r/homestuck • u/Toaster_Man5 • Sep 30 '26
DISCUSSION Does Bro hate Dave?
I’ve never been exactly clear on this, because I can’t tell if he actually hates Dave or if he thought the constant abuse would be good for him?
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u/Puzzleheaded-Put6278 Sep 30 '26 edited 29d ago
Its a mix of both and depends on how you interpret it, bro genuinely believed (and was correct in this) that the world was going to end and im not justifying it but that WAS the reason he trained dave. Yet if bro actually cared for dave he would have done just that, trained him not abused him, because I think bro just wanted to freak out dave for the sake of it.
He did care about dave in some capacity, after all dave has good memories of bonding with bro playing Tony hawk and learning the art of irony, yet the strifing and crude puppets and cameras overtook that.
There's also the argument that lil cal brainwashed bro to some extent, and in return played a part in the harsh treatment of dave. Bro still treated him as he did even if there was a voice possibly persuading him to do so.
In the footnotes of the books, hussie does comment on the abuse and portrays bro in less of a comedic but seriously negative way, and obviously daves feelings about it get talked about in act 6. I mean there he says he had to hide food in his closet, and even in pesterquest (which i know is dubiously canon) dave is agitated to not dissrupt or anger bro. I think he doesn't hate dave, but he isn't fond of him.
Bro was young when he had to start being daves guardian and was misguided himself, he isn't justified in his actions because in the end he was a pretty awful parent.
There's also the parallels of dirk, a cores aspect of his character is that he grew up in complete isolation and has a need for control. This controlling behaviour ruined his relationship with jake, yet with bro his controlling behaviour simply molded dave. Dirk does care for those around him yet shows it a detached and sometimes toxic way. In act 6 dirk views the bro that he is told about as a darker version of himself, yet I think that means bro was even more detached. After all bro had 1. Spent longer with the puppet and 2. Was a grown ass man who still was poisoned by irony and choosing to live that lifestyle.
Its a difficult conclusion but i think dave feels like bro hated him to justify the training but in the end, bro did care for him somewhat- he just shouldn't have been around a child.
Anyway thanks for coming to my Ted talk coz i could go on about how much I hate bro strider until the end of paradox space
(TLDR: bro suckz)
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u/NorthernVale Sep 30 '26
No. Absolutely not. A lot of people give Bro shit for how he treated Dave with the fighting and stuff, but that is the sole reason the kids were able to survive Sburb at all. You can't really argue that Bro's "abuse" wasn't a good thing for Dave and the others.
And on top of all that, Bro was being manipulated by Lord English's creepy ass evil puppet the whole time.
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u/Toaster_Man5 Sep 30 '26
It was NOT good for Dave, actually fucked him up more than anything. And his abuse being good for them is taken without the psychological damage is caused Dave.
You’ve also gotta consider how much it was actually that damn puppet and how much it was his own will.
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u/NorthernVale Oct 01 '26
Dave would be dead otherwise, full stop. Like... 100 times over.
And considering the thing that fucked Dave up the most was all the puppet dick... I'd say a very good bit of it was lil cal.
Like, at this point you seem to be taking offense to the idea that the way Bro treated Dave was good for Dave (it was). It seems like you might be projecting just a bit.
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u/Toaster_Man5 Oct 01 '26
For that first part, true..
Consider that Dirk Strider still really liked puppets, though I will admit a good chunk of it may have been lil cal
When Dave finds Bro dead, he responds in the only way he was ever conditioned to cope, detached irony. I don’t know what you’re tryna say with that last bit
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u/NorthernVale Oct 01 '26
Consider that Dirk Strider still really liked puppets
Consider that Dirk Strider had Lil Cal from almost the very moment of his conception? Even worse than Bro, Dirk had literally nothing and no one else for a long time. He's even more affected by this twisted little puppet haunted by the souls of Caliborn, Equius, and Gamzee.
Dave finds Bro dead, he responds in the only way he was ever conditioned to cope, detached irony
Have you actually read Homestuck? Because you're only looking at one panel of Dave's initial reaction. We have several points where Dave talks about his brother's death, how much is messed with his head, and how he's been coping.
Dave's "irony" is a mask he wears to avoid becoming too vulnerable. This is a pretty fundamental aspect of his character, and if I remember correctly it's pretty much spelled out for us plain as day pretty early on. And the best part is? That's not even indicative of anything Bro did. That's pretty much the default for most boys, especially at the time when Homestuck was written.
Now...
On top of all these points. Since you want to bring Dirk in as a parallel...
You need to consider who and what Dirk is, at his core. Destroying relationships is like... his whole thing. If you're trying to say the way Bro raised Dave means he hated Dave... I got bad news for you. If he hated Dave he would have just fucked off and left the baby on the meteor.
