#and somehow someone with a completely different upbringing understands them perfectly and always says exactly what the character needs

[odetojupiter]

so, we know that abuse and victim responses to abuse are very central to aftg, but what i find interesting is how other characters respond to the victim’s reactions, especially when it comes to mourning their abuser. there’s something about kevin mourning riko, aaron mourning tilda, neil mourning mary, andrew mourning cass, thats so important to me because it really truly highlights how even when people are united through similar traumas, the differences in their situations makes it impossible to fully understand the relationship a person has to their abuser. neil, aaron, and andrew are united through the abuse, neglect, or - what the fuck is the word i’m thinking of? permit? condone? i mean, knowingly allowing it to happen and not intervening - stemming from a maternal figure. but neil can’t understand why andrew would hold on to cass for so long - he refused to let her go until aaron came into the picture. and andrew can’t understand why aaron would mourn for tilda, potentially viewing aaron’s grief as a betrayal of their promise. and they all ridicule kevin for his reactions to riko. of course, neil and andrew are also abused by riko, but they still can’t understand the complicated relationship between kevin and riko because, at the end of the day, they just weren’t there.

i mean this is primarily an observation but i really love how trauma and trauma response is depicted as nuanced, complex and overall just difficult to understand from an outsider perspective in the books. it reads as really real, and though it can be frustrating when a character doesn’t understand a different character’s response, you have to understand that their perception of said character’s response is warped by their own experience of abuse.

andrew bounced from home to home, never had stability, so obviously he held tight on to the first mother-figure that didn’t outright hurt him. his self-worth was probably low enough that he thought living with drake was a fine price to pay to keep cass.

neil only ever had his mother, and he’d willingly accept her harsh hands because he believed she was just keeping him safe from the very real dangers that were closing in on them.

aaron was dealing with an addiction, and so was his mother; he was equally dependent on her to avoid withdrawal as he was scared of her anger.

i don’t really have a point anymore but you get what i’m saying

[ardenttheories]

And onto that odd little meta piece I was talking about. It’s really more of a fandom observation.

Despite not knowing what Bro looks like, the entire fandom seemed to gravitate towards two ideas: Twunk, or Hunk. Every piece of fanart I’ve seen usually has him thickly built, trim down the waist but broad shouldered and coiled with muscle, or at the very least with some sort of defined musculature that usually isn’t present on other characters. E.g. x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x

You’ll also typically find a theme with the artist’s choice of expression or facial features; strong jaw, sharp nose, often frowning. 

And this all comes from...

This sprite. A sprite, mind you, that’s exactly the same as this:

And yet the expression of this character is wholly different. 

He’s often drawn slimmer, with slanted shoulders and either a thin dorito-waistline or a relatively similar shoulder to hip ratio. He often has more curved features - his jawline, his nose - and his expression almost always determined or soft. E.g. x, x, x, x, x, x

And for emphasis: this is how two artists chose to draw them side by side. E.g. x, x

It’s also very rare to see people draw Alpha Dave the same height as Bro. From memory - and I got into Homestuck roughly during the height of the Alpha kids’ popularity - most of the fanart I saw with any instance of Bro and A!Dave in the same image had a pretty fair height difference. 

Again: this comes from the exact same sprite. When you layer Bro’s sprite over A!Dave’s, you’ll be able to fit them together pixel to pixel (except, of course, the arm - A!Dave’s got his arm up holding the sword, unlike Bro - and the jawline - which is much more curved than Bro’s, but when we actually see Alpha Dave’s sprite in canon, it isn’t really long enough to focus on this tiny feature [especially when you consider that Grandpa Harley has the same face shape, but people still draw him with a defined jawline]). 

So, why so different? Why would people draw these two characters so wildly different when, for instance... 

Both Moms are drawn almost exactly the same. 

It’s pretty obvious when you think about it, but it’s also an incredibly important thing to note if you ever plan on creating your own characters. 

Character interactions define how we view characters that have yet to be introduced or do not have a wholly set image. 

When we think of Bro, we have to be realistic: we know absolutely nothing about who he is as a person, or what he looks like, besides the information that we get from Dave. So, when we get the information that he’s physically abusive, that he has cameras around the entire apartment, partakes in puppet snuff for the sake of a pornographic website, leaves such pornographic paraphenalia around the apartment for a young Dave to see, and that he’s emotionally closed off and distant, we immediately start to form an image of him in our minds that’s based on what we can define as an amalgamation of toxic masculinity and male abusers. 

It’s not exactly hard to imagine why the most common fanart of him circulates as a tall, imposing, broad figure who barely smiles and would be incredibly hard to get around in a small, dark alley. 

We also need to remember, of course, that Dave is a child while he describes Bro. An adult is almost always going to be tall and imposing to a child - is always going to be stronger and physically more capable than a child. 

Bro could be the most average joe you’ve ever met, but because we learn about him from the viewpoint of a child who quite literally cannot fight back, the image of him becomes tilted to the buff end of the spectrum. 

He becomes someone we would fear seeing. Someone who could overpower us, and not just a child under his care. He is big and strong because that is how Dave sees him, and that is how we come to understand him as a character.

Big, strong, violent, with sexual overtness and a lack of emotion. It’s pretty much the only way you can imagine him, even when his sprite is incredibly lacking in detail. 

So, why the softness for Alpha Dave? 

Pretty simply, because we already know who Dave is by the time Alpha Dave is introduced. People already had an idea of what Dave looked like, who he’d be when he grew up. People had already decided that Dave, being so different from Bro, being such a hero, would never be able to achieve the same sort of toxic masculinity that Bro did - would never have the same shape, the same musculature, that comes with that toxic imagery. 

