Dave Strider



Dave Strider is pretty much the quintessential example of the human coolkid. From his hipster tastes to his crisp black suit (complete with broken record) to his tenuous-at-best grasp on irony, he embodies everything detestable and yet undeniably suave about that human constant, The Douchebag Snarker.

Oh, and he's also a time-travelling knightly MC extraordinaire destined to be one of the four who will create a new universe, if that's important or something. He really can't be bothered to keep up with this shit.

Setting
Congratulations, and welcome to the Sburb beta! You are one of the chosen elite to receive this game. Sburb is a multiplayer ad hoc simulation, which – using new, previously unknown and possibly eldritch technologies – allows you to interface and modify the real world directly! The server player's job is to build up for you, modify locations in your house and generally assist you in reaching your goal. You will begin playing as a server, but soon enough you will become a client player! What is your goal as a client? You'll find out soon enough!

When you, the client, first install your copy of Sburb, you may notice some odd occurrences. Rest assured, these are merely coincidences, except for the very large meteor now heading for your house! That's right – you are now on a timer! Better get cracking, kid! Don't worry, the rest of the world is on a similar timer, too. Manage to figure out what to do? Then congratulations, you are one of the select few to survive Earth's incoming apocalypse.

If you happen to be one of the select few destined to make it in – and you are destined if you make it in, believe us – then upon victory in the first phase, you will find yourself in your Medium – a blank void, in the middle of the Incipisphere. Going further will lead you to your Land, the planet designed both for and from you, and further than that? It's a surprise!

Over time, you may encounter some bizarre chronologies. It is not unheard of for successfully players to be clones of themselves that they made themselves, otherwise referred to as “Paradox clones,” and you may find that actions you take in the past were guaranteed by previous actions in the future. Other yous may very well wake up, while others still will die in the process. Still, we at the Sburb design team have the most absolute faith in you children!

Player “Dave Strider,” you have been chosen to serve as the Knight of Time, one of the four chosen ones of this universe's Sburb session. While we feel explaining your role proper would take away from the magic of the Sburb experience, we feel it safe to tell you that you will be at the forefront of any time shenanigans that take place while playing Sburb!

Note: over the course of this Sburb session, you may find other destined roles such as the Heir of Breath, the Seer of Light, and the Witch of Space to be people you in fact knew previously. This is likely intentional, as Sburb has its methods of forcing its teammates to be people who would work at least half-decently together. Additionally, you may in fact come into contact with the players of previous Sburb/Sgrub/etc. Sessions. These players are likely to have been the ones to create your universe. Such dramatic revelations are not recommended for pregnant women, children under the each of six solar sweeps, or the elderly (not the supremely elderly, though, they can handle it).

The multiverse is at your fingertips, player “Dave Strider!” Go forth, survive, and win!

Personality
Okay, first things first. The thing you need to know about Dave? He is a cool kid. He is the cool kid. Other kids ask Dave if he can hand out lessons on how to be that cool, and you know he hasn't got the time for that shit. Besides, they're just aiming for an unreasonable goal here. After all, he is simply too cool. Everything Dave does just reeks of being cool, from his iShades to that styling red velvet suit he's wearing, to the rap battles he has with his bro all the time. Want tickets to that new band you've only just heard of? I mean, he's got connections and everything, but they're kind of old news. Why not try this new and (ostensibly) better one?

-wait, what's that? Rap battles are outdated? Red velvet, while undeniably comfy, is a cheesy thing to wear? Ben Stiller's glasses with an Apple logo on them are the single least cool thing anyone could wear? Well, take a moment, grab the nearest banister, because he is going to turn your world flip-ways with this revelation: he is wearing them solely for the irony. That's right, Dave is able to take the very act of being uncool and turn it into unfiltered hellaciousness. (And if you said “dude, hellacious is the worst adjective since tubular,” you'd be absolutely right, and Dave would just give you the look, and in that shared moment, passing between you and him, you'd suddenly realize just how cool Dave had been all along. Provided you're cool. And, you know, a hipster. It's like one of those Lifetime specials, except with unending douchebaggery instead of tears and drama.)