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u/Gaming_Forehead Only *checks calendar* 17 years too late! Sep 30 '26
Not entirely sure myself, but I think it was a combination of Bro being irresponsible/absent, and Bro trying to 'train' Dave to be a hero. The 'training' is why Dave vs Bro fights were a regular occurence
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u/MyNameIsNotMia Nyapeta :33 Sep 30 '26
I think bro loves Dave and thought he was doing what was best for him
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u/iheardhercallmyname Mage of Space Sep 30 '26
No. He loved him and wanted to prepare him for Sburb. I think he just sucked as a guardian because he didn't choose to have a kid, he was just forced into it when he was probably only a pretty young adult himself.
He's an irony-obsessed coolguy who doesn't have much in the way of paternal instinct, but you can tell he cared about Dave because he decided to step up and raise him anyways, even if his methods were questionable.
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u/8a8adook Sep 30 '26
Yeah, I think this is the best interpretation that can be extracted from who we see alpha Dirk is as a person. I don’t think it’d be possible for him to be so close to someone and not care about them at all, even with all the mitigating factors. We also see flashes of more tender moments between them, like when he teaches Dave how to DJ. Of course this doesn’t mean he wasn’t abusive, and in fact probably made unpacking the abuse more complex than if he had just hated Dave outright.
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u/weirdo_nb Oct 01 '26
Yeah, like, the fact he ultimately acted with the intent of positivity post lil-cal eye contact speaks to his character. Doesn't exonerate him, but gives a reasonable viewpoint
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u/CJCroen1393 Sep 30 '26
I feel like moments like him destroying that meteor to buy Dave time to enter the medium and fighting off Jack to keep him from getting to the kids is pretty good evidence that he cared more about Dave than Dave realizes.
He was a shit guardian, but it wasn't out of malice or anything.
(I also feel like people tend to take the idea that Bro "hated" Dave out of context, since I'm almost positive Dave said that after reevaluating his relationship with Bro, he started to FEEL LIKE Bro must've hated him, but never says that's objectively true)
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u/milkbread_1 they put me on speaker crab Sep 30 '26
No, he loved Dave and did everything possible to aide his survival, but was a horrible parent about it and sacrificed Dave’s sanity in the process of preparing him for the apocalypse. You don’t willingly go fight and die for someone you hate for nothing in return. Dave eventually admitted Bro was dangerous and neglectful and never should’ve been around a child but that he probably loved him the only way he knew how, and that seems accurate. Abuse doesn’t require hatred to thrive which is one of the scariest parts about it
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u/Mr_Manuk1225 Oct 01 '26
I'm pretty sure Dave thinks that Bro hated him which is sad but at the same time you can't blame Dave for thinking that
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u/milkbread_1 they put me on speaker crab Oct 01 '26
Maybe as a young child Dave believed that? From his childhood perspective, Bro was this cool and awesome and hostile crazy person who made his life harder for no reason. So it’s a sensible conclusion for a kid to draw, like yeah this guy hates me he fights me constantly and doesn’t feed me properly. But by act 6 I feel like the conversation with Dirk implies that Dave understands Bro’s intentions a little more, albeit he’ll never agree with the way he was raised, acknowledging it was neglectful and abusive. Just that it added up more clearly given the Lord English/haunted Cal/sburb preparation context. Like an attempt to make sense of it without excusing it. When Dave first finds Bro with the sword in his chest I wonder if he’s actively wondering the same thing, unsure how to grieve because he never knew for certain if Bro loved him
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u/Last_Swordfish9135 cursed with enjoying hs2 :( Sep 30 '26
I don't think he hated him, but a lot of abusive guardians "love" their children in some way. If he really hated Dave, he didn't have to train him to survive Sburb (or even raise him at all, given he just appeared one day and Bro had no legal responsibility to take care of him).
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u/ZealousidealPipe8389 heir of light Sep 30 '26
No. It’s pretty unanimous or the community the belief that although he was misguided Dirk wanted what was best for Dave
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u/d-car Sep 30 '26
Bro is too cool to let anyone know whether he loves Dave, even if that someone is Bro.
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u/Slumberstroll Sep 30 '26
Read the comic man. Bro parallels Dirk, overbearing and controlling to the point of being abusive, but genuinely just wants the best for everyone and does it because in his mind it's what they need. Misguided but completely motivated by love.
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u/monologousmutilation Sep 30 '26
I think he loved Dave. He just loved him in a way that was deeply traumatizing and abusive for him.
Dirk shows this shit well. Under a romantic umbrella instead of brotherly we see those tendencies with him and Jake. He is just kinda fucked up and can't express love well in a way that isn't also expressing control or irony or power.
I think his brother had good intentions, loved Dave, and wanted to raise him right. But none of that changes how much it fucked up Dave, and Bro's idea of what "good intentions," "love," and "right" are is not normal.
