Alright time for a lowdown on why I personally feel like this pilot fails to capture the Daveisms of Dave within just the first two interactions. Source? My own autistic obsession with character analysis and focusing on fine details
First things first, the beginning interaction is an important introduction not just to Dave but to John as well as the first real character interaction in Homestuck. This here? This needs to say shit. This needs to give you a taste of what the characters are, and Homestuck itself does this pretty well.
In the base series, this scene follows the following storybeats
Dave contacts John to ask about his sweet loot
John then talks about how it was a poster for a movie he loved, interjecting about his favorite scene
Dave talks about the apple juice he has as a coincidence, to which John decides to ask him if he has seen the movie they were currently talking about as a joke to allude to the idea monster Howie Mandel pissed in his juice
This goes on into talking about monster Howie Mandel being able to reseal juice using his powers to the kid in the movie oddly knowing what piss tastes like to finally the headcanon that Howie Mandel had been doing it for the past 14 days
Dave accepts this headcanon, calls Howie a b-list actor, and talks about Fred Savage having a punchable face before they go on to discuss the game and how Dave trusted a magazine review that John thought was bogus
In this one interaction, you get a good idea of what these characters are like. A taste of the Dave and John friendship buffet currently being slid down a comically large table towards your waiting gullet like some Scooby Doo scene. The two interact like actual long-distance friends online complete with the utterly insane conversation topic of monster Howie Mandel and more importantly really showcases their dynamic as buds. The two are dorks and really do work together, it sells you that these are friends while showing you that they still have differing opinions
Not only that but, more relevantly to this, it sets up a Daveism. When writing, you need to make sure you get across your character personality and Dave has one of the most in-your-face styles in how he is written that you may not even realize it. In this entire conversation, the only punctuation Dave uses is a series of 4 question marks. No commas, no periods, everything is effectively a giant run on sentence. It feels awkward, like you are stumbling over yourself trying to read it, and this is VERY important to Dave's character. He effectively just feels like he is constantly rambling about usually nonsense and delivers it with confidence even as the sentence flow he uses makes everything so weird. Added to his vocab and just how constantly out of pocket he is, and you get the idea of the socially inept kid trying to act cool and apathetic pretty fast.
The pilot doesn't do this.
Lets run through the first conversation again, pilot style
Dave still comes in wishing John a happy birthday, here with the visual of Dave exaggeratedly kicking back his chair and leaning on the scene divider line. It is effectively the same start, but here Dave comes across far more high energy
John immediately rants about his father's baking rampage and how the house is full of cakes before talking about how he got a new movie poster. (Now I have problems with this myself. Not because John swore, the kids all swear especially Dave, but because the context. This is your introduction to John directly interacting with another character and he uses it to specifically rant about his father putting "fucking cakes everywhere" in a frustrated way. It just comes off a bit mean which, yeah John is mad at his father for this, but the fact the pacing forced the fact he is tired of cakes to here sets a bad tone for the character's start)
Dave immediately goes to insult it, calling it a 1980s abomination for his dogshit collection. Again, this is delivered with high energy and, for his second line in the story, does not really carry the same friendly joking vibes as the og convo. This is corrected after John says what it is (again swearing which here just comes across as a bit awkward and forced in the delivery. It is the real problem with some of the swears here, usually they either feel unnatural or shift the tone in an awkward way which really does leave them jarring and noticeable)
This is technically the end of the first scene. It does quickly blend in the second scene after, even saving the game bro dialogue for it which is why I am covering both conversations. However, this? This isn't really a good start. The friend banter part doesn't really get across the friend part as much as Dave just feels too energetic. Dave did have energy in the original, but this was usually expressed through the fact he does not. stop. talking. Again, constant ramble, every conversation is just falling down the stairs. Here though, he is far more punctual, far more exaggerated as his sass comes across more mean spirited. While the flip around does help to give you more of the friend dynamic and help better sell that they are messing around, as a whole it just doesn't get them across being buds as much.