 We also got told about him by a young teen who absolutely idolised him. Who emphasised his good traits and spoke about how absolutely badass he was. 

The connotations with Alpha Dave are so much more positive than with Bro. That in and of itself would have changed how people drew him. But when you combine him with the concept that he’s Dave, the Dave that went through all that abuse and came out the other side hating everything that Bro stood for, it’s hard not to draw him as Bro’s nigh complete opposite. 

So, he’s smaller. He’s got less of that musculature that people associate with toxic masculinity (the ability to overpower someone smaller), and he has a much closer shoulder-to-hip ratio (something that makes him take up less space, and come across as less imposing). He smiles more, he emotes more, he’s much more emotionally open - and even when he’s meant to be “cool”, it’s often with some sort of smug or determined look, not the ever-present blankness or snarl that we see from Bro. 

He loses all of the traits that we’d associate with an abuser. Instead, he becomes a pretty ordinary hero - someone who can stand up and fight back, but isn’t overly heroic or powerful. Someone who might still struggle, but can handle things. 

This is despite the fact, of course, that we know nothing about Alpha Dave’s upbringing or life besides what Dirk tells us - and Brain Ghost Dirk, at that. Unreliable narrators are not a good place to find valuable information, and, once again, the in-comic sprite is literally the exact same as Bro’s.

Fandom perception is an incredibly powerful thing. 

So, what about Dirk? How does he fare in all of this?

Dirk’s actually a weird figure in everything, and this comes down to a very simple yet paradoxical concept:

We already had ideas on who Bro was, yet we actively get to see who Dirk is. 

It’s very hard to go into something expecting one person and getting another. We can see all those notes in Dirk that we saw in Bro - the toxic tendencies, the hyper masculinity, the divorced note from people and emotions - but we see them within the specific framework of a teenager with mental illness. 

This isn’t just an asshole, abusive adult. This is that adult’s younger self in a better mindset to try and do good by the people he loves. We see this time and time again - when he says how much he cares about Roxy, when he expresses his guilt that he couldn’t be romantically invested in her, when he shares the fears he holds of his splinters, when he admits that Bro is exactly what he could be and is genuinely scared of being - that he is the foundation of Bro, but not Bro in a very important way. 

It’s also needless to say that people connected with Dirk in the exact same way that people connected with Dave. When you look at a lot of vent art involving him, it’s almost always about mental illness - anxiety, impulsive or intrusive thoughts, a desperate need for control in life, self harm or a dislike for oneself - and a fair bit of generic art revolving around Dirk includes some sort of deeper mental struggle. 

He’s a victim, in a similar way that Dave is, but he’s also just far enough that he could be a villain. 

You find that a lot of fanart therefore shows this paradoxical nature. 

In some, he’s softer. The ratio between his hips and his shoulders is narrower, his jawline is more curved. E.g. x, x, x, x

In others, he’s sharper. He’s drawn with more defined muscle, with a stronger jawline and broader shoulders, and though he’s definitely slim you can definitely see just how close he is to becoming the same figure as Bro. E.g. x, x, x, x, x 

And in others, he’s an odd mix of both. A brooding figure with a softer jawline, but still imposing and sharp in his own right - or even the complete opposite, with sharp features and defined shapes, but slimmer and smaller, much less imposing. E.g. x, x, x, x, x, 

So, I think we can make a pretty firm observation that the way Dirk is drawn reflects how the artist views his journey and his struggles. Whether he’s his own person, closer to Bro, or somewhere stuck in between. 

As you can see from most of this art, there’s a few ways that people draw Dirk; raring to fight and smug/confident, fairly sombre and down, almost tired, or standoffish and closed off. Even this is somewhere in between the way people view Bro and Alpha Dave. 

So, it’s then interesting to take a look at the Epilogues. 

New art of Dirk was produced in line with the Meat Epilogue. And while I really only know of one piece that catches my eye every time I see it, I think it’s important to point out that, in almost all of these images, one of two body types appear for Dirk:

1) Broad, muscular, tall. He takes up space and commands attention. Sharp features, wider shoulders.

2) Smaller, less imposing, yet somehow intimidating in just the expressions he makes and the way he holds himself. If you can imagine any fuckboy you’d be scared of being cornered by at a party, you’ve got a good idea of this style of fanart. 

In other words, either tipped way more to looking like Bro, or so close to looking like something you’d be scared of IRL - which perfectly reflects how uncomfortable he feels within the narration of the Epilogue, and some of the more questionable things he has happen in it. 

I also want to just add in as a side note: almost all of the links I added about Dirk go to Pinterest for sake of ease for people to find other images for reference, since I’m really just collecting the art I like most. On most of the Dirk ones, scrolling down will reveal the aforementioned vent art; on most of the Dave ones, scrolling down will reveal much softer, sweeter pieces of art involving him and people he’s loved throughout the comic. Just something interesting to add into this discussion - think about what that means for how people view either Strider.

So, what was all of this about?

Honestly, it’s me just pointing out how important character opinions and preconceived ideas are to the way people view other characters. So much of the way we see Bro is influenced by how Dave sees him and our cultural understanding of what toxic, hypermasculine male abusers look like. So much of the way we see Alpha Dave is based around our understanding of Dave, and what little we can fill in from Brain Ghost Dirk, rather than on who he actually is as a person (and we could be wrong; we could be very, very wrong). So much of the way of the way we see Dirk is influenced by Bro, and yet by what we see in canon. 

If we had different ideas and different opinions from different characters, we might draw each of them wildly different. But it is this specific combination of lack of physical description and cultural association/character perception that ensures we draw them the way they are.