ah yes. lets ship an abuse survivor with someone who has anger fits and yells a lot. yeah. that sounds like a good idea. who cares about how daves feels right. as long as karkats happy uwu
karkats anger is 100% bullshit and dave obviously recognizes it instantly in their first conversation. not to mention all signs point to bro being distant and neglectful who showed 0 emotions and dave himself makes a distinction between someone being a peer vs being the same age so implying all child abuse falls under “adult yells a lot at child” and that theres any correlation between bro and karkat is just objectively wrong and kind of laughable
either way dave looks pretty happy to me
Honestly and this is just something that’s been kicking around in my head but like… the way that Karkat wears his heart on his sleeve for better or worse is actually something that’s AMAZING for Dave, I think. SO much of his abuse came in the form of being shown an emotionally blank cipher that he was forced to interpret in all sorts of way to get any sort of emotional feedback in his life.
I think the thing that makes Dave really upset and nervous is when he thinks someone is holding back. When he feels ignored. When he feels neglected. When he stares at an empty chat room, a blinking cursor, and has no idea whether the person is really AFK or just ignoring him because he fucked up somehow.
He’ll never have to worry about that with Karkat. Karkat will NEVER show Dave that impassive, stern, unreadable face. He’ll never have to worry about what Karkat is REALLY thinking.
(Also Dave canonically is unphased by Karkat’s rants and thinks they’re all just hilarious overwrought bluster, which… they are. this is canon from literally moment one. “later windbag”)