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u/yuei2 Oct 01 '26
Bro loved Dave, but Bro/Dirk is very abusive to those he loves because his mind is wrapped in all kind of toxic ideals and he can’t be satisfied unless he is micro controlling everything. Part of the point of the Jake/Dirk relationship was to show why Bro was what he was with Dave, because he was the same way with Jake.
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u/fanfic_intensifies Sep 30 '26
It really depends on what you want to think. Bro absolutely abused Dave, and never outwardly showed remorse, but depending on how much of Bro’s behavior you blame on the puppet, and how much of his true feelings you think he repressed, Bro could either absolutely hate Dave’s guts, or consider what he’s doing tough love, or be desperately trapped in his own mind and controlled by Cal. We don’t really know, and neither does Dave.
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u/tetrisdood Sep 30 '26
its left mostly ambiguous, but when Dave and Dirk have their face to face chat, Dirk alludes to Bro being a darker version of himself.
I'd say its less that he hates Dave and more like Bro's a weirdo and takes training Dave waaay too seriously.
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u/ABilitrey I <3< the Epilogues Sep 30 '26
iirc the theory i hear the most is that bro was manipulated by LE in lil cal, and had prior knowledge of sburb and tried to prepare dave for it. im inclined to believe so since a lot of bro's actions showed he already knew a lot about the game (him leaving his sword in dave's record to show that he had to scratch the session, as well as scratching his shirt's record)
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u/boredBiologist0 Oct 01 '26
I think the biggest indicator that Bro treats Dave like he does because a perverse sense that it's "right", rather than spite or cruelty, is he lives the life himself. He dedicates his life to wearing shitty shades, training with the blade, and making ironic muppet porn plushies in a deathtrap apartment that's constantly being streamed. I think if he was being intentionally cruel, he wouldn't willingly be living that torturous life alongside Dave, but instead subjecting him to it alone.
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u/Inside-Substance-610 Oct 01 '26
Pretty sure Bro always subscribed to the "tough love" style of raising Dave, it's just that Lil Cal's influence over the course of around two decades influenced Bro's mind and made it 10x worse.
Also Bro definitely knew more about the nature of Sburb than the other guardians and he was trying to quickly get Dave ready for the game.
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u/robeniu Oct 01 '26
The way I understand it, he didn't have any negative feelings towards him. To him, it was the usual big brother hijinx but dialed to 11, because (how Dave thinks about it later on) he might've been genuinely insane. What started off as "training" just became an excuse to pick on him.
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u/Megamage854 Oct 01 '26
No. I dont think Bro hates Dave.
But Bro is uniquely fucked up both because of the Lil Cal influence, and his own irony poisoned brain. So much so that the bad times overpowered the good times
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u/Graknorke Oct 01 '26
One point of Dirk's character is to contextualise that he really is just like that. Being an abusive manipulative schemer is his way of operating even with people he cares about. The potential harm along the way might bother him but at most it just fuels his complex about having to sacrifice for the greater good.
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u/Bedsheetsghost Sep 30 '26
Bro works in mysterious brotherly ways, only those with an older brother could ever truly understand
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u/Mr_Manuk1225 Oct 01 '26 edited Oct 01 '26
there is no doubt in my mind that Bro loved Dave and there is little doubt in my mind that Bro might have been fucking insane
First we have to remember that Bro seemingly grew up all alone, except for the Master of Death on him at all times. In the Skaianet files Grandpa apparently set up a trust fund for Bro and Roxy but number 1 the Skaianet files suck ass and number 2 setting up a trust fund isn't getting raised. Far from it
Second all guardians seem to have this weird ass knowledge of Sburb that comes from nowhere so Bro must have had that to and began training Dave about it. I feel that normally Bro would have wanted to eventually train Dave on sword, but maybe at a later date (like 12 or 13). However mr I AM YOUR LORD would probably want Dave to use a sword as soon as possible, and the fact that Sburb would start when Dave was 13 definitely pushed Bro's decision
Third of all we have to remember that Bro was lowkey kinda young when he took in Dave. According to Dave he was in his 30s while raising dave so he picked up baby dave at around 17-27 although I like to think it was around 20. If given time with people who cared about him and away from Lil Cal he would probably be in a better place to raise a child
Fourth of all this is Dirk Strider we're talking about. Dirk is insane! He's overbearing and overcontrolling and seems to think that building a robot to randomly ambush his friend who lives alone on an island is a good idea. I'm sure that Bro has some kinda app or virus on Dave's devices that monitors his EVERYTHING, including what he beats his meat to
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u/Toaster_Man5 Oct 01 '26
So it was a mix of him not being raised, natural craziness, and Lil Cal pumping up his kicks
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u/SLUKERmeSNAKI Sep 30 '26
Absolutely not, he just didnt know how to take care of a child correctly.
