Destiny Strings application

[stridercentric]

Out Of Character Information
Name: Meowzy| [madonnya]
Age: 25
Time zone: GMT +1
Contact: ThaMeowzy on AIM | Meowzy
Anything we should know?: Nope.

In Character Information
Name: Dirk “Bro” Strider (pre-scratch)
Series: Homestuck
Canon Standing: Post-death. ([S] Jade: Enter)
Age: 33 (He doesn’t have a canon age, but this is working with the assumption that he was at least 20 when he found Dave)
Birthday & Astrology Sign: 5th of September, Virgo (headcanon)
Arcana: The Hanged Man

Personality:
Dave describes Bro as the following: “An untouchable master of irony who could replace the meat in your sandwich before it even occurred to you what the fuck you were chewing.” This doesn’t even come close to explaining what sort of eccentric person Bro Strider really is. While most of his quirks can be explained with his love of irony, one has to wonder if perhaps he’s taking things just a bit too far. Or is that just another bit of irony in itself?

First and foremost, let’s address Bro’s love for puppets. He grew up with Lil Cal by his side and has stuck with the little guy for over thirty years, even making him a sweet rapper outfit. Bro is an experienced ventriloquist and takes Lil Cal with him on gigs, but whenever he’s home, he tends to use Lil Cal to troll Dave mercilessly. While he did carelessly slash Lil Cal to pieces during his final strife with Dave, Bro also took the time to sew the puppet back together and have it join in the battle against Jack Noir. The entire living room, where Bro sleeps and keeps his stuff, has creepy puppet posters plastered across the walls. Not to mention there are naked puppets (Smuppets) strewn around the place, with webcams set up to record videos for Bro’s ironic puppet porn website.

Aside from the few normal belongings that he has, such as a TV with an Xbox, a computer and turntables for the occasional DJing, he also leaves a lot of dangerous stuff lying around. Bro owns a variety of weapons, from shuriken to nunchacku to katanas… To even famous swords featured in video games, such as Cloud’s Buster Sword from Final Fantasy VII. He knows it’s a piece of shit, Dave knows it’s a piece of shit, and yet it’s placed behind the microwave along with a few other swords. In fact, because even the fridge is stuffed with swords, Dave has learned to keep food in his own room rather than the kitchen. Not to mention the fireworks stuffed in the sink and the cherry bombs in the ice cube dispenser… The Strider apartment is like a death trap and that’s exactly what Bro wants it to be.

The relationship between Bro and his younger ‘brother’ is a very complicated one. There’s no doubt that the two Striders share a bond of mutual respect. Dave admires Bro and wants to be just like him, and Bro in turn cares much for his younger bro and tries to have him grow up to be a strong, resilient fighter. They respect each other’s boundaries to some degree, but at the same time, they breach those boundaries whenever the moment calls for it. Bro sets multiple traps throughout the apartment for Dave, just to play terrible mindgames, and he has Lil Cal pester his younger brother very often. When the two fight (strife), they take it very seriously and fight to win. Only one can come out on top in these epic swordfights and Bro would never allow Dave to back out. (“Can’t abscond, bro!”) The challenges come in more ways than one, as Bro sometimes leaves ironic comics lying around that are beyond abstract, but he just wants to see if Dave ‘gets it’. Still, there is a certain level of balance between the two. As noted when Dave tries to use Bro’s computer and finds it locked: “Of course you know what the password is, and he knows you know it, and you're both cool with that because the password is the most awesome thing it can be.” It’s a surprisingly fitting way to describe how these two interact. There is trolling, there is rivalry, there are mindgames, but at the same time there is mutual respect. Bro even keeps up with Dave’s Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff webcomic, as he seems to admire the irony his younger brother put into it. Is that a sense of pride, perhaps?

Ultimately, Bro is the kind of guy who keeps people guessing. In fact, we don't even know if his name is really Dirk. It's certainly implied, as at least two of the four pre-scratch kids retained their own name even after the scratch, which means it would work the other way around as well, but... Who knows? Everyone just refers to Bro as Bro. Even his copy of Sburb is addressed to "Bro". Much like the other guardians in Homestuck, you can never quite tell just how much he knows and how much he's doing is to be taken seriously. Even during a serious fight with Jack Noir, rather than fighting head-on, he takes out Lil Cal and has the puppet fight for him. He's even going so far as to have Cal punch Jack in the face. If you try to question his intentions, there’s a big chance you won’t get a straight answer out of him. Does Bro really love puppets or does he only keep them around for the irony and the money? Or is it the irony of loving puppets that actually makes him love puppets?

It’s hard to tell just how similar Bro is to Dirk Strider from the post-scratch universe. They are essentially the same person, but they grew up in very different surroundings. While Bro had no rolemodels and was free to develop himself as he wished, Dirk styled himself after the alpha-version of Dave, who’d died a few centuries earlier and left quite the legacy. Dirk has a thing for robots and ponies, but none of that is (apparently) reflected in Bro at all. Bro seems to be more of a loner, while Dirk holds his friends close. Later in the comic, Dirk comes to terms with the fact that he doesn't like the sort of person he is. That is, the Auto Responder who mirrors his exact personality back at him starts to get his nerves so badly he considers destroying it. Because Bro never had any kind of device to mimic his personality, it's very possible he doesn't realize just how overbearing and obnoxious his mindgames are. On that note, Dirk and the auto-responder can both be pretty passive-aggressive, hiding under a mask of indifference when things are getting to them, while passive aggression may not always be the path Bro would take.