Dave, being one of those cool kids we hear so much about, is a busy guy. Not with school or band or anything like that, though.God forbid. Dave spends a good portion of his life maintaining his status as a cool kid: through discovering indie bands that haven't gotten mainstream enough to classify as “Indie” yet, dropping phat beats and remixing less interesting songs, and maintaining “a number of ironically humorous blogs, websites, and social networking profiles.” Amongst these is his magnum opus “Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff,” a webcomic which at first sight looks to be made by a child with MSPaint, a large amount of free time and an inversely proportional amount of talent. This webcomic offers a large amount of insight into Dave Strider's mind; specifically, his sense of humor and the friends he keeps. Since its creation, SbaHJ has become a part of all four's lives, and they quote it on a regular basis. It's just one of those inside jokes, I suppose. Similarly, his blog (http://dstrider.blogspot.com) offers a keen insight into Dave's humor; he rants about Tony Hawk, Dane Cook, and generally professes his (ironic) love for things which are Not All That Great.

He's actually fiercely intelligent, especially for a thirteen year old, and try as he might to obfuscate his more erudite side his vocabulary betrays him: he's obviously someone that read a lot when he was younger, throwing out large words and the occasional allusion here and there, and it's entirely possible he still has that hunger for knowledge and words. (This could be part of the reason of his love of rap battles and hash-map functions; words, in all shapes and sizes, fascinate him!) That said, I can't imagine him putting quite as much effort as he used to into reading or (god forbid) schoolwork; a genuine attempt at passing classes would not be the “coolkid” thing to do, and books just can't hold up to sick beats. He's a busy guy, after all, you know? Much as he might say otherwise, being this awesome requires a bit of investment.

But his competence doesn't stop there! Despite being as new to the game as any of the other kids, he adapts almost immediately to the bizarre situations. While Rose stumbles a bit while learning the controls, and Jade nearly kills Dave twice with his own toilet, Dave quickly and efficiently gets Rose into her medium – and he does it with a bit of elegance, too, even if Rose is in a bit of a rush. Part of this is his unhurried, unshakeable nature – Dave is, to put it bluntly, one chill motherfucker. While meteors are crashing around him, he takes challenges on with a relative calm. Even in the doomed future he's forced to live four months into, he's still slick as ever and ready to change whatever he can. Only one thing can really get under his skin, from what we've seen, and that's puppets. (Also, Jade's incompetence can get him to lose his shit. Only momentarily, though.) When it comes to fighting monsters, he's quick, to the point, and efficient – second only to Rose, really, and she seems to be channeling the powers of elder gods. Finally, he's easily the best programmer of the main four, as he's learned enough from his Bro to modify his own hashmap sylladex.

That leads to a bit of a problem, though. The dude's extremely arrogant, doing things through his own choice, his own pace, and why wouldn't he be? He's Dave Strider, man, you don't get to be this cool by rushing and panicking like a freaking headless chicken and besides, he knows what he's doing so just chillax, aight? This tends to get him into jams, though, and as smooth as Dave is when it comes to jams sometimes he really does need other people to get him out of them. Like John and Davesprite say, sometimes he gets too far in over his head – and from there, he's just stuck in people's shadows, time after time again.

There's a bit of an inferiority complex there because of that, too. It makes sense, though – for example, how is he supposed to stand on his own when compared to someone as unbelievably rad as Bro Strider? Where Dave steeps everything he does in irony, Bro marinates the teabag with it. Where Dave makes a hilariously bad comic for the irony of it, Bro favorites it, prints it out, and probably frames it before putting it on the fridge. Dave wears Ben Stiller's iGlasses? His big brother has a Mr. T puppet wearing a thong and chained to a Chuck Norris plush. There is simply no way he can match up to his brother's impossible grasp of hipster irony; it takes someone like Dave to even remotely comprehend the multifaceted irony behind his brother's actions in the first place. You cannot beat bro in an irony-off. He is simply the best there is. And because his bro is so cool (and the only guardian figure in his life), Dave has been standing in his shadow for a while now. The rap battles, the programming, the intense irony, part of it's really a way to try and live up to his bro's unreasonably cool standards.

