HMD

[knighthood]

Any problems with how I rp Dave Strider? Feel free to leave a comment about how I can improve here. Anon is enabled, IP logging is off, and comments aren't screened (but they can be on request of the commenter).

Comments

not crit, but:

[(Anonymous)]

Hello! I'm commenting here to ask how you feel about the idea of potentially having a Vriska in GB with carryover history from another game. Unfortunately, that would mean that you couldn't get a Vriska straight from canon (I asked the mods just to be sure; apparently the only time doubles are allowed is when one is a canon AU). Is that something that would be okay with you?

I can de-anon if you want, but I figured that if you really didn't want a CR AU Vriska, it'd be easier to say so to an anon than to someone logged in.

[knighthood]

Oh hi! I'd be perfectly fine with it personally! I don't know what kind of CR Dave and Vriska had at the game you had her at before, but I'm pretty relaxed about rolling with whatever ends up getting tossed Dave's way.

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for the quick reply! Either way, I wouldn't try to force or pigeonhole CR with anyone, so no one would need to worry about that.

[knighthood]

No problem! And sounds perfect then, I'm excited to hopefully have you with us. :D

[(Anonymous)]

When I see people playing Dave, I always try to keep in mind that writing him is essentially an attempt at writing Hussie's character-insert (which he's admitted more than once). And writing like Hussie is hard.

But a lot of Dave players that I see... just don't do him justice. Dave, in a sea of one-off joke characters and "gimmicky" trolls, takes just a bit more to write because he's complicated. There's a lot to Dave's life(s?) and his relationships, his insecurities, stuff he repressed. Because some of his dialogue early on was, verbatim, chats Hussie had with people irl, it can be hard to emulate that style because only Hussie knows what he'd really be like-- if he wasn't sarcastic or trying too hard to be ironic all the time. (Which, as another point, is something Dave never actually has a grasp of- he never uses irony in the right context)

In canon, especially in recent updates, it's also somewhat clearer that Dave's internet persona is just a front, and in person he's actually way more immature and not actually cool in the slightest (which is kind of a running gag to me in HS; no one is as cool or clever irl as they acted on pesterchum, cuz they're still just kids, in the end).

His chat with Rose about feeling "outdated" or "stale" added another layer to his front, since it shows that without being "jacked in" to pop culture, he started to flounder with his "cool kid rap" shtick, and it really worried him.

With all this in mind, I think maybe you should take a bit more time working on your tags- you don't have to answer a tag right away. dave's humor takes time to flow, and if you can't think of a good response/comeback/shitty rap, just come back to it later!

Also, try not to let John's voice creep into Dave's, which is something I've noticed here and there (abuse of punctuation like "?????", cussing for the sake of it, rather than in the context of emphasizing his humor or making an uncomfortable analogy).

The thing about Dave is that he's constantly thinking about how others perceive him in real life, compared to earlier in the story when he could say or do whatever he felt like (because no one was physically there to rebuke/punish him/help him work through insecurities, certainly not Bro). When you see how he interacts in reality with the trolls, it becomes obvious what a 14-15 year old kid he is, and he's nothing like his online persona, besides the fact that he's a troll in nature himself, and can't help working the others up for laughs).

Depending on what point he's currently from in Thor, though, he might act differently, I'm not sure.

I've seen so many Daves in roleplay, and I thought I would drop some advice on how to rise above so many poorly written ones.

[knighthood]

Oh wow! Anon, this was all very well thought out and very well written, and I really appreciate the time you spent to write this and pinpoint exactly what I could do better as Dave! I actually play Dave from before going to the green sun with Rose, so... early in canon, but late enough that some of the coolkid persona is definitely slipping. It's a hard balance to write since his voice from that time has definitely changed from early canon, but isn't what it's like in the recent updates either.

The abuse of punctuation (or question marks at least) is something he does on occasion in early canon, but does seem to let go of, and I have no excuse for the overdone cursing or shoehorning in analogies, so thank you for that.

I'll be completely honest with you too, and since my activity has been pretty lacking for awhile now it's probably obvious... I've actually been thinking about dropping Dave lately! His tags have been hard for me to do, and when I finally get to them I do rush through them instead of taking the time to really put thought behind them and make them sound as good as I might be able to if I sat and reflected on them for awhile. He's not the easiest character for me to write, and if I wanna keep him in game, I will definitely need to do a reread.

I'm definitely gonna reflect on what you said to me while I debate that though. And because this probably sounds bad on my part, and I want to make sure you know that you commenting to me didn't making me feel like I need to drop, I can promise I've been making some noise about this for awhile! I do really appreciate the fact that you've written this all out for me, and I've been struggling with Dave for awhile, so a lot of this really helps me figure out what I need to work on, even in things like musebox and memes where I'm doing more casual rping.

Thank you!