That said, there's still an incredible amount of similarities between Dirk and Bro. It’s funny to note that Dirk guides and manipulates his online friends to show that he cares, even sending a robot to kick Jake’s ass and turn him into a 'ruthless killing machine', which is much like how Bro would manipulate and fight Dave. Both versions of Dirk enjoy contrived irony and movie references. Dirk wears anime shades, uses a katana in battle, loves to rap, has home-made Smuppets lying around his room and like Bro, he's a skilled rocket boarder. He'd be wearing a baseball cap if it fit the dimensions of his head. He enjoys taking on a bit of a 'leader' role and forcefully shoving his friends in the right direction, which in a way is reflected in Bro's relationship with Dave as well.

Backstory:
The story of Dirk Strider, aka Bro, is a tricky one. He is, in fact, a paradox clone of himself. What does that mean? Well, it has to do with ectobiology and a certain John Egbert playing around with the corresponding Appearifier technology. John locked onto the younger Bro Strider on the 4th of December 1995 and created a ‘paradox ghost imprint’. His DNA code was extracted from the imprint and then used to make a clone baby. The clone baby was sent to a certain point in time on Earth aboard a meteor during The Reckoning, to become Bro himself. Luckily, baby Bro was not alone in the world- he was sent back in time with the puppet known as Lil Cal, who is also caught in a paradoxal time loop of insane proportions.

So roughly twenty years later, Bro reached the 4th of December 1995, where John snapped the ghost imprint from him, but more strange incidents happened that day. A meteor, which had crushed Bro’s favorite record store, had brought along baby Dave (and a dead pony). Bro, who seemed to have anticipated this arrival, blessed him with a pair of tiny shades and took him home to raise him as his younger bro. Despite that, Bro is actually Dave’s father due to more ectobiology shenanigans. Bro was, in many ways, a very unconventional parent figure. He had Lil Cal ironically feed Dave his baby mash, trained him to develop mad ninja/sword skills at a very young age and encouraged him to use turntables. Their relationship became something of both awesome rivalry and mutual respect at the same time. And even while juggling being a single parent, Bro managed to build an entire puppet porn empire for himself, with which he raked in quite a bit of cash.

Thirteen years later, Dave was ready to use Sburb but lost his copy of the game. He tried to get his hands on his brother’s copy, but Bro was being his usual self and trolled Dave mercilessly, before finally challenging him to a Strife showdown on the roof. This is all in Act 2. They had a kickass battle which Bro eventually won, though Lil Cal was slashed to bits in the process. As he flew off on his awesome rocket board, he decided to let Dave have his copy of Sburb anyway. End Act 3, start Act 4.

Later, as the standard Sburb meteor threatened to destroy their apartment building and its surroundings, Bro appeared on top of the meteor to slash it in half. … Yup. He slashed a meteor in half. He was then sucked into The Medium along with Dave when the boy’s entry item, an egg, finally hatched. Shortly after, Bro retrieved Lil Cal’s remains so he could stitch them together at some point.

It continues here in The Medium section.

I also have a headcanon post that sums up some relevant headcanon facts of Bro’s life before the start of the comic.

Canon Powers:
Bro’s greatest strength, for the most part, lies with his speed. He can move so fast that he becomes virtually invisible to the naked eye. In fact, he’s so fast it can defy time itself. At one point it’s mentioned that when he moves into the crawlspace of the apartment, he’s so smooth the cord of the hatch doesn’t even jostle. Often, he uses this skill to have Lil Cal move around seemingly on his own, when it’s really just Bro puppeteering him with impeccable speed. Bro is an excellent swordfighter who regularly defeated Dave in battle and even stood his ground against Jack Noir. And let me reiterate; he slashed a meteor in half.

Canon Weapons | Items:
He has an unbreakable katana that he can wield perfectly and is shown to own a vast collection of other swords and ninja weapons, but he sometimes uses Lil Cal as a weapon as well.

Canon Allies:
None.

Canon Baggage:
Lil Cal, his katana, his rocket board, his ironic anime shades, his baseball cap, spare clothing.

Persona
[KERMIT THE FROG]
LVL (1) | HANGED MAN

Fire	Lightning	Earth	Water	Ice	Wind	Dark	Light	Physical	Mind
Str	-	-	-	Wk	-	-	-	-	-

COMBAT SKILLS
► Kill Rush (Inflicts a small amount of Physical damage up to three times on one enemy.)
► Hysterical Slap (Inflicts a small amount of Physical damage twice with a 10% chance of Rage on one enemy.)
► Agi Inflicts a small amount of Fire damage on one enemy.)
► Masukukaja (Increases all allies' Agility by 25%.(1 turn))
▷ Media (Recovers a small amount of HP to all allies. )
▷ Mind Slice (Inflicts a medium amount of Physical damage with a 10% chance of Confusion on all enemies.)
▷ Rakunda (Halves an enemy's Defense . (1 turn))
▷ Revolution (Greatly increases probability of Critical hits. Universal.)
★ Unite Sychronization (Triples Evasion against Physical attacks)

SUPPORT SKILLS
► Dodge Fire (Doubles evasion against Fire attacks.)
▷ Physical Amp (Increases Physical damage output by 50%.)
▷ Endure (Survive being knocked Unconscious once per battle )


Writing Sample
I’ve got some nice threads from when I played Bro in Vatheon last year.
- Bro attempts to make a man out of Ron DeLite and shenanigans ensue
- Bro meets Rose for the first time
- Bro challenges every single techy in Vatheon to build a legit hoverboard (I especially recommend the thread with Prince Gumball)