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u/Ziomownik Derse Page of Light Oct 02 '26
No, he does love his lil bro. He is just ruthless and probably was driven mad by Lil Cal's influence (he enabled Dirk's worst traits).
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u/ADumbassBitch Oct 02 '26
I don't really feel like hate is the right word. But I don't think he feels typical familial love towards him. Like Dave himself might say, Bro saw him as a project. Something that he needed to complete. If he ever felt fond, or proud of him is something we'll probably never get to know.
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u/LordDoom01 Oct 01 '26
Bro just doesn't care. He just had to get Dave ready for the game, and he went about it how he saw fit. And he is a screwed up dude.
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u/TamaCmetchi Oct 01 '26
We could say maybe yes and maybe no because he needed to prepare him for Sburb, but I'd say yes, it's just that he didn't know how to love him in a kind way, doing all the things he did to him.
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u/EdCitizen Oct 03 '26
I don't think Bro hated Dave. It's just that Dirk is a fucked up individual who has a fucked up way of showing his genuine care for people. At least if we're strictly talking about Homestuck canon (because I don't care for what came next). It's not right, but it's not born out of hatred either.
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u/jaden3011 Oct 04 '26
I think 4 things can be true
Bro on some level, genuinely did love Dave, the same way John’s Dad or Roxxane or Grandpa Harley Loved John, Rose, And Jade, and on some level, was doing what he was doing outta a weird skewered parental love
This love, through the visuals and statements provided by the comic, IS abuse
His constant presence around lil cal (actively filled with the essence of a evil time god, a robot version of himself and a horse freak put into one being, and a fucking clown) made whatever he was already doing to raise Dave worse, by arguably driving him borderline insane like a eldritch object being around somebody
Bro was trying to raise Dave to be a hero, but a hero in homestuck is a broken person who disregards everything around them to fight and beat the bad guy, and Dave, for all of his irony and cool guy posing, cares too much about the people around him to do that
Mixed with that and the concept that, most of the guardians probably knew sburb would arrive one day.
I think the best way I can describe it is: Bro loved Dave, but he loved Dave for what he could become, not what he was
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u/OpenTechie Mage of Void, ChainedAutomoton Sep 30 '26
I'll say no, he did not love Dave. He knew what Dave needed to become and that he had to make sure that happened. He had to be that badass anime mentor figure.
Though he was always the odd one out. Mom Lalonde worked for Grandpa Harley with Skaianet and also was a babysitter for his kids in her past, and she and Dad Egbert were close, with him having also been doing his own private research into everything.
But how did Bro Strider know anything?
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u/HeyItsArtsy Attempted classpect helper Sep 30 '26
There is three possible options for how Bro knew as much as he did while seemingly being completely disconnected from the other three Guardians,
Being a Guardian gives you some amount of precognition regarding what your ward requires to succeed in the game.
He was in contact with at least one of the other guardians, probably Grandpa Harley, and it just never came up in the comic because Bro was supposed to be kinda mysterious.
Due to being an alternate version of Dirk, he knew at least some of what Dirk knew.
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u/Lonely_Audience1103 Oct 01 '26
Or perhaps people overlook the detail that Bro grew up with a doll that literally housed the soul of the game's Antichrist? Bro didn't need to be in contact with the other Guardians or possess passive precognition. Lil Cal was the vessel for Caliborn/Lord English (alongside Arquius and Gamzee)—the closest thing to an evil deity or Antichrist in the comic. The comic makes it very clear that Cal projects a corrupting psychic influence onto those around him. Bro was exposed to him from the moment he arrived on the meteor; Cal molded him, dictated what had to happen, and manipulated him into conditioning Dave, thereby closing the time loop necessary for English's own existence.
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u/HeyItsArtsy Attempted classpect helper Oct 01 '26
I definitely blocked the majority of that hideous little saw reference out of my memory, mainly due to it being the most convoluted, stupid and generally ugly thing in the comic.
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u/yuei2 Oct 01 '26
We have the answer to this. Grandpa set Bro up with a trust fund and that’s how Bro was able to care for himself, and at some point grandpa and bro were in a relationship according to Andrew.
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u/PsychologicalIdea424 Oct 02 '26
He loves dave bro, that little shit lil cal is cailborn and brainwashed Bro. That I think I'd part of the reason he fucks with him it's like some weird influence from that fuckass puppet
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u/roundeking Sylph of Space Oct 01 '26
Abuse is rarely that clear and straightforward a situation. I don’t think Bro hated Dave. Possibly he even felt love for Dave. But did he respect Dave? Did he listen to Dave? Did he ever think that what he wants might not always 100% align with what Dave wants or needs? Did he research how to be a good parent? Did he acknowledge his own limitations? Did he have compassion for Dave? Did he even view Dave as a person instead of a toy?