as someone to emulate, and John as ‘stupid’ and as someone to enjoy reading about but to feel superior to. In this way, they’re specifically leaning into Dave’s perceptions of both himself and John. Dave describes John as ‘gooberish’ in his note – a word that has never appeared in Homestuck before, but has definitely come up in forum discussions.

In sitcoms, it’s pretty common for characters to feel like real people in season one, but by season five, their most extreme and comedic traits are exaggerated while their more nuanced and human traits are suppressed. I think a lot of this comes from how viewers respond to these characters, and what becomes their ‘iconic’ moments in early seasons. That’s the case even with a lot of distance between writers and audience – in Homestuck, Hussie engages so much with fans and reads the MSPA forums in real time, so it’s likely that fan interpretations could influence in-comic characterization. This feels especially true now the cast of characters is expanding so much, which makes it harder to keep track of the complexities of each one.

Overall, I really love John and Dave’s existing dynamic, and how all the beta kids have been characterized so far. In all cases, there’s great groundwork for future character arcs. It’d be a real shame to see any of them become caricatures of themselves. And while I don’t think this is happening in a serious way yet, there are slight shifts in how they’ve been written over time. That could be their changing responses to situations in universe, or could be Hussie’s changing understandings of the characters, and either way I think it’s something to pay attention to. So despite the risk of ending this post on a negative note, I’m going to finish by putting these two interactions side by side.

EB: i do things ironically sometimes. EB: what about what i sent you for your birthday? TG: no those are awesome EB: what? no, they're stupid, which was the joke. the IRONIC joke. get it? EB: wait... EB: you're actually wearing them, aren't you? TG: im wearing them ironically TG: because theyre awesome TG: the fact that theyre ironic makes them awesome TG: and vice versa (p.110)

EB: yeah, of course! EB: there was no way i wasn't trying out this sweet ride. TG: god dammit what do i have to do to make you believe me TG: fist bump my future self til i got bloody knuckles and write you an even sappier bday note in my own blood TG: on a back to the future poster EB: relax, i'm not going through the gate! EB: i am just flying around, and having a good time in the sky. (p.1667)

#homestuck #analysis #john egbert #dave strider #fuck. is this anything. im so tired but i wanted to post this for the ✨homestuck beta 1 year anniversary ✨#worth noting that john originally being 10 in the beta could feed into all this!!#also OFF TOPIC but yall should subscribe to dropout before may 6th bc prices will be going up after that (for new subscribers)#cancel any and all other streaming services if you have them #and if you don't have $6 a month maybe find 2 or 3 friends and share the price and the account #i promise you. this is the only video/tv/etc service you should be paying for. this is the only life advice im qualified to give you #poob does not have it for you. dropout has it for you.#chrono

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