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@Lizardlicks Thanks, that does clear it up some. I did get Dave's need for someone to blame, and his conversation with Dirk later was really in depth. I think what was throwing me off was Roxy - Dave and Rose's conversation with her seemed much lighter than Dave's conversation with Dirk, and the "lighting round" questioning meant the issue was skipped over with a"yes" from Roxy, and then they went on to talk about wizards and Nintendos. I was like ????? Wait??????

 

I wonder how that would of went down had Dirk and Roxy actually been raised by Dave and Rose in turn.

As is we just know they had some inkling that kids would eventually be in their homes some time long after everyone else is gone. Leave some things to help their survival. Wonder if they got killed before they finished preparations. Did they think what they did was good enough before going off to their grandstands.


Small aside to wonder at how the heck Dirk survived infancy aside from protagonist immunity. Roxy at least had other living things around. Did some Imperial robot come out and bottle feed him until he could toddle over and tear into his legacy junk food.

There is no point to what I'm saying here it's just a big old homestuck stream of consciousness.

 

I always headcanoned that there was at least one carapacian hanging around, long enough to keep Baby Dirk from dying of exposure/starvation, anyway, but they died or buggered off by the time we met him. Presumably they also taught him how to talk and flash-step... although I'm not sure how they'd have managed the first one since we've never actually seen a carapacian use mouth-words.

I also kind of imagined them avoiding his sight whenever possible, flash-puppeting Lil Cal instead so Dirk would imprint on his own species.

Alternatively, robots. Maybe even Imperial Drones. HIC knew she needed Dirk and Roxy alive so they could enter the game. That would've included making sure Dirk survived infancy.

 

It's been a long time since I last read through Act 6, so I'm not sure if I'm remembering it properly, but isn't there a pesterlog after Roxy meets Rose where she and Dirk chat about their hypothetical children and how they'd be terrible parents?

It's not really a new worry for either of them by the time they meet Dave.

 

i forget the context, but here's a pesterlog where they talk about being parents



dirk at least is already convinced he'd be bad at it
(sorry for image size/quality, i'm mobile)

 

That's the one! I thought they went into more detail but apparently not

 

Eeeeeh. Dirk specifically mentions biological blame, like how you blame your parents for your shitty genes. That's not quite the same as "you're at fault for my childhood," more like... you're at fault for me? Or parts of me? Which like sure, if you really want to blame Roxy & Dirk for Paradox Space existing... go ahead? It's pretty much nobody's fault, by definition.

I read a fic where he didn't learn to talk and so can't now that he's a teen. Jane is actually upset because he's so wordy online and it is gr8.

 

Dirk and Roxy's ability to do so many things is strange due to lack of explanation, thankfully the suspension of disbelief is a powerful thing.

 

he says "you bear at least partial and like biologically incidental responsibility for why we are both so fucked up" which I read as 'you have biological responsibility for passing along shit genetically but you also bear some of the blame for our upbringing and the way our parents were'. I separated 'partial responsibility' and 'biologically incidental responsibility'. I don't know if that's how it was intended to be read but that is how I read it.
he also says "you don't have anyone to blame for who you are except weirdly and paradoxically yourself" which sounds to me like Dave is saying "Rose and I can blame being fucked up and having shitty childhoods and doing things like drinking at least partially on you and Dirk, but you have no one to blame for your fucked-up-ness and toxic tendencies except yourself" which also sort of implies "Roxy and Dirk you two were destined to be fuck-ups."
then he says that he didn't meant that rudely and he guesses that Roxy was probably influenced by her "parental figure" Rose, and that part, the 'influenced by' and 'modeled yourself after', is what suggests to me that Dave is trying to say here that he and Rose are fucked up in part because they modeled themselves after and/or were influenced by their parents--who are, in some way, Roxy and Dirk, and therefore Roxy and Dirk are at least partially to blame for the way Dave and Rose are because of how they were brought up, because Roxy and Dirk are Like That in personality and shit and have no one to blame for it but themselves, whereas Dave, at least, seems to place partial blame on the parents of him and Rose....Roxy and Dirk.
anyway I feel like somewhere these sentences got away from me but do you kind of get what I'm getting at?

 

Wait but roxy and dirk were influenced by versions of rose and dave who had grown up without a mom/bro to model off of... And of course by the circumstances they grew up in, which also isn't a their fault thing.

 

Unrelated but I found this while scrolling through the subreddit and needed to share it because I can't stop laughing about this

 

yeah, and Dave mentions that after he says he didn't mean for that to sound rude, but I think that might actually be the first time he's considering this? because then he goes "and your friend was a paradox clone of himself and modeled himself after" and then he kind of trails off because he seems to realize that the person Dirk modeled himself after would be him.

like....I think what he's initially thinking is that since Roxy and Dirk grew up alone with no real guardian raising them, most of their development was just because of them being them--I'm not sure he really considered, up to that point, that Roxy and Dirk had versions of Dave and Rose who they would have tried to model themselves after. so he's thinking that the way he and Rose's parents were was because of just....who they inherently were, and therefore Roxy and Dirk would be, at least somewhat, inherently the same way, because they're clones of the same people who raised him and Rose.

I'm not saying it makes sense to think that, but it doesn't have to? things can make sense to a person even if they're not really completely logical and I can kind of see how Dave could have viewed Roxy and Dirk as inherently a certain way, because they're not descended from or raised by anyone, so they must just, at least somewhat, BE this way. it's entirely possible he didn't initially think about the implications of Roxy and Dirk modeling themselves after/being influenced by the post-scratch versions of himself and Rose, and how that could have changed who they were from who Dave and Rose's parents were, or influenced them to develop in certain ways. it's one thing to know Roxy and Dirk had guardians who were versions of himself and Rose and another to realize that yes, someone who didn't actually directly raise Roxy and Dirk could still influence how they turned out here.

 

i always though that was a seer thing

 

Wait wait, where did that come from? Not trying to sound rude, just asking. I'm probably forgetting something, but the only thing that comes to my mind would be Rose retaining memories of her doomed dream self, but that wasn't scratch, just a timeline that ceased to exist?

 

Mostly Kankri/Signless, but also Rose remembering stuff from the doomed timeline. With Alpha!Rose it's unclear how much she knew, because what we do know is filtered through Roxy, who never met her in person.

 

Aah, Kankri... I might've skipped skimmed whenever he was mentioned

 

Yeah, I just interpreted it differently.

 

dont forget terezi: remember