Player name: James
Contact info: Plurk -
nathanderOther characters currently played: CRAU!Pokey Minch, Lucifer
Character name: Bro Strider
Age: In his 30s; we'll assume 34-35
Canon: Homestuck
Canonpoint: After his death at Bec Noir's hands
Background: http://mspaintadventures.wikia.com/wiki/Dave's_Bro
Personality:Bro Strider is an enigma wrapped in smuppet felt and stuffed with shit.
During the short period of the comic where Bro is an active participant, we only get short snippets of who he is while much of the rest of his personality is left to interpretation based on evidence we have from Dave and from traits from Dirk that seem to correspond to some of Bro's earlier behaviors. The foremost trait Bro expresses, however, is the toxic masculinity Bro possesses that he appears to try and drill into Dave. Bro idolizes the concept of being self-made man: you have to be strong enough, quick enough, and smart enough to rock the world off its feet when it comes knocking, and you have to be ready and prepared to do such alone. Because of this, Bro himself isn't particularly social. He relegates most of his social activity, including 'work', to online. It's implied he has quite an online presence, especially in the puppet fetish scene with the multiple smuppet porn sites he operates, although Dave later on implies that Bro populated his chatrooms for his sites with a great number of bots, as well as using bots to boost the traffic he gets to his porn sites. Bro could very well be a lonely dude, but Bro would never admit to this loneliness. Men don't give a shit about that, let alone dudes who know you don't need anything but blood anyway. This attitude shows that Bro is stunted emotionally, something he displays in his behavior as shown in his failure to display empathy towards Dave, let alone any sense of real nurturing. Which leads into the fact that he has only two real known relationships: his brother Dave, and his favorite puppet, Lil Cal.
Bro's relationship with Dave is less than ideal. Early on, Dave seems to respect and hero worship Bro, and in many ways this means that what Dave says and does can be viewed as a mirror of who Bro is. Much of what Dave says during the early parts of the comic are likely a regurgitation of what Bro himself believes and says, and while it has to be understood much of that is still Dave, at least some of it is Dave trying to emulate his brother. This leads to an understanding of Bro putting an emphasis on being a cool, cool motherfucker, both in personality via internet culture and 'ironic' humor that is so impenetrable it could be said to barely give you an indication of the person wielding it, as well as a willingness to troll and antagonize people if they present themselves as susceptible targets, or even just as a natural means of interaction.
The toxicity of Bro extends beyond the behavior he teaches Dave to emulate and into his raising of Dave himself, which could be called Spartan at best. Bro has webcams placed all over his home, ostensibly in order to monitor any illicit activities of his smuppets, but also likely as a means of watching every action Dave takes within the house 24/7. Bro makes a habit of knowing Dave's every move and changes things up in the house on Dave in order to keep Dave on his toes (or, more accurately, paranoid). Saying Bro's behavior towards Dave is borderline abusive towards Dave is disingenuous; it is abusive. Bro seems to speak or communicate in short, blunt terms with Dave most often (as seen in his note telling Dave to get on the roof for a strife with him) and seems to hold nothing back when engaging in strifes with Dave for training. He frequently would leave Dave alone and without enough food, forcing Dave to rough it out.
In an insane way, this is Bro's way of making Dave a man. Despite his cool exterior Bro is deeply insecure and uncertain of himself, traits of himself that he's disgusted with as they are so against the hyper masculinity he hopes to display. He'll be damned if he'll allow Dave to feel this same insecurity, and because of this he goes to extreme lengths to ensure that Dave is able to earn and development the kind of inner confidence to face the world, and Sburb, that Bro lacks and has to fake. While Bro can go far enough in demonstrating just how brutal the world can be in trying to train Dave to be able to be self-sufficient, Bro fails to provide any form of nurturing or care for Dave. Bro doesn't understand how to and couldn't if he tried, as he assumes that even if he could it would just soften Dave and leave him dependent on others. Bro needs Dave to be self-sufficient not just so Dave can take care of himself, but because if Bro makes Dave self-sufficient then it'll prove Bro really does have a handle on the masculinity he believes himself to have, and thus Dave will be his actual monument and legacy to the man he is. That being said, he does display that if Dave is in trouble that he is willing to defend and help Dave, though often only when Dave himself wouldn't see that he did, such as cutting a meteor in half that was threatening to fuck their shit up while Dave was falling and sending his hoverboard to catch Dave.