Finally, as for a bit of personal head-canon: Dave's legitimately, unironically fond of rap and remixed/techno-style beats. This plays into his status as the Knight of Time, as time's flow and progression makes innate sense to him; for this reason, he's got a very acute perception of time, rhythm, and sound. Poetry, rhyme, drums, and rhythm – all thread together flawlessly in his head.

Too long, didn't read? Dave is the hipster to end all hipsters, self-aware of his own hipsterdom and using that as a propellant into even further levels of semi-cool ironic hipsterdom. At the same time, he is the Knight of Time, an intelligent (if not somewhat acerbic) timetraveller with a propensity for blades and the poetic.

Tl,dr tl,dr? He's Dave Strider, man, and that's that.

Abilities and Weaknesses
As the Knight of Time, Dave's got power overwhelming at his fingertips. After all, those Time Tables let him do pretty much anything he wants in the timestream, with a few obvious consequences. If he returns and significantly changes what his timeline would normally be (i.e. returning after four months and changing significant events), then that Dave is doomed to die very quickly. For the most part, Dave enjoys not dying very much, and so focuses on stable time-loops – loops which do not change the future and guarantee their own occurrences.

For an example of a stable timeline, if Dave saw another Dave come out and assist him in defeating something, then walk away, he would know that in the next few minutes (after defeating that monster) he would have to scratch back time so he could help himself defeat that monster and then walk away.

For an example of an unstable timeline, imagine that Dave loses against that monster. After he respawns, he scratches back time and helps the original Dave defeat that same monster. This would be a valid application; however, the Dave that scratched back time would be from a doomed timeline, and thus would die in a very short amount of time through some horrific accident or murder.

The way I'd be using these powers (to prevent from over-abuse) if he ever got his Timetables back would be limiting Dave to short (i.e. usually a few seconds, at most on my own a few posts) and stable time-loops, and killing off the other Dave if a time-loop was ever unstable. Additionally, for any major time jumps (anything that would change something even slightly important), I'd request the permission of the mods, the other characters involved, and make sure it was damn well worth it.

Other than mastery over time, he's quite quick (not on the same level as his bro, but he's got a good amount of speed to him). On top of that, he's not half bad with rap-battles, and his skill with a sword is only marginally better than his skill with his tongue.

On the weakness side of things, Dave's got his supreme arrogance working against him, along with his infuriating superiority / infuriating inferiority depending on the time of day. Additionally, he seems to have remarkable streaks of bad luck at times. (See: crows invading his room for no reason other than making him fail at being Rose's server player, and him getting stuck with Jade as his server player.)

Finally: Dave can only currently wield half-blades, courtesy of the “1/2-bladekind” specibus he's allocated his weapons into. Additionally, Dave has an automated inventory of sorts – the hash map modus! Whatever he picks up, he designates a name for, which then converts each letter into a value given by the numbers his Bro helped him program in. For instance, the Scrabble hash map lets him store items in the numerical slot that the ones digit of scrabble points for that name gives. (Example: if he picked an “EYE,” the value of each letter would give him 1+4+1 = 6 points, so he'd store it in slot 6. Similarly, if he picked up the same “OCULAR ORB,” it'd give him 1+3+1+1+1+1+1+1+3 = 13, which would be sorted into slot 3.) By yelling verbs with the same hash index as a stored item, he can send those items flying at a rather high speed, whether intentionally or not. This is both very convenient and very confusing for all involved.

The last time we saw his sylladex in action in canon, he was using a consonant/vowel system; consonants worth 2, vowels worth 1, and y can kind of count for either depending on the word. (For instance, EYE would give him 1+1+1 = 3 points normally, 1+2+1 = 4 points if he was forced to use y as a consonant, and OCULAR ORB would give him 1+2+1+2+1+2+1+2+2 = 14 = 4 points. Both names would store the item in SLOT 4.)

Character Relationships
Canon

Bro Strider

Davesprite

John Egbert

Karkat Vantas

Sollux Captor

Terezi Pyrope

Vriska Serket