So I feel like, in light of the recent upd8, people tend to forget how pragmatic Dave is in combat. Like, y’all are acting like this is something new. Case and point, the AutoHarley
Dave knew that Jack would not hurt Jade, however from an objective standpoint, that move could still be considered fighting dirty by all definitions of the phrase. And I think that a lot of people, in favor of viewing him as some poor innocent cinnamon roll, forget that he’s actually REALLY SMART AND QUICK THINKING IN BATTLE, that’s what happens when you live with a guy like Bro. You learn to make split second choices in the heat of the moment.
Thus, in combat, Dave is willing to make sacrifices and dirty fight as long as he knows it won’t hurt his friends. He makes an active effort to get all of the body, so even if Dirk’s death is somehow heroic, Jane can still resurrect him, assuring Dirk’s safety just like he was assured of Jade’s years ago.
Put this in contrast to Dirk.
For all his big talk about the Greater Good, and all the other horseshit he pulled in an attempt to improve his friends, when the chips are down he can’t bring himself to do something that drastic. Even when completely assured of Roxy’s resurrection, he could not bring himself to kill her. I completely and utterly believe that if the roles were swapped, and it was Dave in Dirk’s position, Dirk would not be able to make that desperate move.
tl; dr, Dave is able to make huge decisions and pragmatic moves for the greater good, as long as he’s assured that no one will get hurt or killed in the process. On the other hand, Dirk, by all means the most ruthless of the two, wouldn’t be able to pull it off even assured of their safety, despite inadvertantly hurting others in the past with his less extreme decisions.
Terezi and Dave used their combined powers to “revive” Dirk, after Dirk was killed by Spades Slick via dozens of point blank gunshot wounds. We can assume this death was heroic, as he didn’t begin to revive on his own, and he certainly didn’t deserve a “Just” death. So for a few seconds of the flash, Dirk Strider was permadead.
But then Dave and Terezi used their classpect powers in conjunction with each other, in the fraymotif you see above.
Now, from the image, we can get an idea of what exactly their combined power actually is. You can see Dirk and Jack English doing a variety of different actions, with the timeline splintering off in different directions based on the choices Dirk makes as to how to go about fighting Jack.
Once the fraymotif fades, Dirk is fine, and is in a much different situation combat wise than he was originally- the battle never went in that direction, so he never died. This is, obviously, time travel- that’s clear from the get-go. But what’s remarkable is that it’s a type of time travel we’ve never seen before in Homestuck.
Time travel in homestuck- even John’s retcon powers- involves the person in question physically traveling back in time, so that if they want to change their own actions, they have to carry a conversation with their past self and convince them to act differently. In Terezi and Dave’s fraymotif, though, nobody actually physically travels back- at least not in the sense we’re use to.
Considering that, in the picture above, every cyan branch represents a barrier between potential timelines- there’s actually no duplicates in the image. Every given timeline shown has one Dirk, one Terezi, and one Dave. Rather than there being two of someone, because someone went back and changed things “manually”.
Mind as an aspect represents choices, the reasons people have for making those choices- and other choices they could have potentially made. Combine that with time travel, and it’s clear that their combined ability is to retroactively cause people to make different choices than they originally did. Dirk never died because he never made the combat decision that led to his death. It’s a type of time travel that leaves no fingerprints- nobody runs into another version of themselves, nobody meets anyone from the future.
you just happen to make a different choice than you would have originally, probably not even realizing something is different.
and odds are, only the player(s) who did it are aware.
it’s a form of time travel where you BECOME your past self, rather than encounter them. and that’s remarkable. that’s unprecedented in homestuck. seamless time travel like that has endless potential, it’s like an “undo” button in photoshop. considering that it forces the person in question to make a different choice, it’s arguably a form of mind control.
My favorite Homestuck headcanon is that Rose Lalonde will forever be, with no question whatsoever… a 100% better rapper than both Dave and Dirk combined.
Like, while Dave and Dirk practice their raps all the time in order to be the best, Rose would just be the kind of person to be incredibly naturally skilled at it with absolutely no effort whatsoever. It’s a hidden talent though, something that she’s never shown anyone in particular before because she sees it more as a “party trick” or something like that than anything else, as freestyles aren’t really her thing.
So one time, when Dave challenges her at a rap battle as a joke, it backfires when she spits a mean and awesome flow for twenty minutes straight, totally destroying his verses and leaving him absolutely speechless.
