Okay look. I won’t lie to you, this is a whole ass essay, because I have a Lot of thoughts on Bro Strider. But uh, tl;dr I guess is I think he is fucked up in really interesting ways.
So I got into the fandom relatively recently, back in May or so. And because Homestuck is So Fucking Big, it obviously took me a Hot Minute to get through it, reading maybe 50-100 pages at a time when I had a chance to get on my computer. And all the rest of the time, I was thinking about it constantly, because this was my hyperfixation for that Hot Minute. That gave me a lot of time to think. And one of those things I thought about was Bro Strider.
I was really really obsessed with thinking about his childhood–landed on a meteor in Texas, no parents or biological relatives to speak of. He was his only family. And we never really learn about what that was like, who raised him, whatever. Only that when he was relatively young (the conjecture in the 2010 fics I was reading was 17), a baby fell from the sky that he knew he had to raise, because he was going to play a video game. And Bro was going to die. Because they must have known, right? All of the guardians? They must have known they were going to die, the same way they found out about the game at all. Grandpa Harley definitely knew, and the quiet way Dadbert and Rose’s Mom drink together feels a little bit like a toast to the end of the world. So I think Bro knew, too. And I would marvel at the fact that all of these people, but especially the younger ones, and most especially Bro, were literally born/ecto-cloned to die.
At that point, most of Bro’s abusive behaviors were played as jokes by the story, not as abuse. I was more worried about Rose with her Mom (who is narratively let off with a slap on the wrist despite the negligence and alcoholism, but that’s another topic). So I kind of fell in love with the story I had built up in my head–this guy who grew up fighting like hell, who raised a kid he wasn’t prepared for, who tried his very best to make sure that kid would be tough enough to survive underlings and denizens and meteor apocalypse–and more importantly, did his best to make sure that kid could hate him when he was gone, so he wouldn't have to cry over him. (And of course, he did anyways, because that’s not how grief works)
I also arbitrarily decided it would be really fucking funny if he was gay and didn’t tell Dave cuz he thought Dave knew (when Dirk proved to be Gay As Shit I was so fucking proud of myself for calling it), and that he refused to drink at home, but only so that he could win every argument about his questionable parenting in the guardians group chat that I presumed they had by saying “well at least i dont keep beer in the house”.
And then we had meteorstuck, and Dave reflecting on how, hey wait, that was kinda fucked in retrospect–and I also realized that, and kind of started…not mourning, but being wistful, about the guy I had imagined in my head. Not a good brother, but still someone trying to be. That brother was dead.
And then we learn about Lil Cal.
And suddenly I can reconcile these two different Bros again.
In my mind, Bro is A. Deeply deeply fucked up in the ways you might expect from a gay orphan who grew up in Texas in the 90s, and B. Deeply deeply fucked up in the ways you might expect from a 17 year old who has to raise a kid to play in a magical video Game of Life and also you’re gonna have to get impaled by a scary tentacle bird jester, and C. Deeply deeply fucked up in the ways you might expect from Dirk Strider, a guy with a long list of neuroses and issues I could write a whole other essay on, and D. Deeply deeply fucked up in the ways you might expect from a guy who has been raised from birth by a puppet-juju containing the souls of the most evil and powerful guy in Homestuck who doesn’t like you for not being a different you, a clown, a sweaty teenager, and your alternate self’s morally ambiguous AI clone who doesn’t like you for being you/him.
Take any one of these factors away, and you’ll get a guy who is still deeply fucked up, who will still try to train his son-brother on a rooftop and get off to puppets and bully himself into a pathological fear of being vulnerable to anyone ever. But I think that taking one of these factors away, especially the puppet one, will get you a Bro who is, if not good, then at least less bad. Someone a little closer to the Bro I imagined back when I was reading Homestuck for the first time and didn’t know what a Karkat Vantas was.
Also, I think more people should write about him and his fucked up relationship with Cal pretty please (I went through the tags again last night and I’ve still read everything there)