The art of monster Howie Mandel pissing in juice never could truly happen in this rushed format, but the fact that the introduction does have this kind of dialogue dropped BEFORE the friend nature was properly sold does kind of hurt it especially since, again, this Dave is far more animated and punctual which helps to make him feel like a generic asshole friend over the out of pocket bizarre entity that is Dave Classic. However a first interaction isn't damning and besides the second is merged right into this right after a short cut off by the narrator and with how breakneck the pace is it is basically still the intro. Hopefully it fixes things!
First, homestuck classic.
Dave is pestering John first again, asking if the game is there and if he can play with TT (character tease) because she had been pestering him about playing it. This involves a joke of her macking on him before Dave said he'd understand why. John follows it up with a joke about being attracted to Dave as more bestie banter because there aint nothing with more homo tension than two best friends on the internet. This becomes even funnier later when Dave evolves into Gayve Strider Dick Rider himself
John complains about his sylladex to which Dave asks what his modus is and laughs at him. He then mentions that his bro taught him tricks while calling Bro awesome in some great set up to Bro Strider NOT being awesome
Dave then proceeds to give John a tutorial about the Strife Specibus in order to free up inventory, even noting it "lets you attack stuff when things get too hot to handle which is never" which besides the fact this is being said by the dude who uses his most in his day to day because of Bro is just a nice little bit of Gayvid Sass
After hearing what John has, he tells John he sucks at inventory management and advises him on how to fix it resulting in the arm cake OF FUTURE PRANKING AND PROTOTYPING RELATED DOOM
Dave realizes he forgot to tell John that the hammer is permanent before making a small quip of "hope you like hammers dude!" to which John is relatively unaffected since he couldn't imagine using it much
Again, this really sells some more Davisms here. Great character banter and a wonderful showcases of that Strider-Lalonde Sass. Plus it shows that while Dave can be an ass, he is still a helpful ass which is a good thing to note about the character
Starts with a joke about the narrator being an in universe thing which I actually like. Homestuck is made of the 4th wall being a suggestion and them capturing that with a different medium was something I was concerned about.
Dave insults stack modus again, only here instead of laughing and moving on he makes sure to call it too fucking basic. Still manages to pull in the Bro line which is good even if it doesnt quite hit as much by swapping out "he basically knows everything and is awesome" for just "he's awesome" which, while small, these kind of de-verbosifying really does increase the feeling of loss in Dave's speech patterns.
Dave insults the arms out of the blue in order for the pacing to speed up tossing them out, which does lesson the help Dave gave. As a whole Dave's help here is lessened from an explanation to more of him pushing John around. The encouragement to get a weapon wasn't to help with inventory management either, it was just an order for John to at least arm himself.
Dave finds out John put in a hammer, laughs at him, spins dramatically away and talks about how John blundered into a "mid ass weapon for the rest of his days" (the fact it says mid just feels wrong considering the time frame Homestuck is meant to be set in)
John talks about how he actually fucking loves hammers
Now the gamebro comes up, actually completely unchanged. We lose the Gayve Strider retroactive forshadowing though so whats even the fucking point?
So what's going on here? Well to sum it up Dave comes across as more of a dick. To rush pacing, they entirely cut out him being helpful and the more exaggerated personality he has just has everything seem more rude and less playful. John complaining about stack leading Dave to insult it? Gone. Its just a plain insult out of the blue and a slightly more in depth one. Dave advising John on how to help with clearing up inventory? Gone. Now its just Dave exasperatedly telling John to arm himself. The arms being removed being part of advice to get to the hammer? Gone. Dave is just insulting the arms at a narratively ironic moment to get things along faster. Even the small moment of forgetting to tell John the hammer is permanent was replaced with a long bout of mockery.
This is my problem with pilot Dave. Instead of selling himself off as some dude trying to be cool and ironic without understanding what irony is leading to him having the most awkward and out of pocket rambling around... the dude just feels like a generic asshole friend character. it firmly is NOT good Dave writing in my mind and thus why I felt the need to drop this all on one post which I felt was oversimplying and downplaying the complaints Ive heard and had despite the post not even qualifying as a fraction of the autism I put into this
Is this an excessively long response? Yes. Could I have made this a solo post? Also yes. Did I post this as a reply anyway because it is 4:13 AM and I am in too deep to even process the steps needed to do that. Well, you are reading it aren't you?
