The AU where they go to school and Rose is the new transfer in student who plays the violin and Dave is the COOL KID in school who does turn tables and all. And then on the first day of school Dave gets a dare from his friends to flirt with Rose and-
Here you have it.
(note: they are not siblings in this AU. Not YET at the start, at least)
DAVE: Gog damnit Rose i already told you to stop going on those stupid dates with those guys they obviously don’t know how to handle you
DAVE: how does anyone handle flighty broads and their snarky horseshit i don’t know
DAVE: its impossible
ROSE: I’ll give you credit for trying your hand at comforting, Strider.
ROSE: But alas, you were never one for such tender sharing of emotions
ROSE: You never are, and never will be
ROSE: Woe is me.
DAVE: screw this
DAVE: don’t joke with me lalonde i’m trying to do something here
DAVE: you just stop hanging out with those tools
DAVE: and stay around with me
DAVE: until i win the award for being the best genuine comic writer and you start keeping dogs instead of cats and my dick and your breasts are sultanas
ROSE: Strider, I’m not sure where you’re getting at
DAVE: i love you
DAVE: hahahaha
DAVE: i said it
DAVE: i finally said it
DAVE: fuck
– – – – –
And then he promptly flips the fuck out and absconds because he cannot can anymore.
I’m researching Carl Jung, specifically the references in Homestuck to his philosophies, and I found some raw as hell quotes that I think are pretty poignant when applied to Dave and Rose’s suicide mission.
“No one can or should halt sacrifice. Sacrifice is not destruction, sacrifice is the foundation stone of what is to come.“ “Sacrifice proves that you possess yourself, for it does not mean just letting yourself be passively taken: it is a conscious and deliberate self-surrender, which proves that you have full control of yourself, that is, of your ego”
That first one is I think pretty obviously directly applicable to the whole concept of godtiering. The latter one is most explicitly a belief Rose embodies throughout the early narrative, in a different sense than Dave.
Dave is willing to sacrifice himself for people, both when he lets himself get shot to keep things on the Alpha timeline (and all the other deaths he experiences, even arguably the creation of Davesprite), and his insistence that he take the suicide mission while Rose lives. Dave’s idea of sacrifice is one of self-devaluing. He’s been trained by Bro all these harmful things, and this is simultaneously a denial of the “important role” he has been told he has, and a fulfillment of said role.
Meanwhile, Rose’s earliest suicide threat (to her mother) is empty and meaningless, only an expression of vague teenage rebellion. Rose threatens to kill herself because it gives her “meaning.” Later, she loses her mother, and her rebellion becomes, itself, meaningless. Her rebelling shifts from being a denial of her mother’s love to a denial of the “character building” exercises SBURB wants to put the kids through. She’s rebelling against the concept of the character arc, the myth that hardship and suffering makes you better, more capable. Her rebellion is even against her previous refusal to admit her love for her mother; she’s “gone completely off the deep end in every way,” because her mother died. Rose finally finds a “purpose,” a real reason to rebel, whether you think it’s to avenge her mother, to destroy SBURB, to save her last few surviving loved ones, or anything else.
And Dave doesn’t want her to sacrifice herself for any of those goals. He’s always been willing to put himself in harm’s way, but when the tables are turned (ba dum tss) he isn’t comfortable AT ALL. He refuses, he tries to stop her. And, fulfilling the Jung quote above, when he accepts her sacrifice and joins her, they find a new beginning together.
There are so many conclusions you can make from this, but I’m going to stop here before I end up going on a crazy tangent about how much Dave and Rose love each other, moreso than the other Beta kids, but I really think it’s a good perspective to have when rereading Homestuck and I urge you to do at least some surface level research if you’re interested in Homestuck Meta.
TG: i have absolutely no idea where that came from
TT: Of course. You have no idea where the JPEG-Object mistletoe came from.
TT: It does of course, grow in the wild here. Being a parasite it becomes quite an issue.
TT: Especially those pesky JPEG strands.
TG: you callin me a liar
TG: im wounded rose
TG: you dont have to kiss me if you dont want to but at the very least you could accept that i have nothing to do with this reasonably conspicuous magnificent jpeg artifact.
TT: I never said I wouldn’t kiss you.
I gave myself the gift of the OTP for christmas.
Also Dave ended up being more beanpole than human and I was too lazy to fix it.
The AU where they go to school and Rose is the new transfer in student who plays the violin and Dave is the COOL KID in school who does turn tables and all. And then on the first day of school Dave gets a dare from his friends to flirt with Rose and-
Here you have it.
(note: they are not siblings in this AU. Not YET at the start, at least)
– – – – –
Done on TE I was really just playing around with it and BEING AMAZED THAT YOU CAN DO LINE ART ON IT SO EASILY AS COMPARED TO PS ELEMENTS??? I was really amazed.