a random thought about a Homestuck fandom trope

[edenfalling]

There seems to be a subset of Homestuck fic dealing with a particular ramification of Time player powers -- namely the dead alternate beta versions from doomed timelines. Now it is canon that Aradia created a freaking army of doomed selves, but A) she did that on purpose for the final battle with the Black King, B) she was a robot at the time and therefore not very emotionally affected by the process, C) given the number of her co-players (and the nightmare tangle of their interpersonal relationships) it is not surprising she had a LOT to fix, and D) she's a girl so nobody cares.

(What, me, cynical? Never!)

But the only dead Daves we know about for sure are the one in his apartment from when he decided not to try stealing Rose's journal back from the Draconian Dignitary, and the one in the green suit from when he asked Terezi about God Tier ascension methods. (And Davesprite, of course, though he's a special case.) In fact, I have always been under the impression that one of the main points of Dave's partnership with Terezi was to prevent any other dead Daves by giving him foreknowledge of the stable time loops he needed to set up so he didn't have to discover them via trial and error and lots of corpses.

So why is the whole "Dave died over and over and over (or just saw himself die over and over) and is fucked up by this" such a popular fic trope?

I mean, I have read and enjoyed a bunch of stories with that premise, but I don't see a lot of evidence for it in the comic itself.

Comments

[yggidee.livejournal.com]

The way I see it, there are three things that fandoms love the most:

1) Stoic characters
2) Stoic characters who are secretly angsty and vulnerable
3) Stoic characters being angsty and vulnerable in the tender embrace of their yaoi husbando the chipper protagonist

And time travelers always seem depressed about something, I mean if the future was sunshine and kittens they'd just stay there.


On the other hand, while I don't think Dave's died more times than we've seen in canon, it seems that every time I make an assumption about something not explicitly stated in Homestuck, Doc Scratch pulls a fast one or it turns out that Davesprite didn't die.

Come to think of it, I bet you good money a lot of the fics in question were written back around Hivebent, before we had the full picture re: Dave's Time Travel.

shrug.

[edenfalling]

Mmm. Hivebent's probably the start of the trope, but I keep seeing new fics pop up that assume a horde of dead Daves. It's like it's become accepted fannon. Which, yeah, is probably because breaking a stoic and secretly vulnerable character is a very attractive trope. (Though is Dave's vulnerability really all that secret???)