Reblogged with image description (so that it’s available to anyone who needs it but possible to reblog the post with or without it):
As much shit as you want to talk on Beta Bro, he knew what he was doing. Dave was clearly the most prepared Beta kid for Sburb, not to mention Bro CUT A FUCKING METEOR IN HALF. Yeah, the puppet/smuppet obsession was weird, and he was pretty abusive, but when it came down to the literal apocalypse, he was pretty cool, all things considered.
I mean they touch on this a lot with Dirk himself. Dirk has an insane amount of self-discipline, bordering on masochistic. He pushes himself to the absolute limit and has an amazing sense of self-awareness. He knows exactly how far he can push himself and always does so. Because of this, he’s easily the strongest and most prepared when they enter the game.
The problem is that Dirk is not nearly as good at reading other people as he thinks he is. So he pushes Jake well beyond Jake’s limits and never notices. He pushes Jake away because of the choices he makes. You can see it when he’s having RoboDirk train Jake. He’s an intense dude.
Bro does the same thing. He’s been raising and training Dave from day one to be ready for Sburb. If you look closely in Bro’s apartment, he has a bunch of newsclippings posted up on a board with string and stuff. Relating to Sburb and meteor strikes. Bro had quickly pieced together what was going on. He likely intended to enter Sburb with Dave and initiate his plan to beat the game. But during Dave’s entry into Paradox Space Bro realizes Dave isn’t ready yet, (which is also why he’s been fighting Dave so hard, also to test him) so Bro goes on ahead to try and beat the game for him. When it becomes clear that he can’t, he tries to reset the session, but again, he’s not an active player. So instead he tries to leave a clue for Dave to finish what he starts.
Of course, Dave never knew any of this, and was also a small child. Living in that sort of environment with no context or capacity to understand why your guardian is constantly beating the shit out of you and forcing you to basically constantly fend for yourself in a hostile environment is not healthy, to say the least. Bro did a great job raising an Sburb player. Sadly he fucked up the development of his “little brother” in the process. Learning to understand and trust others is a big part of Dirk’s character arc, and despite not being introduced until act 6, the groundwork for said arc is laid out as early as act 2.
And I mean, there’s also the fact that Bro literally grew up harboring an eldritch abomination, presumably being raised by it. That Bro was a functional adult at all is a miracle of sorts. Bro’s mind was undoubtedly corrupted by Cal’s influence. Bro was an abusive guardian, but I don’t think he meant to be. I think he genuinely tried to help Dave grow. Dirk’s character arc is all about doing what Bro never could. Be there.
Wait a second. Bro raised Dave in a hostile environment to prepare him for Sburb. Bro had been carrying around Lil Cal for his entire life and probably had his personality influenced by him. Who else do we know who is part Lil Cal, and by extent part AR-who-is-Dirk-who-is-Bro? Doc Scratch. What did Doc Scratch do?
He raised the entirety of Alternia as a hostile environment to prepare them to play Sburb. He did the same thing Bro did to dave, but to an entire civilization. And what did we end up with? An entire cast of individually competent but socially dysfunctional characters.
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