Bro does love and care about Dave, but it's wrapped up so selfishly and garnished with so much sociopathic behavior that only Bro actually understands it, leaving his brother the emotional mess he is now.
Aside from Dave, the only meaningful relationship Bro has is with his puppet, Lil Cal. Bro is never far from Cal, and in a weird way, Cal is maybe the one thing Bro truly trusts as a consistent in his life. While Bro has an unabashed love of puppets in many, many ways, Lil Cal is the only one he could say 'understands' him. Cal itself is a possessed, evil puppet made up of the fractions of several people's souls/personalities, launched through time in a clusterfuck of insanity. Because of Cal's nature, it's possible that Cal in fact has influenced some of Bro's behavior. At the same time, there are enough traits that Bro shares with his post-scratch version, Dirk, such as his cool composure, his emphasis on control, his technological knack (though Bro still doesn't have Dirk's level of skill), and of course love of puppets. Still, Cal is more or less the one thing Bro would consider a friend, and it is possible that he was susceptible to Cal's influence because it both reaffirmed his own beliefs and because he was lonely enough and truly willing enough to not fully question that there was something wrong with Cal that he was willing to listen to Cal's "advice" to please the only thing he considered a friend.
Bro is, at the end of things, competent at what he does. He's skilled with technology, generally unshakable, and a talented fighter. At the same time, he lacks almost any real sense of humanity to him in terms of empathy and socializing. Dave labeling him sociopathic isn't far off; he doesn't really understand other people, and in a way this allows him to thrive in his own 'ironic' sense of humor and art as he primarily takes in internet culture as a substitute for dealing with people on a human basis. The guy can get the job done, but he has generally little concern about the way he does it and how cruel and cold it might come off as. He often underestimates others and is willing to deal with most people in a way that could be seen as condescending, as seen when Jack Noir approached him for a rematch and his response was to pull out Cal, state "Let's get it on, motherfucker." and then slap Jack in the face with Cal.
Which brings us to his wish.
Wish: "I don't want Dave to have to see this."
He didn't come to this fight expecting he was going to bite it when Jack showed back up again. They had been so evenly matched that he had thought that, while it might be clutch, he should still make it out of it.
Looking at his corpse when Kyuubey shows up to offer him a wish, Bro is forced to confront something he doesn't really want to confront. Let alone left with a choice he usually wouldn't take. Wishes go against how he thinks. You don't just take something some jackhole offers you, you work for your shit.
But here and now, all he knows is that he doesn't want Dave to know this shit happened. The wish is inherently selfish, even if Bro might try and create an unselfish reason in his mind for it. After all, what dude wants to see that his brother bit it big time like a chump? Shit. That would put everything Bro had taught Dave in jeopordy, couldn't it, if Dave thought and saw his Bro was just hot air. He doesn't want to destroy Dave's confidence or have a crisis of faith, does he?
Doesn't want his bro to see just how shamefully, inadequtely human his brother is.
So instead of Dave ever finding Bro's body and gaining closure on what happened to his brother, Dave instead finds a life-sized smuppet of Bro with a sign saying "#BreakTime" on it. Certainly, this development would never cause any kind of neurosis or feelings of abandonment.
Passive ability: Due to his wish to go unseen, Bro ends up going unnoticed to the point of being invisible whenever he first shows up someplace until attention is drawn to him. This power has several caveats:
1) He is only visually invisible. He can still be heard or have other senses pick him up.
2) The moment he openly speaks or takes an action that would get him noticed by someone, the invisibility ends. If he's just passing through or standing, he remains invisible. The moment he takes a more specific action, the invisibility ends.
3) Familiars/Nightmares/Witches are not affected by this and can sense Bro, whether he has done something to draw attention to his presence or not.
4) Ironically, Dave is immune to Bro being invisible and will always see when Bro shows up somewhere, whether Bro has done something to warrant attention or not.
Active ability: Bro's active power is a copy of the big, dumb smuppet of himself that he left for Dave to find. Unlike that piece of shit, Bro can mentally control this puppet to take actions as if it was a separate person. Bro must be in the puppet's presence to do this, and must have enough concentration that he can mentally think what the puppets actions should be. That being said, the puppet is a piece of shit; it's not very strong, only enough so to pick up light items, and will be destroyed within one or two hits. It's not worth much aside from being used as a distraction, and if it does get destroyed Bro must wait a day before summoning it again.
Weapon: His Katana
Sample: https://souljammed.dreamwidth.org/7397.html?thread=1318373#cmt1318373 ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
